Rishi Khosla co-founded OakNorth ten years after he struggled to access capital for their start-up. Khosla and his co-founder, Joel Perlman were turned down by the big lenders, despite running a successful data analytics business with 3,000 employees. Thankfully, they scaled regardless, proving the early rejection wrong. But, even after eventually selling the business to Moody’s Corporation in 2014, the two finance graduates still felt frustrated by this early experience. They had an itch to create a bank founded by entrepreneurs, and for entrepreneurs.

In 2015, that itch became OakNorth Bank. It exists for the "missing middle" – businesses which are too big to bootstrap, but too small to have City institutions fighting over them. Using its data-driven lending platform, OakNorth has since funded ventures across diverse sectors like property development, healthcare, and hospitality.

Its latest financial statements report total lending facilities have grown by 18 per cent to £7.2bn, and a post-tax profit of £165m. Since 2023, the bank has also funded mid-market business and property deals in the US, where it recently agreed to acquire the Michigan-based Community Unity Bank.

As CEO of OakNorth, Khosla has written not just his own business success story, but the stories of thousands of others as well. OakNorth's tally now stands at £15bn lent in total and 70,000 jobs created. Plus, a 'Mentorpreneurship' Programme is working on the next generation of founders, backing maths education, mentorship and career inspiration for 100,000 secondary school students. Not bad for a business built on the world's most productive grudge.