WOMEN WITH AMBITION

Rachel Clare profiles five women whose entrepreneurial traits haved allowed them to recognise gaps in markets, seize golden opportunitites with both hands, and go on to set up their own highly successful companies.

Karen Hanton, founder of Toptable.co.uk
Karen Hanton is the founder and CEO of toptable.co.uk which is the largest online restaurant booker in Europe. Toptable.co.uk helps clients research, plan and book everything from a romantic dinner for two to a large corporate event for thousands. The Company will genereate over 1.5 million bookings worth in excess of £35 million to the restaurant industry in 2006 alone.

Karen came to London from Aberdeen in the late seventies and never looked back. She started off working hard days in bars and at the Kensington Odeon in the evenings. Starting toptable.co.uk from literally around her kitchen table, she says her proudest moment came when Toptable was named an eSuperbrand alongside such giants as Google in 2005, and also named as one of the fastest growing new media companies in the UK.

As part of a new breed of female entrepreneurs, Karen is famous within the industry as a pioneer of new media. She regularly lectures at the London Chamber of Commerce lunch meetings and is known for encouraging young entrepreneurs to be creative. After Toptable, animal charities are Karen’s passion in life, which she regularly donates to. Karen says that if she were the Lady Mayor of London for a day she would
let everyone travel for free!

Judy Craymer, founder of Littlestar Services production company

Judy Craymer founded the production company, Littlestar Services in 1998 which produced MAMMA MIA! the ABBA musical. Five years after the show opened, it had grossed £750 million from 11 productions worldwide with Judy as the global producer. In 2002, Judy was presented with a Woman of the Year Award in recognition of her international success with MAMMA MIA!, which was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Musical.

Judy says: “I was never a huge ABBA fan as a teenager, but after meeting Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson I became hooked. I thought, bloody hell, these were the men who wrote Dancing Queen.” After her brush with Björn and Benny, Judy’s interest in them refused to go away. She spent hours sitting on the floor of her flat listening to ABBA records and eventually decided she wanted to make a film that told a story using their songs. Her breakthrough realisation that it would work better as a musical than a film eventually led to her amazing success.

Judy believes the secret of her success has been her sheer determination to make it happen. “You have to make people believe in what you are doing,” she said. “It has taken every fibre of my focus and concentration. I was so passionate about it that when someone at one of the meetings suggested we put the show off I just shouted ‘No, you can’t do this, it has to happen’.”

Emma Harrison, founder of Action for Employment

Chairman and founder of Action for Employment (A4E), Emma Harrison is one of the most dynamic businesswomen in the UK. A4E sources a variety of services, from training and education to recruitment, administration and childcare in both the public and private sectors.

Known for being a charismatic and respected entrepreneur, Emma has always chosen to stand on her own two feet. Even at the age of nine, Emma’s entrepreneurial spirit shone through when she opened an illegal tuck shop for her classmates. She is very much a people orientated businesswoman and this was the driving force that led her to set up A4E.

In 1991, Emma had had enough of seeing the effects of unemployment in her home town of Sheffield and felt that she wanted to give people purpose. Instead of offering ‘battery-farm’ training for the long-term unemployed, A4E gives government agencies the chance to offer assistance to get people back into work. Whether they need literacy skills, interview practice, extra training or simply the confidence to rejoin the workforce, A4E provides it. Emma’s business is now worth a staggering £300 million and helps more than 100,000 people each year.

Penny Streeter, founder of Ambition 24 Hours recruitment agency

Penny Streeter’s story really is one of true adversity. Defying the odds, South African-born Penny, a single mother, has overcome lack of finance and negative attitudes to build up a company that, in less than 10 years, has an annual turnover of £60 million. She is the founder of Ambition 24 Hours recruitment agency, originally an employment agency for medical staff, which has grown rapidly and now diversified into the social care sector, running a locum service for doctors.

As the name suggests, the agency is open 24 hours - a service which Penny believed was necessary due to a strong demand for agency staff during the weekend, when most agencies closed down.

Penny is very single-minded and this is revealed in the fact that her business is not modelled on any other company and, beyond her mother, she has no inspirations in the business world. She gives the impression that she took on the world alone, and won.

Penny has this advice for other entrepreneurs, “Keep at it and don’t give up! It is increasingly hard to start up in business because of the growing mountain of regulation, and also employment legislation. However, there are always opportunities for the determined entrepreneur.”

Philippa Rose, founder of The Rose Partnership

Philippa founded The Rose Partnership in 1981, which is a specialist financial services search firm covering the European markets. She established this company at the young age of 22 and is now recognised as one of the leading headhunters for City high-flyers.

This multi-millionaire mother-of-four is on first-name terms with everyone who matters in the Square Mile, and the company holds details of the majority of London’s investment banking elite.

The Rose Partnership has a deliberately small and niche client list and only employs a staff of 39. Its approach has been to work for only a few banks - between four and eight - in each specialist field. This prevents conflicts of interest and enables the firm to become a full partner to each client bank, taking time to understand its strategy, strengths and weaknesses and then make a case for it to the best potential recruits.

Philippa comments, “I don’t know where we will end up, but we get more ambitious every month as we grow more confident. I can spot a top corporate financier like that,” she says, clicking her fingers.


Image: Judy Craymer by Joan Marcus