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 Oxford based CEO’ operating in the Apps space. If you think a CEO’ 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.
Nick D’Aloisio
Co-founder and CEO of Sphere (Acquired by Twitter)
Nick D’Aloisio is an English computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the inventor of Summly, which is a summarization and artificial intelligence technology developed with SRI International. D’Aloisio has been recognised as the youngest person to receive a round of venture capital in technology from a Billionaire, at just 15 years of age. As of March 2013, Summly was sold to Yahoo for a reported $30 million US dollars making him one of the youngest self-made millionaires ever. D’Aloisio was awarded “Innovator of the Year” in New York City by the Wall Street Journal for his work on Summly and at Yahoo. D’Aloisio was also included in TIME Magazine’s ‘Time 100’ as one of the world’s most influential teenagers, as well as being profiled in their “Secrets of Genius” Publication. D’Aloisio currently leads the critically acclaimed Yahoo News Digest, which launched at CES 2014 and won the 2014 Apple Design Award at WWDC for its technological and product excellence. He is also an undergraduate student at Hertford College, Oxford University, where he is studying Computer Science and Philosophy, and is the “Entrepreneur in Residence” at Airbnb.
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About Sphere (Acquired by Twitter): Now part of Twitter! Sphere is a community chat app turns groups into close, vibrant, purposeful and productive communities, instantly!
James West
CEO of Manything
James West, CEO & Co-Founder of Manything, is a tech entrepreneur with a history in spotting future technology trends and building companies to harness them. Manything, which stands for Monitor Anything, is a platform for cloud enabling video installations that brings distributors, dealers and integrators into the recurring revenue chain. Manything started out as a consumer app that has 850,000 users worldwide. In 2016 the company moved into the professional space after seeing an opportunity to connect the dots between the superior hardware of the professional industry and the more end user friendly software of the consumer industry. Prior to Manything James was co-founder and CEO of Alamy Stock Photos for 18 years. Alamy was an early pioneer in the digital photography industry, enabling photographers to reach a global customer base without handing over their rights to the big agencies of the time. He grew the company from startup in 1999 to scale, employing 250 staff across 4 continents and returning over $200 million in royalties to photographers. James was running both companies until Dec 2017 after which he became Chairman of Alamy Stock Photos and full time CEO at Manything.
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About Manything: Manything is an app that turns an iOS device in to a smart remote monitoring camera.
Lukas Lohove
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zizzle
Lukas developed his passion for understanding Chinese characters at UC Berkeley. When not learning Chinese, he enjoys riding boards – be it on snow, water or concrete.
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About Greator, Zizzle: Zizzle provides learning Mandarin Chinese has never been easier.
Paul McIntosh
Founder & CEO of Mustard
As head of the company Paul brings 25 years of experience working on the front line with blue-chip to start ups on everything from retail, service providers, technology, and more. The last ten years he has helped businesses from every industry successfully expand to new markets the right way the first time.
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About Mustard, The Mustard Concept: Mustard is a mobile app that enables users to find and connect with individuals interested in the same offline activities as themselves.
Toby Staveley
CEO of Edplus
CEO co-founder of Edplus; serial entrepreneur
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About Edplus: Making learning easier for everyone
Roy Azoulay
Founder and CEO of Serelay
Roy is a Senior Technology Transfer Manager at Isis Innovation and has been managing the Isis Software Incubator since its inception in early 2011. He is responsible for the day-to-day running of incubator facilities, services and finances and in scaling it to support 27 ventures over its first three years of operation. He typically works with incubator ventures from the early stage of idea & business plan through to deployment of a minimum viable product and initial commercial traction and has supported ventures in securing VC, angel and competition based funds. Isis Software Incubator ventures Roy has worked with in the past include: pilio-ltd.com, theysayanalytics.com, colwiz.com, esplor.io, bounts.co.uk, onfido.co.uk, smarteatout.com, com and OxLegal.com.
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About Oxford University Innovation, Serelay: Serelay is establishing the industry standard for trusted media capture.
Adam Reynolds
CEO of Webexpenses
Adam Reynolds is CEO of webexpenses, a fast-growing global expenses management software provider. With an extensive background in software and leadership, he joined webexpenses as head of sales in 2013. He became CEO of webexpenses in 2015, and now oversees all business functions from technical and product development to customer services. Webexpenses software is used in over 70 countries throughout the world, and with offices open in Sydney, Brisbane and Austin, the business continues to grow internationally.
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About Webexpenses: Webexpenses is the creator of a web based mobile application that strives to simplify the expenses process for large organizations.
