Start-up Stories: Ross Elder and Andy Firth at Holidaylettings.co.uk

Friends often make the best business partners, but it can also be a recipe for disaster. Thankfully for Ross Elder and Andy Firth, co-founders of Holidaylettings.co.uk, business is booming and the relationship remains in tact. Gina Dyer meets the mogul mates behind Britain's fastest growing holiday home rental website.

Back in 1999, best friends Andy Firth and Ross Elder both had jobs in London; Andy was developing financial systems for BNP Paribas and Ross was progressing through a business leadership programme at Barclays Bank.

At this point, the pair had already dipped their toes in entrepreneurial waters, having invested in a few small buy to let properties in their former university town of Oxford.

With full time commitments in the city, they were finding it a chore to scuttle back and forth between London and Oxford to show the properties to students and decided to set up a website where they could display photographs: "The idea was really to create an online brochure where people could view the properties in advance.