This company was founded in a spare bedroom fitted out with five telephone sockets by Keith Purves, 51, and Paul Richards, 42, in 2001. As its tagline “born in the cloud” suggests, the company focused on cloud-based services from the start, and it says that it has benefited from the wider adoption of the technology. It now provides cloud-based telephony and contact centres to clients including EDF, Which? and Oak Furniture Land. Sales reached £6.4m in 2014, and last December it secured £5.7m from private equity firm Living Bridge, which took a 30% stake.