An entrepreneur, who started out earning tens of thousands playing online poker from his bedroom, has set up a business which was recently valued at £100million.

William Beauchamp, aged 30, grew up in Weston.

While attending Priory Community School, he qualified for free school meals and would later receive a scholarship to go to Cambridge University as his parents could not afford to send him to university.

Since then, William set up fast-growing Seamless Capital which uses computer programmes based on mathematical algorithms to buy and sell assets - a process called algorithmic trading.

The idea for the business started as a side project with a friend he had met during his time at Cambridge University.

William said: “After university I didn’t get accepted to any of the companies I interviewed at, so I kind of had to go my own way.

“I didn’t know much but it seemed exciting to be able to make money just by sitting at my computer and thinking, so I started working on this with a friend."

After a year, the pair had lost £10,000, and the friend left to pursue a high-flying job in the US.

William decided to stick at it, and by the end of the second year he was making £100,000. From there, Beauchamp grew the Seamless team by hiring friends.

Seamless consists of more than a dozen mathematicians, physicists and engineers.

The team includes two former professional poker players and the best Sudoku player in the UK.

Last week, the company celebrated its first international success in its plan to expand its trading to foreign markets.

William added: “In life I like to set huge, apparently impossible goals, and then to go after them with a team of great people.

"This is why I get up for work every day at 5am super excited: I can’t wait to see how far we get.

“The people I work with are really what I’m most proud of. Last year the team came up with a few new clever tricks and we managed to double our revenue.

"A lot of our people are really young - I love to see fresh graduates grow into great coders and traders.

“We hope to keep growing this year, but I don’t know how far we want to grow the team: a hundred people, a thousand? You never know.”