Female Hero of the Week: Sarah McVittie

You do not have to be a business veteran to be an internet entrepreneur, shows our female hero of the week Sarah McVittie. English Sarah McVitte, founder and CEO of Texperts.com, dubbed one of ‘The top 35 women under 35’ by the Times, is one of those female heroes of who we expect more to come.

After a brief career as a city analyst, Sarah founded Texperts (originally 82ASK), a quick text question and answer service for mobile phones, in 2003. Texperts allows anyone in the UK with a mobile phone to get his or her question answered by texting a question to UK number 66000. Texperts then uses a combination of innovative internet technology and human resources to send users the answer to their questions.

Since the service launched in 2003, Sarah not only raised £2.5m from investors, while ensuring that its service could operate across all UK mobile networks, she also collected a host of prizes for her innovative idea and business. In 2007 Texperts won the Innovative Company of the Year prize at the Real Business/CBI Growing Business Awards and the National Business Award for Best Use of Technology for it. In 2008 Sarah she was runner up in the ‘ rising star’ category of the Media Guardian awards and won the “Businesswoman of the Year” award at the Cambridge Evening News Business Excellence Awards.

Now that the mobile services enters its fifth year of existence, we of course wonder, Sarah what’s your next move?