A young Exeter-based company and its online social shopping game has won the global Amazon Web Service (AWS) Start-Up Challenge, scooping $100,000 in cash and AWS credits.

Fantasy shopper – whose application allows users to create outfits from real high street shops using virtual ‘pay days’ – was the only one of the seven finalists in the competition from the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

In San Jose, California yesterday, the finalists presented their businesses and ideas to judges, AWS representatives and venture capitalists. The judges then selected their favourite before an evening awards ceremony.

In all, Fantasy Shopper beat off competition from more than 1,500 other applicants from 78 countries.

The prize is split into $50,000 cash and the same amount in credits for Amazon Web Services products.

Having only launched to the public less than a month ago, Fantasy Shopper co-founder and CEO Chris Prescott was understandably delighted with the achievement. He was also vociferous in his praise of AWS and the opportunities it affords start-up companies.

"As the only tech start-up in a small town 150 miles outside London, we’re honored to win this year’s AWS Start-Up Challenge,” he said.

“Our goal for Fantasy Shopper is to become the world's number one social shopping platform, which means we’ll be going global very quickly. Thankfully, AWS provides us the foundation to make this ambitious goal possible.  After watching the insane growth rate during our private test sessions, we knew we needed to build our business on highly scalable technology infrastructure, and AWS was our only choice.”

Prescott also had some advice for other budding tech entrepreneurs.

“It's a roller coaster and you'll need the passion to get you through,” he said. “And seriously, this isn't an Amazon plug either, but host your platform on EC2 [Amazon’s cloud server]. The last thing you want when your product takes off is to have scaling issues creating a barrier to momentum.

“You'll have scaling issues regardless; growing the team, handling the user requests, managing the finance. Don't add hosting problems into the mix unnecessarily. Be brave, go big and remember that small, agile teams have massive advantages over large corporations – you already have the power, so just give yourself the belief.”

After being presented with the “Golden Hammer” award last night, the Fantasy Shopper team partook in the annual ritual of using the award to destroy a server, signifying a small business’s requirements when using AWS.