Maserati 100

Despite the name, Maserati 100 has nothing to do with cars. It is a British ranking of entrepreneurs — a list that, across its several editions, recognised people building innovative companies and strengthening the UK's wider business environment. Launched as part of the Maserati 100 years celebration — to mark the carmaker's centenary — the Maserati 100 became one of the more distinctive entrepreneur recognition schemes in Britain, built around a simple idea: honour the people behind the ideas, not just the ideas themselves.

What Is the Maserati 100?

At its core, Maserati 100 is a list of 100 entrepreneurs, investors, mentors and business leaders, published annually for several years running. What the list specifically celebrated shifted somewhat from year to year — early editions leaned toward recognising established figures supporting the next generation, while later editions, including the 2019 edition, focused more tightly on entrepreneurs who had turned an original idea into a working business. What stayed constant across every edition was the underlying theme: innovation, impact and entrepreneurial drive within the UK economy.

History of the Ranking

Maserati announced the project in 2014, as part of its Maserati 100 years anniversary marking a century since the company's founding by the Maserati brothers. For Maserati, the Maserati 100 was a way of connecting that anniversary to the entrepreneurial spirit the brand associates with its own origins: Alfieri Maserati and his brothers starting the company on their own initiative, before it grew into an established manufacturer.

The project was formally announced on 25 November 2014, opening public nominations for the very first list. Nominations closed on 24 December 2014, and the finished list — the first edition of the Maserati 100 — was unveiled at a dedicated event in London in February 2015.

Partnership with the Centre for Entrepreneurs

The earliest phase of the list was built in partnership with the Centre for Entrepreneurs (CFE), a UK think tank and registered charity supporting entrepreneurial activity. Maserati had already been working with CFE since the summer of 2014, supporting several of its events and projects before the Maserati 100 itself was announced. In this early period, the list wasn't limited to company founders: it also recognised people who supported the next generation of entrepreneurs through investment, mentoring or philanthropy, rather than only through their own personal business success.

CFE's founder, Luke Johnson, acted as a Maserati ambassador during this period and was closely involved in framing the purpose of the list — describing established entrepreneurs' support for newer founders, whether through funding, mentoring, or simply office space, as vital to the continued growth of the British economy.

Partnership with The Sunday Times

In later years, Maserati's partner for the list shifted to The Sunday Times, giving the Maserati 100 wider media reach. By the time of the 2019 edition — the fifth annual list — the Sunday Times partnership was well established: a panel of Sunday Times experts adjudicated nominations, and the finished list was published as a dedicated supplement in the newspaper itself, on 17 March 2019. This partnership moved the ranking from a single London launch event into a media package that covered the individual stories of participants and their contribution to different parts of the British economy.

How Participants Were Selected

The Maserati 100 was never framed as a wealth ranking or a "biggest companies" list. Based on the confirmed record, selection emphasised innovation, genuine business success, and — particularly in the earlier, CFE-partnered years — a contribution to the wider entrepreneurship ecosystem, rather than company size or revenue alone. The 2019 edition made this explicit through its own stated theme (see below); for other years, the exact formal criteria used by the judging panels are not fully documented in public sources, so they are best summarised in general terms rather than as a fixed checklist.

Innovations That Became Successful Businesses

Particularly in its later editions, the list didn't simply reward interesting startups — it looked for founders who had converted a genuinely original idea into a durable, working business model. The 2019 list captured this explicitly: its theme was "innovators," defined not as people who merely had a big idea, but people who had "had a big idea and converted it into a successful business." That distinction — between raw creativity and commercially proven innovation — ran through the kinds of businesses honoured, from technology platforms to new physical products and medical developments.

Contribution to Entrepreneurship Development

Especially in the list's earlier years under the Centre for Entrepreneurs partnership, mentoring, investing in, and otherwise supporting younger founders was itself a qualifying contribution — not merely a nice-to-have alongside personal success. This is what set the Maserati 100 apart from a standard business ranking: it evaluated a person's role in the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem, not only their own company's performance.

Industries Represented in the Maserati 100

Across its editions, the list spanned a range of industries: technology, fintech, healthcare, education, food and drink, retail, and environmentally-focused businesses all featured. In the 2015 list, roughly half of the entrepreneurs came from the technology sector, with the other half spread across fashion, food and drink, travel, events and sport — a pattern that continued in later years, including the 2019 edition's emphasis on food & beverage, technology and healthcare. This spread indicates the Maserati 100 was not limited to the technology sector; it consistently drew entrepreneurs from across the wider economy.

Notable Participants

• Tom Blomfield — founder of the app-based bank Monzo, cited by Maserati among its previous recipients ahead of the 2019 nominations round.
• Charles Rolls and Tim Warrilow — founders of premium tonic brand Fever-Tree, also named among past Maserati 100 recipients.
• Col Needham — founder of IMDb, the film and television database, another cited past participant.
• Silas Adekunle — founder of Reach Robotics, featured in the 2019 list.
• Steven Mendel — founder of Bought by Many, the niche pet-insurance business he set up in 2012, which by 2019 employed around 100 staff across four UK locations with roughly £50 million in sales; featured in the 2019 list.
• Vivi Friedgut — founder of Blackbullion, a student financial-education platform founded in London in 2011, with partnerships including King's College London and the University of Surrey; featured in the 2019 list.
• Thang Vo-Ta — founder of Callaly, maker of the Tampliner, which combines an organic cotton tampon with a mini pad; featured in the 2019 list.

Maserati 100 in 2019

The 2019 list is the most thoroughly documented and, on current evidence, the last widely publicised edition of the Maserati 100. Published in partnership with The Sunday Times on 17 March 2019, it marked the ranking's fifth consecutive year, built around the theme of "innovators" — entrepreneurs who had turned original thinking into a genuinely successful business, rather than simply an interesting idea.

Key Features of the 2019 List

The 2019 edition stood out for a few specific, well-documented details:

• Three sectors dominated the list: technology, healthcare and food & beverage.
• More than 60% of entrepreneurs on the list were based outside London, in cities including Edinburgh, Manchester and Cardiff — underlining that the ranking wasn't a London-centric showcase.
• The average age of a 2019 participant was 42; the youngest, Stephen Wilks of Seneca Learning, was just 24.
• The list included inventors of genuinely novel physical products, such as Hexo Helmets — founded by Jamie Cook, Henry Neilson and Georgie Smithwick — described as creators of the world's first custom 3D-printed cycle helmet.

Why the Maserati 100 Mattered for British Business

For the entrepreneurs involved, inclusion in the Maserati 100 offered public recognition that smaller or younger companies rarely receive on their own — a form of visibility that, particularly once The Sunday Times became involved, reached a much broader business audience than a niche trade award would. Beyond the individual profile boost, the list as a whole served a demonstrative function: showing, year after year, that commercial success and genuine innovation could go hand in hand with broader social benefit, whether that meant creating jobs outside London, tackling a healthcare gap, or building a more sustainable product.

Does the Maserati 100 Exist Today?

The most recent widely confirmed, officially documented edition of the list is from 2019. Nothing in the public record points to a further annual edition being published after that year, and no evidence was found confirming that the list has been formally discontinued either. Given that gap, it would be inaccurate to describe the Maserati 100 as a currently running annual ranking without further, more recent confirmation. The more accurate framing is historical: the Maserati 100 stands as a notable initiative — launched during Maserati's 100 years celebration and sustained for at least five consecutive years, from 2015 to 2019 — through which the brand supported and celebrated British entrepreneurship, first alongside the Centre for Entrepreneurs and later alongside The Sunday Times.