Virtyt Pula Named Finalist at 2025 Great British Entrepreneur Awards

Often described as the “Grammys of Entrepreneurship,” the Awards celebrate the UK’s most innovative and impactful businesses. This year’s shortlist features more than 800 entrepreneurs, employing over 25,000 people and generating £2.25 billion in turnover. Previous winners include the founders of BrewDog, Grenade, ClearScore, and Zilch, making this year’s recognition a significant milestone for both Pula and TOML™.
 
In an industry where size is often considered the marker of success, TOML Collective has built a different kind of creative business: one designed around people and trust. Founded in 2017, the company operates as an indie creative agency, powered by a global collective of visual storytellers, building bespoke teams of designers, producers, animators, and strategists for every project rather than relying on static, hierarchical structures. With a remote-first structure that puts talent at the centre, each project pairs the right creative minds with the right brief fostering a culture where collaboration outweighs ego and storytelling becomes a shared language that elevates the work both competitively and culturally.

This flexible, talent-first model has powered collaborations with leading organisations including UBS, ETH Zürich Space, Accenture, Siebert Financial, and Save the Children, as well as partnerships with major production studios such as Unit9, Waste Creative, and Red Bull Media House.

“Being named a finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Awards is meaningful to us,” says Pula. “It recognises the approach we’ve followed from the start: prioritising talent, collaboration, and trust”.  

Pula’s entrepreneurial journey is shaped by lived experience. Coming from an agency background and moving to London with zero network and English as a second language, he quickly ran into the barriers many creatives know all too well. He decided to do things his own way — creating a collective driven by talent, shared creativity, and trust over industry standards.

“As a creative myself, I saw how big, traditional agencies demanded long hours, offered too little credit, and left brilliant people burnt out and in the dark,” says Pula. “We never set out to become the biggest. I wanted to build something different, a collective-approach where talent comes first, creativity is respected, and collaboration isn’t restricted by borders, but shaped by the value you bring to the table, to clients, to community and nourishes good work-life balance for the whole ecosystem”

That philosophy proved its strength during the pandemic. While many agencies paused production, went through redundancies, and struggled to adapt, TOML continued with a “business as usual” approach — already built differently: remote-first, with systems in place and a strong team culture, likely making TOML one of the first creative agencies to operate fully remotely.

Today, TOML Collective combines in-house teams working from studios in London, Toronto, and Prishtina, with a network of over 50 world-class creatives across disciplines and continents, working across branding, strategy, and production for inspiring global brands. Beyond its client work, the collective also develops original projects, including Children’s Planet, a YouTube channel creating original songs and animations for children, and TOML Journal, an independent storytelling platform dedicated to sharing ideas, insights, and conversations that inspire the global creative community.