Startups From Edinburgh To Know

Between Scottish businesses like Skyscanner and FanDuel and winning the 2016 Startup City of the Year crown, Edinburgh’s surging entrepreneurial spirit has evolved into an ocean of possibilities. Call it the second Scottish Enlightenment if you will! Here we profile just a handful of startups in Scotland’s capital city.

Skyscanner

Giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘the sky is the limit’, Skyscanner is the brainchild of three entrepreneurial tech gurus Gareth Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes. The company, a global metasearch engine for flights, hotels and car rental deals, evolved from a simple grievance surrounding the inevitable challenges when on a hunt for cheap flights to ski resorts. Formed in 2001 and launched in 2002, 2016 marked a big year for the company with China’s largest travel firm, Ctrip, buying Skyscanner for $1.75 billion.

FanDuel

Flavourly

A most ingenious idea, Flavourly, which launched in 2012, draws from independent suppliers to obtain a meticulously curated box of gourmet alcohol, in particular artisan craft beer and gin. Better yet, they send it straight to the subscriber’s doorstep each month! Flavourly’s Founder Ryan O’Rorke and CEO Assean Sheikh first took their business venture to popular TV show Dragons’ Den. They notoriously accepted then declined a £75,000 joint bid in return for a 20% stake and subsequently opted for the Crowdcube route, which raised an impressive £515,000. This makes them the first Scottish company to ever achieve such a high number. Needless to say, this ever-burgeoning gourmet craft alcohol startup now boasts an epic number of subscribers and raving reviews from the likes of Vogue, Forbes and the Guardian, to name a mere few.

Celtic Renewables

Leave it up to the Scots to create fuel for the future using the byproducts evident within the Scotch whisky fermentation process! As the first company to conjure up such a cunning idea, Celtic Renewables has not only figured out how to make ‘superior next generation biofuel’ but they are also on the map as a multi-award winning startup worth watching out for. Through adapting the Weizmann Fermentation Process and using the two main by-products of whisky production typically used for cattle and animal feed — draff and pot ale — the company is able to successfully obtain biobutanol, a super high value renewable product.

pureLifi

Ever since pureLiFi founder and CSO Professor Haas first demonstrated the wonders of Li-Fi — essentially supersonic speedy Wi-Fi via an LED light source and a term coined by the professor — at TED Global, the benefits of this technology keep gaining momentum. The company formed as an extension of Edinburgh University’s 2008 D-Light project and are now the world leading experts in Visible Light Communications technology — a pioneering plan for lightning fast data and bandwidth realms. Watch out for this one — they’re ahead of the game.

Since you are here, we would like to share our vision for the future of travel - and the direction Culture Trip is moving in.

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Increasingly we believe the world needs more meaningful, real-life connections between curious travellers keen to explore the world in a more responsible way. That is why we have intensively curated a collection of premium small-group trips as an invitation to meet and connect with new, like-minded people for once-in-a-lifetime experiences in three categories: Culture Trips, Rail Trips and Private Trips. Our Trips are suitable for both solo travelers, couples and friends who want to explore the world together.

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