Sahar Hashemi founded Coffee Republic, the UK’s first US style coffee bar chain with her brother and built it into one of the UK’s most recognised high street brands with 110 bars.
Hashemi left the day-to-day management of Coffee Republic in 2001 and published a bestselling book, Anyone Can Do It, which is the second highest selling book on entrepreneurship after Sir Richard Branson.
In 2005 Hashemi founded Skinny Candy, a brand of sugar free sweets which was sold to confectionery conglomerate Glisten in 2007.
Hashemi is currently co-chair of the Government Scale Up Taskforce and is actively involved in the roll-out of Change Please, a social enterprise that trains and hires homeless people to run coffee carts.  She is finishing her third book, Start Up Forever, 10 ways to behave like a start-up when you’re not a start-up, based on her experiences of business. 
She currently co-chairs the government Scale Up Taskforce and is involved in a social enterprise coffee company, Change Please, which trains and hires homeless people to be baristas and run its coffee carts.