'Adele inspired our start up idea'

SEAT Unique is the luxury ticketing company Londoners call when money is no object.

- Lucy Tobin

When all your partner wants in life is a Taylor Swift ticket that sold out months ago (Seat Unique still has a few left, albeit you'll need to pay at least £1,800). When your team surprises you and you want halfway line tickets to a particular Champion's League fixture. Or when you want the plushest Formula 1 hospitality but there's only two of you and you're not a corporate bank Seat Unique will sell it to you.

The five-year-old company, set up by husband and wife Robin Sherry and Phillipa Hicks, has now sold £50 million of tickets to over 100 sports, music and theatre venues on its platform - £25 million of them in the last 12 months.

Inspiration first struck, though, thanks to Adele. "In the early days of our relationship, I wanted to take my Phillipa to see her in concert," Sherry explains. "But tickets were impossible to get hold of. I found a way in by calling venues to ask for hospitality packages directly - but it was a faff: it took a week to book, so many hard copy forms to fill in, and phone calls.

It was worth it-we had a brilliant time, and now she's my wife! But I realised venues were running hospitality purely via large telesales teams, and it was time to digitalise corporate hospitality and offer it directly."