THEY meet and greet as advance publicity suggests – Nadhim Zahawi is ebullient and smiley, Stephan Shakespeare is coolly appraising.

Shaven-headed Zahawi, 40, pumps my hand with the directness of a sales manager. Shakespeare, 50, is shaggier, wearing rumpled jeans and check shirt, and smiles slowly. He has the louchely thoughtful air of a Fulham Road antiques dealer.

They are, by any estimation, an odd business couple. Both failed Conservative parliamentary candidates, both adopted Brits – Zahawi born in Iraq, Shakespeare in Germany (he changed his name from Kukowski in 1989) – they now head YouGov, the internet pollster that is one of the fastest-growing research firms in Britain.

The company, founded in 2000, has just emerged from a summer of acquisition, pushing into America, Germany and the Nordic regions to cement its position, with a string of blue-chip corporate clients egging it on. How big can YouGov get?

“We intend to go the whole way,” says Shakespeare.

Zahawi: “We want to be the global leader.”

Shakespeare: “Not just a nice little UK business.”

They both grin. Are they serious? Completely. Anyone can start a research firm – “you only need a clipboard”, sniffs Zahawi – but these two have developed a business that has gained recognition way beyond its financial size. Quoted on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), YouGov this month reported turnover up 51% to £14m – tiny compared with research giants such as £1 billion-turnover TNS, or £600m-turnover Ipsos Mori, but just see who’s along for the ride.

Former Clear Channel boss Roger Parry is YouGov chairman, television executive Peter Bazalgette is on the board, BBC Radio 4’s John Humphrys was an early shareholder, journalist Peter Kellner – YouGov’s first chairman – oversees its political polling. No wonder the media watches YouGov closely. Nothing is commonplace about this company.

Then there’s the founders themselves. They met while running Lord Archer’s truncated campaign to be London mayor in 2000. Shakespeare was a teacher turned political strategist, Zahawi a Wandsworth councillor who had worked in T-shirt and licensing businesses. Archer’s campaign was torpedoed when he was convicted of perjury and sent to prison. It’s not exactly a blueprint for e-business stardom.

Yet Zahawi and Shakespeare’s leap into online polling, and smart switch to brand research for companies such as M&S, Google and EDF, has left bigger rivals standing. Political polling provides only 2.5% of YouGov’s UK income now, though its rapid response rate gives it influence and profile.

And the rewards have been good. Shakespeare and Zahawi have sold £4m of shares each since floating in 2005. Shakespeare still has 14%, Zahawi 13% (through a family trust) of a company valued at £175m. Neither is keen to cede control.

There have been glitches – a false start in America, where YouGov miscalled the 2004 presidential election – but so far these two, with no previous research experience, have played a steady game.

How did they do it? “Research is a very conservative industry,” shrugs Shakespeare. Established firms just didn’t think valuable, qualitative research could be done online. As often happens, it took two outsiders to gauge the potential of new technology, and they have run fast to keep ahead ever since.

Zahawi, chief executive, and Shakespeare, chief creative officer, share a glass-walled office off London’s trendy Old Street. They sit, side by side, at a raised desk divided by a chest-high screen, like Dickensian clerks copying wills. They used to share the chief executive title, too, but were recently persuaded to take separate roles. Now Zahawi drives the corporate side, while Shakespeare thinks up new ways of doing things. YouGov’s Brand Index service, which tracks daily changes in public opinion on well-known brands, is a lucrative Shakespeare invention.

The key to the firm’s success has been its ability to do research cheaper and quicker than established firms – no two-week waits. YouGov now has a panel of 220,000 people in the UK and 1.1m in America, through its new acquisition Polimetrix. It has bases in Europe and the Middle East, too. The leap from politics to corporate research has proved easier than many expected.

Shakespeare: “Once we impressed the media that they could get accuracy and speed and at a lower price, it became a nice story to sell.”

Zahawi: “Then we went to the C suite . . .” That ‘C suite’ mention – bizspeak for senior corporate executives – is typical Zahawi. He talks fast, persuasively, as if he is closing a deal. Shakespeare is gentler, more cerebral, saying a lot or nothing at all.

When Zahawi exaggerates, saying a new service has to be 26-times better to get people to switch, Shakespeare quietly corrects him.

“No, it’s three times.” “I thought you said 26-times?” “No, it’s three times.” Shakespeare only gets sharper when his flow is interrupted. “Let me finish what I’m saying,” he complains twice, when he’s cut across. Zahawi just laughs.

Colleagues describe their skills as complementary. “Nadhim is down-to-earth, bit of a bruiser, no bullshit,” says Bazalgette. “Stephan is more eccentric, very creative, great lateral thinker.”

But the real surprise is that bigger outfits haven’t quickly copied their innovative work. Kellner says bigger firms just couldn’t make the switch. “They didn’t know when to close down their telephone research, and they couldn’t suddenly say they would do the same thing for half the price.”

Kellner acknowledges, however, that specialist outfits like the American firm Harris Interactive (turnover £103m) are now hot on their heels. The future could be tougher.

Just as surprising is that YouGov’s founders haven’t been deflected by their obvious love of politics. The firm is scrupulously nonpartisan but Zahawi and Shakespeare are one-party men. Shakespeare says he fell into politics after teaching at a Brixton comprehensive in the 1990s. It turned him into a passionate advocate for Conservative changes in education. Before that, he had taught and written in Los Angeles.

Zahawi became a Conservative at University College London. “All the Socialist Worker Party guys handing out mags made me want to find out about the other side.” He later worked in marketing.

Both saw working on Archer’s campaign as a way of boosting political ambitions dented in the 1997 election. Shakespeare had stood for Colchester and lost. Zahawi lost Erith and Thamesmead.

Shakespeare persuaded Archer to take him on as campaign director. Zahawi was already connected – his brother-in-law Broosk Saib was the Kurdish businessman entangled in the row over Archer’s Anglia share purchases in 1994.

Zahawi: “But we did something new, a West Wing-type campaign, brought guys over from America, tried to poll. That was one of the kernels of the idea for engaging people on a more permanent basis.” Shakespeare: “And Jeffrey was very studious, he was ideal, but he, er, turned out to have a flaw in another respect.”

He laughs nervously. Archer, when I contacted him last week, said he was “unable to help” with any comment.

In such unlikely circumstances, YouGov was born. Seven years on, its biggest challenge now is how to manage expansion. “Acquisitions are risky,” says Parry. “They throw up cultural issues, but we are being very choosy in what we do.” But what about politics? Friends say that Zahawi still has political ambitions. And Shakespeare is pouring money into two political e-businesses he owns: 18doughtystreet. com, which runs television and blog discussions, and Conservativehome.com.

Could a resurgent Conservative party lure them back? No, both men say, then hedge their bets. Shakespeare says the party now regards him “with some suspicion” – all that blogging, presumably.

And Zahawi says there’s time. He may turn to politics when YouGov is a world leader. Such confidence. But he also phones me later to change his car in our Vital Statistics panel from a Range Rover to a Prius. He has both. Read into that what you will.

NADHIM ZAHAWI’S WORKING DAY

THE YouGov chief executive wakes at 6am at his house on Putney Hill in southwest London. Nadhim Zahawi showers and dresses. It takes him an hour to drive to YouGov’s office in east London for 8am.

“I have a management meeting for the UK first thing, then I go through e-mails. Everything corporate goes through me. I implement technical integration and strategic decisions. I have six executives reporting to me and attend our board of chief executives from different countries.”

He often lunches contacts at Eyre Brothers restaurant nearby, and usually works till 7pm. “Then I get to see my kids before bedtime.”

VITAL STATISTICS

NADHIM ZAHAWI

Born:June 2, 1967

Marital status:married, with two children

School:King’s College School, Wimbledon

University:UCL

First job:salesman at Global Inc

Salary package:£138,000

Home:Putney, west London

Car:black Toyota Prius

Favourite book:Perfume

Music:George Michael, Eminem

Film:Pulp Fiction

Gadget:wife’s Apple iPhone

Last holiday:Dead Sea

STEPHAN SHAKESPEARE

Born:April 9, 1957

Marital status:married, with two children

School:Christ’s Hospital, Horsham

University:St Peter’s, Oxford

First job:teacher

Salary package:£138,000

Homes:Barbican, Bloomsbury and Sudbury

Car:black Range Rover

Favourite book:The Great Gatsby

Music:Beethoven

Film:Ice Cold in Alex

Gadget:Roksan hi-fi system

Last holiday:Los Angeles

STEPHAN SHAKESPEARE’S DOWNTIME

“ART, politics and the Gooners,” says YouGov’s chief creative officer, listing his interests. Stephan Shakespeare collects modern British art and 18th-century French and Flemish old masters.

He has also spent £1.5m on his internet television station 18doughtystreet, named after the property he bought to house it. He will soon spend more revamping the political station “as a broader, nonpartisan offering”.

To relax, Shakespeare watches Arsenal. He has three season-tickets at the Emirates Stadium. He also proudly supported Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final – the only boy at his British school to do so.