In November, one month after launching, Fantasy Shopper beat 1, 500 rivals to win the Amazon Global Start-up Challenge.

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Whether we focus on B2B or consumer marketing, work in a global network or a social media start-up, our very detailed plans tell us who our customers are and what they want.

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She's the woman who built eBay from a scrappy start-up to a global force.

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Infosys, a technology firm, leapt in a generation from a start-up to a global blue chip, owned by institutional shareholders and measured against that most Western of yardsticks, the stock price.

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Last year venture capital godfather Kleiner Perkins, along with Tiger Global, injected a surge of optimism into the Turkish start-up scene when they invested a combined 26 million into Trendyol, one of several Turkish versions of Gilt Groupe.

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Once the proposals are formally agreed it will start the biggest shake-up of the banking system since the global financial crisis.

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In effect, our global investment earnings have defied gravity since the start of the century - and helped to make up for the fact that large parts of our economy were no longer paying their way.

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