ACCORDING TO ITS co-founder Ben Medlock, the best thing about SwiftKey is “building things that blow people's minds”. Medlock, who is also chief technology officer at this London-based firm, has helped turn its “magical word-prediction technology” into a global business selling mobile apps that autocorrect and predict words. Founded in 2008, the new entry has 95 employees in the UK, with 41 joining in the past year. Its people believe the firm is driven by more than profit (they give it a top-10, 85% positive score) and that it makes a difference to the world (83%) — by saving mobile-phone users billions of keystrokes. The other co-founder, chief executive Jon Reynolds, hit on the concept as a 22-year-old graduate trainee for the British government, when he would watch colleagues struggling to type on tiny keyboards. He enlisted his friend Medlock, who has a doctorate in language-based artificial intelligence, and they soon expanded from their bedrooms to a worldwide market with the bestselling Android phone keyboard and a service for iPads and iPhones. Software engineers earn around £47,000 a year, everyone has share options and they each get a free phone or tablet once they are through their probation period, so the staff feel they are fairly recompensed for their responsibilities (78%).
