Startup fever

FOR all those exasperated people who can never find anything in their own homes, Simon Lyons has the answer. The 24-year-old entrepreneur has come up with Geco Hub—a square of flexible rubber circles between which can be squeezed keys, biros and other things that tend to go astray (see picture). He hopes the first one will be manufactured next May, and is now working on a device to open recalcitrant packaging.

More and more Britons are starting businesses. According to StartUp Britain, a website that uses data from Companies House, 526,000 new outfits were registered last year, up from 484,000 the previous year and 441,000 in 2011. This year the number has already passed 400,000, so last year’s record should be broken easily.