A combined 30 years of media and marketing experience can bring two people to an interesting point, but a kitchen table may not be the first place that springs to mind. That is, however, exactly where internet entrepreneurs Sophie Cornish (left) and Holly Tucker (right) found themselves just five short years ago and also where the concept of high-growth business notonthehighstreet.com was born.

Ask one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs about his predictions for the new decade and you know we will soon all be practicing what this canny man preaches. He is Sabeer Bhatia, the man who revolutionised the way we would communicate during the noughties when he co-founded Hotmail in 1996.

Maintaining his foothold as one of Silicon Valley’s brightest stars, Bhatia has kept on re-investing both his knowledge and the $400 million for which Hotmail was sold to Microsoft, to keep his many companies at the forefront of technology.

Against the background of a weak economic recovery and an ongoing debate about the relative value of the service economy and declining manufacturing base of the UK economy, it is undeniable that a thriving technology sector is a key driver for success if the UK is to return to substantial growth.

And, as any citizen of Entrepreneur Country would no doubt agree, it is clear the UK has no shortage of start-ups that go on to be profitable technology companies. But for every Autonomy and Monitise there is, despite the best efforts of the entrepreneurs behind them, a host that, although profitable, remain small.

Polly Gowers is a self-confessed adrenalin junkie. She admits she owns a ‘busy’ desk and gets off on “having many plates spinning in the air”.

Her life so far has been a stream of one success after another and she is not scared to put all on the line for ideas that she is passionate about. After all, she remortgaged her house to start up Everyclick.com.

She was already a successful entrepreneur at the time, but found it hard to get backing for her philanthropic business brainwave.

Sahar Hashemi is a woman who knows how to spot a gap in the market. Barely into her forties, Hashemi has two successful start-ups under her belt already, is a successful author and, more recently, became a widely acclaimed motivational speaker. So how did she get her first big idea?

“On a trip to New York to see my brother in the early nineties, I noticed that London had no equivalent to match the hugely popular coffee bars that littered the streets and were always busy,” says Hashemi. 

She and her brother Bobby gave up successful careers - she as a lawyer and he an investment banker - to open their first Coffee Republic in 1995.