Karen Hanton

Who is Karen Hanton?

Karen Hanton MBE is a British entrepreneur formerly founder and Chairman of Toptable, a restaurant booking enterprise in the United Kingdom.

Hanton is a native of northeast Scotland, but moved to London soon after her Highers. She pursued a career in training and human resources, but at age 29 founded the IT staffing firm Mortimer Spinks. After selling the company to FTSE 250 Executive Search firm Harvey Nash in 1997, she bought and staffed a restaurant business in Fulham, which in 1998 inspired her to found Toptable. She owned just under half of the company's shares. The company became profitable in 2005, after surviving years in the red, which Hanton attributes to the rise in consumer broadband accessibility.

At the 2005 Institute of Business Advisers Annual Conference, Hanton presented closing remarks about the four principles of successful of business management to which she ascribes: "keep it simple, have clear objectives, don’t confuse reasons with excuses and be prepared to tweak your ideas."

toptable.com was sold to Nasdaq listed Opentable.com in 2010 for $55m.

She is currently an Investment Partner at ProfoundersCapital and investor in JustAddRed, where her investments include Hire Space and Pets Pyjamas