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 Software 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.
Ali El Kaafarani
Founder and CEO of PQShield
Dr Ali El Kaafarani is the founder and CEO of PQShield, a British cybersecurity startup specialising in post-quantum cryptography and quantum-safe solutions. A University of Oxford spin-out, PQShield is pioneering the commercial roll-out of a new generation of cryptography that’s fit for the quantum challenge, yet integrates with companies’ legacy technology systems to protect them from the biggest threats of today and tomorrow. Dr. El Kaafarani is a research fellow at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute and a former engineer at Hewlett-Packard Labs, with over a decade of academic and industrial experience.
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About PQShield, University of Oxford: At PQShield, we help customers transition their product lines from legacy RSA and Elliptic Curve cryptography to quantum-safe standards.
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Bo Jing
CEO of ONI
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About ONI: ONI is a pioneer of super-resolution microscopy, making this advanced technology accessible to new generations of researchers.
Anders Krohn
Co-founder and CEO of Aula
Anders Krohn is Co-founder and CEO of Aula. Originally from Denmark, he has studied at 5 universities on 3 continents. He is an advisor to several non-profits in the education space and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community.
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About Aula: Aula is a social learning platform that brings university content and learning experiences online.
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!
Oren Yogev
Co-Founder & CEO of Replay Technologies
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About Blink Technologies, Replay Technologies: Replay Technologies Inc. develops video 3D reconstruction technologies.
Michalis Papadakis
CEO & Co-Founder of Brainomix
Dr Michalis Papadakis is the CEO and co-founder of Brainomix. He leads the management team, commercial strategy, fund raising, and corporate partnerships. He has grown the company from the ground up, building the company’s global presence and has raised over £15 million of private investment and public funding. When he founded Brainomix he was the Scientific Director of the preclinical stroke lab at the University of Oxford. He has a BSc Honours in Biochemistry from Imperial College London and a PhD in neurosciences from UCL School of Pharmacy. He has been an invited speaker at international scientific and innovation conferences
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About Brainomix: Brainomix specializes in the creation of AI-powered imaging biomarkers that enable precision medicine for better treatment decisions
Denys C. Shortt
Chairman & CEO of Enable
Denys Shortt is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at DCS Group. He is also a Co-Founder at Enable.
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About Enable: Enable is a startup developing a cloud-based software tool for business-to-business rebate management.
David Grimes
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sorted Group
David Grimes is the founder and CEO of Sorted Group, formerly My Parcel Delivery Group.
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About MPD Group, myParcelDelivery, Sorted Group: Sorted Group is a global SaaS company that provides data-driven software for checkouts, warehouses, and shipping.
Stuart Mclean
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Zonal Retail Data Systems
Stuart Mclean is the Founder & CEO of Zonal Retail Data Systems & he attended Middlesex University.
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About Zonal Retail Data Systems: Zone Retail Data Systems provides technology solutions to the bar, restaurant, retail, hotel, and leisure industry.
Tim Fernando
CEO of Esplorio
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About Esplorio, Hummingbird Technologies, Tesla Owners UK: Esplorio uses social data and our iOS app to create a digital travel journal that you can use to re-live and share your adventures.
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.
Tim Ford
CEO and Founder of PriceSynergy.IO
20 Years of experience within software development, system architecture and eCommerce Platforms, successfully launched a business portfolio of 6 website revenue streams, running with exceptionally streamlined automated processes. Founded PriceSynergy.IO an amalgamated price management and advertising platform, sponsored by Microsoft For Startups completely based on Azure run on a global scale.
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About PriceSynergy.IO: Delivering powerful online adverting data to make informed decisions.
Ross Upton
CEO of Ultromics
Ross is specialised in utilising computational technologies to build diagnostic algorithms within cardiovascular imaging. Ross has a strong academic background within the medical sciences and has undertaken two MSc degrees and a DPhil, receiving multiple grants for technology innovation and being selected as finalist for the 2015 Young Investigator Award in Lisbon. Together with Professor Leeson, Ross founded Ultromics’ underlying technology and as CEO, he drives all aspects of the company from technology development to business strategy.
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About Ultromics: Ultromics clinicians and engineers working together to set new standards for world-class cardiovascular diagnostic tools.
Neil Gold
CEO of HypaShip
Neil Gold is Founder at HypaShip
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About HypaShip: HypaShip’s Delivery Management platform allows retailers and fulfilment houses to manage all of their carriers in a single application.
Jay Katzen
Chief Executive Officer of Achilles Group
As CEO, Jay’s focus is to ensure Achilles partners with our customers to deliver the value and insights they expect to help them achieve their goals. That means ensuring that buyers and suppliers alike have every opportunity to benefit from stronger, more open and transparent relationships that help them minimise risk, improve compliance, deliver insights and maximise the value of working together. With more than 30 years of experience behind Achilles, Jay’s goal is to continue to build Achilles as the global leader and partner of choice for supply chain risk and performance management.
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About Achilles Group: Achilles Group provides identification, qualification, evaluation, and monitoring services for managing supply chain risk.
Jason Lee
Founder & CEO of illumr
Jason is a visionary leader with a passion for emergent technologies. He has a proven track record of identifying early-stage, high-growth technology markets and executing business as a first-mover. He co-founded one of the first internet companies in the UK, which won a global award delivering to an international blue-chip client base. His background is in designing electronic, computer and software systems for the oil & aerospace industries. Jason holds a 1st Class MEng (Hons) from Aston University.
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About Founders Pledge, illumr: illumr helps organizations to better understand and predict patterns of behavior that affect them.
Rajarshi Banerjee
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Perspectum
Rajarshi Banerjee is CEO of Perspectum, which he co-founded in 2012, and now employs over 100 people in Oxford, Singapore and San Francisco. Rajarshi has worked in the National Health Service since 2002, and trained in cardiology and internal medicine in London and Oxford. He developed the MR techniques for rapid non-invasive liver assessment in Oxford, and commercialized the method as LiverMultiScan, which is now FDA cleared and used in over 200 sites. He graduated in medicine from Oxford, and went on to complete a Masters in Public Health in London before returning to Oxford for his doctorate. Dr Banerjee continues to work as a Consultant Physician with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with research into the phenotyping of liver disease at an individual and population level in adults and children. He has many years of experience in running clinical trials and working in multidisciplinary scientific teams to develop applications for cutting-edge imaging technology and is a keen advocate of smart trial design.
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About Perspectum: Healthcare, Medical Technology, SaaS
Bimal Roy Bhanu
CEO of AI-XPRT
Bimal is an experienced manager with 24 years’ experience of operating at a senior level in both public and private sector, particularly in the end to end project management of complex operational cost improvement, and delivering business turnaround; both financially and in service re-design. Bimal has worked for organisations such as PwC and Unilever as well as with government agencies. Bimal is also a co-founder of Eduworks UK Limited which successfully developed and delivered A.I. solutions to Deloitte and Ministry of Defence.
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About AI-XPRT: AI-XPRT is provides artificial intelligence solution to automate regulatory compliance assurance and financial audit.
Daniel Mitchell
Co-Founder, CEO of Hivemind
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About Hivemind: Data science and technology company specialising in the application of human and machine intelligence to complex unstructured data problems
Zachary Yerushalmi
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Living Optics
Zachary Yerushalmi is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Living Optics.
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About Circadian Therapeutics, Living Optics: Living Optics is an imaging technology company.
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.
Conrad Wolfram
Chief Executive Officer of Wolfram Research
Conrad Wolfram is a mathematician, technologist, and entrepreneur. He founded the European [Wolfram Research](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wolfram-research) in 1991 and works as its CEO. He launched computerbasedmath.org in 2010. Since 1997, Wolfram has also been a strategic director of the worldwide group, where he initiates and directs the business, marketing, design, and a variety of strategic technical projects, including the CDF Player concept to webMathematica, which underlies Wolfram|Alpha to conceptualizing wolfram.com. Conrad Wolfram has an MA from Cambridge University, U.K., where he read physics and mathematics.
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About ComputerBasedMath.org, Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Research, Wolfram Research: Wolfram Research is a computer, web, and cloud software company that offers solutions for sectors such as education, R&D, and sciences.
Vaclav Potesil
CEO of Optellum
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About Optellum: Optellum develops an imaging biomarker for smart lung cancer detection.
Roger Noble
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Zegami
Roger Noble is a Software Developer and Data Visualisation expert with a passion for building new and innovative technologies that help people see the world in a new way.
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About Zegami: Delivering explainable AI faster and more accurately. Zegami are end-to-end imaging AI specialists combining unique tools and ML services
Sean Miller
Co Founder & CEO of Tubular
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About Jyst Creative, Tubular: A sales tracking, collaboration, and workflow platform for sales teams.
Christoph Birkl
Co-founder, CEO of Brill Power
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About Brill Power, University of Oxford: Brill Power is a clean-tech platform that develops cutting-edge battery management technology.
John Miles
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Inkpath
John is Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Inkpath. John conceived and built the very first proof-of-concept prototype of Inkpath while at Oxford back in 2013 and has been developing the idea ever since. Before Inkpath, John was Training Officer for the Humanities Division at Oxford and a Research Associate at Wadham College. And before that he taught Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he was Caroline Spurgeon Research Fellow.
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About Inkpath: Inkpath is about people performance as well as course performance.
