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 United Kingdom based Founder operating in the Trading Platform 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.
Peter Smith
CEO and Co-Founder of Blockchain.com
Peter Smith is a Co-Founder and CEO at Blockchain. He is also the Director, Board Member at UK Finance.
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About Blockchain.com, Blockchain.com Ventures: Blockchain.com is a platform that offers ways to buy, hold, and use cryptocurrency.
Nicolas Cary
Co-Founder & President of Blockchain.com
Nicolas Cary is the Co-Founder & Vice Chairman at Blockchain.com.
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About Blockchain.com, Skysthelimit.org, YBA: Blockchain.com is a platform that offers ways to buy, hold, and use cryptocurrency.
Mark Lamb
Co-Founder and CEO of CoinFLEX
Mark is CEO of CoinFLEX and a longtime advocate for physically delivered futures over cash settlement as a way to prevent manipulation. Mark’s vision for crypto derivatives is to grow the industry beyond speculation into real commercial use for lending, borrowing, hedging and payments. Mark Lamb has been in bitcoin since 2012 and previously co-founded Coinfloor, the UK’s first cryptocurrency exchange back in 2013.
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About CoinFLEX: CoinFLEX is the leading crypto derivatives exchange and yield platform.
Barney Mannerings
Co-Founder of Vega Protocol
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About Vega Protocol: Vega Protocol is a technology protocol for fully automated end-to-end financial product trading and execution.
Ashwind G. Soonarane
Founder & Chief Technology Officer of DMALINK
Ashwind Soonarane is an institutional electronic foreign exchange specialist drawing from his multi-displinary management and technical expertise to formulate and implement strategic plans aimed towards generating competitive advantage for sustainable growth. Ashwind holds an MSc in Finance, MBA and a Bachelor of Engineering (with Honours) degree. He is a a certified technical analyst of the Society of Technical Analysts, UK.
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About DMALINK: DMALINK is a data-centric trading and RegTech platform for professional Foreign Exchange traders globally.
Dmitry Gunyashov
Co-Founder & CEO of Cryptopay
Dmitry is a long-term bitcoin supporter and has been involved with the bitcoin community for more than 3 years. Moreover, he has an extensive experience in e-commerce and payment systems.
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About Cryptopay, LTC.Miner: Cryptopay is a digital currency firms, offering crypto-wallets, debit cards, B2B payments, & investments.
Judd Gaddie
Co-Founder of TransFICC
Judd Gaddie is the Co-Founder of TransFICC. He was the Software Developer and Team Lead of LMAX Exchange.
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About TransFICC: TransFICC is an e-trading technology company for banks and asset managers trading in Fixed Income and Derivatives markets.
Tom McKee
Co-Founder of TransFICC
Tom Mckee is the Co-Founder of TransFICC. He was previously a software developer at LMAX Exchange, where he worked on system tuning, real-time risk analysis, and improving system throughput. Prior to this he worked at Standard Bank on their algorithmic FX pricing system, Murex and Fidessa support and integration, and portfolio analysis on the base metals trading desk. He has experience with advanced automated testing pipelines and is an advocate of extreme programming.
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About TransFICC: TransFICC is an e-trading technology company for banks and asset managers trading in Fixed Income and Derivatives markets.
Steve Toland
Co-Founder of TransFICC
Steve Toland is a Co-Founder of TransFICC. He has over 25 years experience working in the global capital markets. In a previous role he was Head of LMAX Interbank, where he met his technology colleagues. He has also led global sales for MarketFactory, and held the positions of Head of FX Sales for EMEA and America at ICAP, and Head of Sales for Americas at Thomson Reuters.
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About TransFICC: TransFICC is an e-trading technology company for banks and asset managers trading in Fixed Income and Derivatives markets.
Florian Thaler
Oil Strategist, CEO and Co-Founder at OilX of OilX
Florian is Oil Strategist, CEO and Co-Founder at OilX, a startup that is innovating oil trading analytics through deep empirical knowledge and state-of-the-art data science. Florian has >15 years’ oil experience at Shell, Citibank and Och-Ziff. He completed a doctorate at Vienna University of Economics and Business and a business administration degree at Bocconi University. Florian is one of 100 Future Energy Leaders of the World Energy Council.
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About OilX: OilX is a oil sector that provides a global real-time oil supply-demand balance.
Julian Bourne
CEO & Co-Founder of Sellar
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About Sellar, Waffle: Sellar is the new trade ordering experience for breweries selling beer directly to trade customers.
James Powell
CTO & Co-Founder of Sellar
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About Sellar, Waffle: Sellar is the new trade ordering experience for breweries selling beer directly to trade customers.
Hariton Korizis
Co-Founder and Chief Product Architect of ResonanceX
Demonstrated history of innovating in the financial services industry, and running lean global business initiatives. Investment Banking professional expertise and Electrical Engineering academic background. Skilled in Derivatives Trading, Investment Strategies, Structuring Securities and Financial Technology. With an additional focus on Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence, blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Significant expertise in tailor-made quantitative trading strategies for hedging or investing – with strong quantitative and analytical skills obtained through a PhD focused in Signal Processing Methods for the Modeling & Prediction of Financial Data from Imperial College London. For the past 15 years, I’ve specialized in sophisticated investment products and services that extract real value from the markets in a scalable manner – and designed & built the tech to do so. First in Academia, and then in top tier Investment Banks where I was also responsible to establish all required business & governance and for selling them to Institutional clients globally. In the past, I have been responsible for managing approx GBP 2bio AUM of algorithmic investments and have built 160+ investable strategies & indices – some very successful and sophisticated.
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About ResonanceX: The Low-Code Fintech Agility Platform
Stuart Wheeler
Founder of IG Group
John Stuart Wheeler is an British financier and political activist. He made his fortune as the founder of the spread betting firm IG Index in 1974, but is best known for his political activism being formerly a major donor to the Conservative Party and treasurer of the UK Independence Party from 2011 to 2014.
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About IG Group: IG is a provider of online trading and spread betting services.
Ran Aroussi
Founder & CEO of Tradologics
Ran Aroussi is entrepreneur, software developer, and the founder of Tradologics – a cloud platform for trading.
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About Tradologics: Cloud platform for programmatic trading
Matt Latham
Co-Founder of CIRCA5000
Matt has over 8 years’ experience in the investment management industry. Most recently he was working with private clients and charities to structure and advise on their investment portfolios at Barclays. Matt has an MBA from Liverpool University.
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About CIRCA5000: The investment platform of the human future
Tom McGillycuddy
Co-Founder of CIRCA5000
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About CIRCA5000: The investment platform of the human future
Darren Callcott
Founder & Director of StreetDots
Darren Callcott is co-founder of StreetDots.
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About CADA Design, StreetDots: StreetDots creates smart street-trading platform.
Ben Davies
Co-Founder and COO of Hugo Save
Ben Davies is the Co-Founder and COO at Hugo Save.
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About Hugo Save: Hugo is a digital account that helps you spend, save and invest, starting with gold.
Braham Djidjelli
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Hugo Save
Braham Djidjelli is the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Hugo Save.
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About Hugo Save: Hugo is a digital account that helps you spend, save and invest, starting with gold.
Saurabh Goyal
Founder and CEO of Satoshi Systems Limited
Saurabh, our Chief Product Strategist, has 15 years of experience in conceptualizing, designing and developing trading systems. One of the earliest bitcoin & blockchain backer, Saurabh is passionate about emerging technologies such as Blockchain, IoT and AI for the fintech industry. He spends most of his free time with his boys (aged 5 and 8) teaching them chess and programming.
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About Satoshi Systems Limited: Satoshi Systems provides state of the art software solutions for the trading space, currently focusing on the commodity.
Paul Gill
Founder, Director – Client Service of C3 Post Trade
Paul Gill has been responsible for product development and client service at C3 since 2008. Paul has worked in financial services IT for over 25 years, starting as a systems engineer within EDS investment banking practice with a focus on operations technology. His career progressed with senior technology management roles at investment banks including Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Nat West Markets, Bankers Trust and JP Morgan Chase through to CTO of iFOX, a VC-funded electronic swap trading pioneer. He also spearheaded SwapsWire’s push into equity derivatives.
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About C3 Post Trade: C3 post trade platform is a web-based solution that easily wraps around both legacy and new systems to deliver efficiency and transparency.
Abdullah Hiyatt
Founder and CEO of THETA Trading Systems
20 years of experience in capital markets working with sell and buy-side firms on e-strategy, design and building e-trading solutions. In 2013, Abdullah’s focus shifted to the buy-side and more recently worked with Deutsche Wealth Management leading the design and delivery of SPARTA, its new global multi-asset trading platform.
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About Deutsche Bank, THETA Trading Systems: Capital Markets London based FinTech
Fabio Kuhn
Co-Founder & CEO of Vortexa
Co-Founder & CEO of Vortexa.
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About Vortexa: Shaping the future of energy markets
Antonio Simeone
Co Founder of Euklid
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About Euklid: Euklid is the new way to manage savings and investments through thousands of different algorithms.
Giovanni Contini
Co-Founder, COO & Head of Business Development of Euklid
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About Euklid: Euklid is the new way to manage savings and investments through thousands of different algorithms.
Tim Chater
Founder of Phoenix Ventures
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About KOJI Drinks, Phoenix Ventures: Phoenix Ventures operates as a market platform for intellectual property asset trading that facilitates and accelerates transactions.
Ishaan Hemnani
Founder and Director of BunkerEx
Ishaan Hemnani is the founder and director of BunkerEx. He earned his degree at Imperial College London.
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About BunkerEx: A new world for Marine Fuel.
Willem Muller
CTO and Founder of BunkerEx
Willem Muller is the CTO and founder of BunkerEx. He is an experienced technologist with deep knowledge of the Microsoft stack in an enterprise environment. I’ve worked extensively in digital security, online betting and insurance using web and middle tier technologies. Also have experience in entrepreneurial settings, as CTO, founder and as technical hand heavily involved in online customer acquisition. Willem Muller earned his degree at Victoria Park.
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About BunkerEx: A new world for Marine Fuel.
Andrew Toumazi
CEO and Founder of BLOC-X
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About BLOC-X: BLOC-X is a provider of electronic trading software for OTC Oil Block Future markets that reduces your transaction costs by up to 90%.
Gavin Wiseman
Co-Founder of Zero Deposit
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About Zero Deposit: A trading name of Global Property Ventures Limited.
Jon Notley
Co Founder & CEO of Zero Deposit
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About Zero Deposit: A trading name of Global Property Ventures Limited.
Henrique Matias
Co-Founder of Aluna.Social
Henrique Matias is the co-founder of Aluna.Social.
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About Aluna.Social: Aluna.Social is a gamified multi-exchange social trading terminal for cryptocurrency traders and investors.
Dinos Daborn
Co-Founder of AxeTrading
Dinos co-founded AxeTrading in 2009 and has over 25 years’ experience in Fixed Income broking, sales and electronic trading. His previous experience includes, among others, a senior role in credit e-sales at Citigroup and a Fixed Income electronic trading dealer sales specialist role at Bloomberg: both positions held in London for 5 and 7 years respectively. Having acquired more than 16 years’ experience in Fixed Income/Repo trading and electronic brokerage, Dinos’ in-depth technical and business knowledge in this sector has earned him a strong reputation among his peers, colleagues and clients.
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About AxeTrading: AxeTrading specializes in providing effective technology solutions for the challenges facing fixed income sell-side.
Ralf Henke
Co-Founder & CEO of AxeTrading
Co-founder of AxeTrading, Ralf has over 15 years’ experience in Fixed Income electronic trading and is responsible for technology and software development at AxeTrading. Holding a degree in Computer Engineering, his past experience includes designing and implementing bespoke Fixed Income pricing and trading systems for JP Morgan and other leading Fixed Income dealers. Ralf is a strategic business developer with familiarity of trading markets in different countries. Prior to co-founding AxeTrading, he contributed to the start-up and development of several other successful Fixed Income trading technology companies, each of which remains successfully in business today
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About AxeTrading, Quinsol AG: AxeTrading specializes in providing effective technology solutions for the challenges facing fixed income sell-side.
Gavin Weeks
Co-Founder of Epics.gg
Gavin Weeks is the Co-Founder at Epics.gg.
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About Epics.gg: A digital trading card platform.
Michael Horgan
CPO and Founder of Nous
Prior to joining the fintech world, Mick was the Lead Decision Architect with Pega implementing O2’s real time predictive analytics software, which was central to the intelligent monetisation of client contacts across O2’s retail network. This implementation achieved an 85% conversion rate on inbound interactions representing an increase in revenues of £75 million EBITDA and a decrease in churn of 3%. It was implemented in 5 call centers across the UK. Mick was previously a commissioning engineer with GEC Alstom and led engineering teams in the UK, South Africa and Taiwan in the delivery of solutions for both coal fired and nuclear power stations
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About Nous: Nous designs and develops virtual trading platform for financial market.
Justin Short
CEO and Founder of Nous
Before founding NOUS® Justin worked at a number of investment banks over a period of 14 years, building fully automated trading strategies including Market Making Engines; Smart Order Routers; Agency Benchmark Algorithms and Options Pricing Engines. He also ran regional teams to determine the product strategy and directly influenced the global product, organised the necessary quantitative research, designed and tested fully automated low-latency trading strategies, and coded or provided input to the development team.
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About Nous: Nous designs and develops virtual trading platform for financial market.
Nathan George
Founder of Trade as One
Founder at Trade as One.
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About Trade as One: Healthy and ethical food subscription.
Francis Michel
Founder of GSFX Investments
Founder at GSFX Investment
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About GSFX Investments: GSFX Investments are a London based investment company.
