Suzanne Noble, founder of Frugl, explains why the business should win the home business category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
Frugl is an online marketplace for daily deals and local happenings. It gives independent businesses the opportunity to list their events and reach Frugl’s customers on web and mobile instantly in order to fill empty seats. Winner of the Smarta Mobile Business of the Year Award 2014, Frugl has been featured in national press and now has thousands of customers all looking for great events and offers in London.
Frugl’s team all work from home and are a truly international business. The core team are based in London with the chief executive and her son working from their kitchen table in Kilburn, but having the added benefit of using technology that ensures faster broadband speeds.
The developers are based abroad, one in Bosnia and the other in Lebanon. The team use a communication platform called Slack to keep in touch with each other and this has helped them to bridge the gap in distance between the management and its employees.
Working from home has other benefits too. Aside from saving time by not needing to commute and the money saved by not travelling on the Underground, it allows the business to remain very lean, which is important as Frugl is an early stage tech startup that has, until recently, been completely self-funded.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
