Sara Murray OBE

Sara Murray is the founder of the financial comparison site confused.com. She has since gone on to create Buddi, a personal tracking device.

After university Sara worked in management consultancy in the US where she claimed she became very good at spreadsheets. She also suggested writing software which would effectively do most of her job. Meeting some resistance she set out on her own and founded her own marketing consultancy. She then created a website during the original dotcom boom called inspop.com which aggregated and compared insurance quote.

Having sold what became confused.com to Admiral, she conceived her next idea after losing her daughter in a supermarket. Buddi is a tracking device for the elderly and vulnerable. Pressing the buddi connects to a service which can establish location and connect to a monitoring service to speak to the wearer to understand what assistance is required and notify emergency contacts. Sara estimates that the government could save around £2billion a year using buddi in care homes etc.

Sara shows that digital entrepreneurs, like any other, must always be prepared to adapt; and reeling off examples of household names that all started with hiccoughs, she stresses the lessons of failure: “You have to want to grow a business, not make a fast buck.” Sara is also a member of the government’s Technology Strategy Board.

Other roles Sara has taken on have included being a member of the Government’s Entrepreneurs' Forum, a council member at Imperial College London, and non-exec roles at online fashion retailer boohoo.com and at construction company Travis Perkins.