Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Founder operating in the Staffing Agency space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Sergiu Matei
Founder of Index
Sergiu Matei is the founder of Index, the London-based platform helping enterprises like Vodafone and Twilio find and hire world-class remote software developers, and be globally compliant from the get-go. Before launching Index, Sergiu founded Travod, the translation marketplace providing 2,000+ brands such as Amazon and Swissport with locally hired translators in 100+ countries in every continent across the globe.
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About Index, Index.dev: Index helps companies and organizations hire remote software developers and teams.
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Jack Beaman
Co-Founder & CEO of Syft
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About Fuse Universal, Syft: Syft is the UK’s market leading flexible staffing platform.
Novo Abakare
Co-Founder & COO of Syft
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About Syft: Syft is the UK’s market leading flexible staffing platform.
Rosemary Forsyth
Founder & General Partner of The Forsyth Group
Rosemary has been the General Partner of the Forsyth Group since she founded the company in 1981. Recognizing the potential growth of Information Technology within business, the Forsyth Group was the first Executive Search Consultancy to focus on the emerging technology market. Rosemary has developed extensive search experience across all technology sectors and conducts “C” and Board level assignments for technology companies in the UK, E& W Europe and the United States. Rosemary is is a key contributor to the investment community, and is an investor in Seedcamp. Rosemary holds a Master’s degree with honors in Psychology and an M.Litt degree in Educational Psychology, both from Aberdeen University in Scotland. Rosemary sits on the Aberdeen University Sixth Century Campaign Board, The Board of Governors of the School of Communication & Arts 2.0, Innovate Europe, Snowball and is an advisor to TalentPuzzle and BraveNewTalent.
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About Said Business School, University of Oxford, The Forsyth Group: The Forsyth group is a boutique executive search firm.
Bradley Bartlett
Founder and Director of LMRE
Brad spent 8 years at one of London’s leading independent agencies as Director of Corporate Services. In 2017 he joined the highest funded VC backed property startup in Europe leading their leasing and corporate strategy teams. Brad wants to link the strongest talent in property with the most innovative ideas in PropTech.
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About LMRE: LMRE is placing talent into the proptech sector within UK and international real estate.
Louisa Dickins
Founder and Director of LMRE
Lu Lu started her career in property working at a well-known estate agency in London. Realising her people skills, she moved over to Lloyd May to pursue a career in recruitment. She now is a Director and oversees their 5 core areas. Louisa now has co-founded LMRE, and provides a constructive recruitment platform to the new disruptors in real estate.
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About LMRE: LMRE is placing talent into the proptech sector within UK and international real estate.
Olivier Kerckhove
VP / Founder of Storm5
Olivier Kerckhove is the VP and Founder at Storm5.
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About Storm5: Storm5 are global RetailTech recruitment experts, connecting organizations with the talent to drive their mission.
Mark Elwig
Co-Founder and Commercial Director of Staff Heroes
Proven Commercial leader with a track record of driving growth through technology sales with Enterprise customers across multiple sectors including Hospitality, Retail, Travel and Entertainment. Experienced go-to market strategist and sales leader. Deal brokering at a global level. International experience within EMEA and US. Focus, drive and great people skills having lead several sales, business development and client account teams for both Fortune 500 and start-up organisations. Experience in setting up and building out sales and marketing teams from scratch and most recently co-founding and running the commercial arm of an innovative staffing marketplace start-up, operating within the Hospitality sector in the UK. Specialties: Business development, Sales, business strategy, account management, client services, licensing, white label, B2B partnerships, European & Global sales, SaaS software sales, launching a start-up.
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About eBay Advertising, mydeco, Staff Heroes: Staff Heroes is an on demand & AI technology marketplace reinventing the world of work, connecting businesses and workers more efficiently.
Andrius Balkunas
CEO & Founder of ParcelABC
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About ParcelABC: ParcelABC is a logistics company that unites thousands of local and international delivery companies.
James Uffindell
Founder & CEO of Bright
James Uffindell is Founder & CEO at Bright.
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About Bright: Bright is an online recruitment network that connects graduates, undergraduates and professionals with suitable job opportunities.
Whitney Hawkings
Co-Founder and CEO of Flowerbx
Whitney Hawkings is a co-founder and CEO of FLOWERBX.
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About Flowerbx: Flowerbx is an online, wholesale, flower-delivery service.
Kayleigh Bottomley
VP And Founder of Storm4
Kayleigh Bottomley is the Founder and VP at Storm4.
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About Storm4: Storm4 is a specialist GreenTech recruitment marketplace, connecting organizations with the senior talent to drive their mission.
Seb Hall
Founder of Cloud Employee
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About Cloud Employee: Cloud Employee is an Innovative Offshore IT staffing Provider helping Startups Grow
Jennifer Johansson
Founder & CEO of Placed App
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About Placed App: Placed is a mobile-first recruitment platform helping the high labour churn, service industries access permanent staff.
Ann-Christine Roope
Founder & CEO of Ethan Partners
Ann-Christine is Founder and CEO of Ethan Partners a global executive search company focusing on high growth Internet companies. Ethan Partners has supported over 150 successful Internet companies and placed more than 3000 high profile candidates. Clients include among others Uber, Houzz, Naspers, Zomato, Ringier, Deliveroo, and Goldman Sachs. Previously Ann-Christine was Director of International Recruiting at Rocket Internet where she was responsible for Founder and Senior Executive recruiting for +75 portfolio companies in +45 countries, taking Rocket Internet from a few 1000 people European company to a +25.000 person global organization in 2 years. Before this Ann-Christine was Director of International Recruiting at Groupon as they entered +50 countries globally. Ann-Christine has also supported some of the largest VC’s and PE’s globally with talent acquisition. Ann-Christine holds a Master in Marketing and Business Communication from Copenhagen Business School.
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About Ethan Partners: Ethan Partners is a specialized executive search firm.
James Silverman
Co-Founder of Hunted
James started his career with Michael Page before joining a startup rec2rec business Paddington Partners. He led PP’s global expansion and worked with recruiters and recruitment/search organisations across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. James is responsible for the overall strategic direction at Hunted and is hands on leading the Customer Success and Talent Advocacy teams.
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About Hunted: The biggest hurdle to growth for recruitment companies is finding and hiring recruitment talent.
Guy Tam
Co-Founder of Hunted
Guy started his career at Michael Page before going on to run global projects for a leading international artificial plant company. Guy heads our day-to-day operations and leads our tech and product development. With an unparalleled eye for detail and a great photo he’s the man to speak to about our product roadmap and an awesome team pic.
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About Hunted: The biggest hurdle to growth for recruitment companies is finding and hiring recruitment talent.
Clare Johnston
CEO and Founder of The Up Group
Clare is the Founder and CEO of The Up Group, a leading international executive search and networking firm focused on the digital and technology sectors. She has an extensive global network and hosts regular sector events attracting some of Europe’s most exciting investors, entrepreneurs as well as executives from start-ups through to global corporates. Clare’s earlier career was as a Management Consultant for Detica, an international technology consultancy, as well as being co-Managing Director of an executive search firm. Having self-funded and grown The Up Group from the ground up to a twenty person business shortly opening its Berlin and New York offices, Clare was recognised in Management Today’s influential ‘35 Women under 35’ list, as well as listed on Growing Business Young Guns 2012 awards. Clare graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Management Sciences from The University of Warwick.
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About The Up Group: The Up Group company provides online recruitment, professional placement, and career consulting services.
Owanate Bestman
Founder and Director of Bestman Solutions
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About Bestman Solutions: Bestman Solutions is a cyber security staffing resource firm that aids security and technology leaders.
Greg Kalym
Co-Founder of You Are Uncommon
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About You Are Uncommon: You Are Uncommon is an onsite consultancy for recruiting agency.
Matthew de la Hey
CEO & Co-Founder of inploi
Matthew is co-founder & CEO of inploi, a recruitment marketing platform built to connect great employers with the future of the workforce. With employer branding at its heart, inploi empowers companies to speak to candidates as consumers of workplaces, helping them to tell their stories with captivating videos, images, and written content in order to engage active and passive candidates. When actively hiring, inploi’s software is a powerful recruitment tool incorporating job post creation and distribution, applicant tracking, CV-parsing, candidate-job matching, proactive talent search, video profiles, instant messaging, video calling, file sharing, programmatic job advertising and more. For jobseekers, inploi provides a beautiful professional presence making it easy to access career-related information, apply for job opportunities, and connect and communicate with employers, and with each other. Matthew is a Mandela Rhodes Scholar and a two-time Weidenfeld Scholar.
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About inploi: inploi is the future of talent engagement and job discovery.
Samm Green
Co-Founder and Director of Few&Far
Samm Green is the co-founder and director at Few & Far.
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About Few&Far: Few&Far helps companies stand out, build teams, and set the foundation for growth.
Gary McKay
Co-Founder & MD of APPII
Gary is the co-founder and managing director of APPII, a blockchain start up revolutionising CV verification and employee background checking. APPII was founded in early 2016 and is based in London. He has more than 20 years’ experience across many different industries including financial services, media, staffing and recruiting, and management consulting. All of his roles have centred around using his technology experience and knowledge to transform businesses and disrupt business models. Born is Scotland, Gary studied Building Surveying at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, before moving to Australia for 18 years where he studied at the UNSW Business School and was awarded a Master of Business and Technology.
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About APPII: Using blockchain technology to quickly and simply verify identities, backgrounds (such as criminal history) and career history (CV / Resume)
Tommaso Lucentini
Founder and Business Developer of iTalentJob
Passionate about digital marketing, technology and travelling. Have lived in London, Bangkok, Milan and Marsala.
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About Crowdville Ltd, iTalentJob: iTalentJob is an integrated career searching consultancy firm that connects employers with job seekers.
Alex Dover
Founder of Prism Digital
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About Prism Digital: Prism Digital are a DevOps, Cloud & Infrastructure focused Talent Partner.
Gary Elden OBE
Founder of SThree PLC
George Ayittey has a Doctor in Philosophy (Ph.D.) at the University of Manitoba. He founded the Free Africa Foundation.
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About SThree PLC: SThree is a company and has three key elements are market specialisation, organic growth and homegrown management.
Sean Schwarz
Founder and Managing Director of RAFT Recruitment
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About RAFT Recruitment: RAFT Recruitment is a recruiting firm that places executives, software, machine learning, and robotics engineers.
Kyle John Probert
Founder of Transparent Talent
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About Transparent Talent: Transparent Talent is a staffing agency that provides recruiting services to a variety of sectors.
Scott Erwin
Founder and CEO of HireHand
Scott Erwin is the founder and CEO at HireHand.
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About HireHand: HireHand is an intelligent and fuss-free staffing platform for food businesses.
Nicholas Barton
Founder & CEO of The Barton Partnership
Nicholas founded The Barton Partnership in late 2007 and has succeeded in building a niche executive recruitment firm with an enviable reputation within the Strategy, Transformation and M&A arena. From a standing start, he has built a team of professionals renowned not only for their talent acquisition skills but also their subject matter expertise with offices in London, Europe, New York and Asia. Throughout his career he has specialised in, and successfully executed, on over 250 senior retained and contingent assignments across Commerce, Financial Services and Professional Services both in the UK and Internationally.
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About The Barton Partnership: The Barton Partnership is a niche Executive Recruitment firm providing permanent and interim solutions in strategy, transformation, and M&A.
Nick Cochrane
Director & Founder of Zebra People
Nick Cochrane is the Director of Zebra People and Founder of UX People.
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About Zebra People: Zebra People is a digital recruitment agency bringing together the smartest Digital talent.
Christopher Platts
Co-Founder & CEO of ThriveMap
Chris Platts is CEO of ThriveMap, a provider of personalised, pre-employment assessment software for volume hiring.
A former recruiter, Chris has experienced the problem of relying on intuition when making hiring decisions. ThriveMap helps companies to redeuce attrition and improve hiring decisions via realistic work simulations that take candidates through a digital “day in the life” experience of a job. Prior to starting ThriveMap, Chris was CEO of TalentRocket a culture-first talent marketplace.
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About ThriveMap: Personalised pre-employment assessments for volume hiring
Ali Hanan
Founder & CEO of Creative Equals
All Hanan is an award-winning creative director who marketing sector for the last 19 years. Along the wa lack of diversity within the industry, so in 2015, she s project, now an award-winning organisation with the VCCP, HavasLondon, Ogilvy, The Engine Group, AMV pioneered a data-driven, people-powered model for Media Equality Standards, which has become the be companies a review, rating and a roadmap for lastin has worked in the advertising and she has seen the impact of the -t up Creative Equals as a side backing of companies including 1900 and many more. Her team liversity, the Creative, Digital and chmark for the industry, giving change.
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About Creative Equals: Creative Equals is here to work with industry, agencies and recruitment to create more pathways to success for female creative talent.
Dan Collier
Co-Founder, Director of Sales and Strategy & CEO of ElevateDirect.com
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About ElevateDirect.com: Productivity enhancement tool for recruitment across all workforce categories
Simon La Fosse
CEO, Founder & Co-Chairman of La Fosse Associates
Simon has worked in technology executive search for the last 20 years. Up until the end of 2006 he worked for a leading executive search firm and helped to grow the business from an embryonic team to an international organisation of over 500 people. Simon was part of the executive team that took the organisation public in 1997 and left to start La Fosse Associates at the beginning of 2007. La Fosse Associates has since grown to a position of prominence as one of the most respected technology search firms in the UK, and is poised for further significant growth.
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About La Fosse Associates: La Fosse Associates focus all our efforts on providing an outstanding service to our clients and candidates
Anthony May
Partner & Co-Founder of Hedley May
Anthony has advised major law firms, Big Four accountancy firms, FTSE 100 corporates, financial institutions and Government entities on legal search, strategic consultancy and leadership projects since 1993. He has completed assignments in all the major European economies, the US, CIS and across Asia. Previously Anthony led the international law firm practice at Whitehead Mann, having started his career as a Corporate Financier with Chemical Bank in London and New York. Anthony has an MA in History & Philosophy of Science from St John’s College, University of Cambridge.
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About Hedley May: Hedley May delivers exceptional talent and strategic consultancy.
Russell Stinson
Founder and Owner of ACT Clean
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About ACT Clean, Fireheart Coffee: ACT Clean is providing the highest standards of outsourced cleaning and staffing services to the hospitality industry.
Neil Dickins
Co-Founder and Director of IC Resources
Neil Dickins is the founder and director of IC Resources.
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About IC Resources: IC Resources develops and delivers insightful and relevant recruitment solutions to the technology community.
Agnieszka Łyniewska
Founder of NIKWELI
Agnieszka Łyniewska is the founder of Nikweli. As a founder sha brings drive, contacts, and business development knowledge.She is a former World Banker in Tanzania. She is an associate at Associate at McKinsey & Company. She earned her MBA at London Business School . Brings drive, contacts and business development knowledge.
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About NIKWELI: NIKWELI is a mobile-to-web job matching platform that connects employers and job seekers for the service sector positions.
Simon Taylor
Founder of SupplyNow
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About : Disrupting the education supply staffing market in the UK – Offering candidates and schools a fair deal using an innovative tech platform
