The Bold & The Brilliant: 2025 Beelievers Awards – London Edition

At Beelieve London, we celebrated companies and individuals who’ve redefined what’s possible in recurring revenue business. The 2025 Beelievers Awards winners deserve the spotlight for their creativity, tenacity, and results.

Meet the winners changing how business gets done.

The Business Champions

Global Growth Leader: Factorial

Originally founded as an HR software company, Factorial has evolved into a full-suite business management platform. Having grown to more than 13,000 customers in 65+ countries since 2019, Factorial aims to become the most horizontal and easy-to-use platform for businesses of all sizes. 

Their governance approach meant compliance across 65+ countries never faltered, while their forecasting and cash flow management sharpened with scale. Now valued at over £1 billion, Factorial proves that ambitious global growth and operational excellence can go hand in hand.

Monetization Hero: Condé Nast

The subscription platform redesign at Condé Nast in recent years has fundamentally transformed subscriber relationships. By centralizing customer data, streamlining portfolio-wide management, and creating a clear separation between subscription and payment processing systems, the publisher achieved a more cohesive approach to subscriber acquisition, management, and retention.

Their smart implementation of multiple payment gateways — among other modernized capabilities — drove significant conversion & retention improvements year over year. Features like scheduled subscription changes and graduated pricing boosted retention while giving subscribers self-service capabilities and the seamless experience they deserved. Their tailored cancellation deflection flows alone drove significant increments in retained revenue, an effort that speaks volumes about their value proposition and putting subscribers first.

Operational Excellence: Hostinger

The Hostinger team saw beyond its in-house billing system’s limitations and rebuilt for the future. Their focus on better reconciliation, compliance, and tax integration resulted in streamlined catalog management and audit simplicity.

What separates good companies from great ones? Speed. Hostinger’s operational transformation accelerated their go-to-market pace, giving them the agility to outmaneuver competitors in a crowded market.

The Individual Standouts

Modern CFO: Gary Lumsdon, CFO, Freepik

Gary has supported Freepik’s transformation from a provider of stock content to a suite of AI-powered tools for designers and marketers, delivering 400% CAGR in AI subscribers and building a community of over 80,000 AI users globally over the last 12 months.

He has been instrumental in helping Freepik develop and launch its first-ever products targeted at Enterprise clients and has championed, through a data-driven approach, greater localisation of the business, including payment solutions, price plans, and multi-currency options.

With users in 99% of countries and 158 million monthly visitors, Gary proves that forward-thinking finance leaders drive growth, not just record it.

Business Transformation Leader: Annelies Bertels, Financial Controller, ScreenCloud

Annelies led ScreenCloud from £4.5M to £19.5M ARR by transforming finance into a growth engine. She rebuilt billing operations to support three product tiers, four billing frequencies, and four currencies, creating the foundation for global expansion and enterprise-ready flexibility.

Under her leadership, manual processes led to automation across quote-to-cash, tax compliance, and revenue recognition. Revenue recognition went from a two-week ordeal to a two-hour task. Month-end close became faster and cleaner, and an audit was delivered without a single flag.

By connecting Chargebee with Salesforce, Avalara, and NetSuite, Annelies created an ecosystem where finance actively shapes business decisions rather than just reports on them.

AI Founder Award: Alexandre Leciel, CEO & Co-founder, AdCreative.ai

Alexandre grew AdCreative.ai from concept to an 8-figure ARR business in 18 months by reimagining what’s possible in ad creation. His team launched the first ad-focused LLM and built pricing strategies that supported hypergrowth, culminating in an acquisition by Appier.

Alexandre’s leadership shows what happens when visionary ideas meet flawless execution in the fast-evolving AI and adtech landscape.

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These winners remind us that innovation comes from people who see solutions where others see only challenges. Here’s to all the Beeliever award winners, proving what’s possible in the recurring revenue business. See our San Francisco winners here.