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 CEO’ operating in the Cloud Data Services 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.
Matthew O’Riordan
CEO & Co-founder of Ably Realtime
A serial entrepreneur and seasoned developer with over 15 years of hands-on development experience. Matthew co-founded Econsultancy (http://econsultancy.com), a global digital marketing publishing, training and research business, with Ashley Friedlein and exited via a £25m trade sale to Centaur Media plc in 2012. Matthew was Co-founder and Technical Director of Aqueduct (http://aqueduct.co.uk), a leading digital agency in London and Founder of easyBacklog (http://easybacklog.com), a SaaS agile backlog management tool. Matthew was also founder of Lemon Studios http://lemonstudioslondon.com/ in 2016, a serviced office for digital marketing and technology companies in London.
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About Ably Realtime, easyBacklog, Open API Initiative: Ably is the platform to power synchronized digital experiences in realtime.
Maria Chatzou Dunford
CEO and Co-Founder of Lifebit
Dr. Maria Chatzou, CEO of Lifebit, is a biotech innovator and a proud geek, expert in bioinformatics, medical informatics and high performance computing. She is also a passionate entrepreneur and has founded two companies, Innovation Forum Barcelona and Techstars-backed Lifebit. Prior to Lifebit, she was a researcher at the Centre for Genomic Regulation, in Barcelona, where she was designing and deploying tools and methods that facilitate the analysis of Big Biomedical Data, allow for biological discoveries, and promote personalised medicine. She was part of the developing team of Nextflow, a programming framework that is revolutionising the computational analysis of genomic data and setting the foundations for personalised medicine computational analyses. Maria is also a frequent industry speaker and has spoken in many international conferences on the subjects of docker containers, genomics workflows, the computational challenges of personalised medicine, AI and HPC in genomics, women in leadership, entrepreneurship, science ventures, among many other topics.
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About Lifebit: Lifebit CloudOS is the intelligent genomics platform that is the industry standard for unified, secure research over distributed big data.
Ricky Thomas
Founder & CEO of Avora
Ricky Thomas As founder and CEO of superfast, cloud-based data intelligence platform AVORA, Ricky Thomas is a key disruptor in his space. Ricky has decades of experience building global, scalable high-speed database and transaction systems & now with AVORA, he has built a platform that aggregates any number of data sources, delivering meaningful insight with the power of machine learning. Ricky believes that “to drive growth, businesses need to drastically reduce data blindspots & the time it takes to access critical information, transforming your business’ time to action.” He is a regular speaker at the London Analytics Forum and industry panels on the challenges of traditional data systems and how to overcome them. Previously CTO at IG Group before building a number of business across Europe, most notably PetMeds which he sold in 2013.
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About Avora, MedicAnimal.com, Socialite: Avora provides a complete augmented analytics solution powered by AI that makes in-depth data analysis as easy as a web search.
Gordon Willoughby
CEO of WeTransfer
Gordon Willoughby is CEO of WeTransfer. Gordon is working at Amazon for eight years now. He has worked at Amazon as Director of Books, Kindle Europe, and Amazon Media Group Europe, and currently serving as Director, category leader, Grocery, Alcohol, Baby and pets. Gordon also joined eBay Inc. as VP European Operations and customer support and Cityspace as Managing Director. In 1998, he was Global Marketing & Content Sales Director of The Financial Times. He has also worked at FTSE, Diageo, and Boston Consulting Group.
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About Amazon, WeTransfer: WeTransfer offers a way to send files around the world through its platform.
Ohad Folman
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Practi
Founder & CEO at Practi.
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About Just Eat, Practi: Practi develops cloud based software solutions to manage retail businesses.
Ajay Patel
Founder & CEO of HighQ
Ajay Patel As Founder of HighQ, Ajay continues to deliver on his vision of enabling a new, modern, highly efficient and ‘best in class’ secure platform of collaborative engagement and transaction for security, compliance and regulatory minded enterprises. As Chief Executive Officer, he leads the company growth strategy, product direction and senior management team. Ajay graduated with a first-class degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Manchester University and later completed a Master’s degree in Information Systems at LSE. He qualified as a chartered accountant at PwC in London and later occupied roles in leading investment banks Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. After spending several years in the City, he realised the corporate environment didn’t fulfil his creative, professional or personal ambitions and subsequently started HighQ.The idea was simple: to create a dynamic, fun and successful company that puts its employees and clients at the centre of everything it does.
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About HighQ: HighQ empowers leading law firms and corporate legal teams to transform the way they work and deliver legal services.
Joyeeta Das
CEO and Co-founder of GYANA
Joyeeta Das is a techie and serial entrepreneur with a background in engineering who has dabbled in both for-profit and non-profit technology companies from a young age. She has traveled and lived across the world and is driven by her passion for using technology to advance human consciousness. She is currently CEO and Founder of UK-based AI startup GYANA.
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About GYANA: No-code Data Analytics
Jaisekhar Kothandaraman
Co-founder & CEO of Witsy
Jaisekhar Kothandaraman is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Witsy.
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About Witsy: Witsy is a cloud-based, full-stack, AI enablement platform that builts to simplify and accelerate Deep Learning.
Matthew Scullion
Co-Founder and CEO of Matillion
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About Matillion: Matillion is an integration platform for cloud data warehouses.
Simon Riggs
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of 2ndQuadrant
Simon Riggs is the Founder and CEO of 2ndQuadrant. Simon has worked with enterprise-class database applications and uses his operational experience to contribute to many features of PostgreSQL’s internal design and usability. He is also co-author of the “PostgreSQL Administration Cookbook” series.
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About 2ndQuadrant: 2ndQuadrant provides solutions for mission critical PostgreSQL databases, ensuring high availability, backup & disaster recovery, & more.
Aruna Schwarz
Founder and CEO of Stelae Technologies
Founded the company in 2002 in Paris, funded by a group of private investors. Prior experience in marketing, product management and business development in the telecommunications and technology sectors with BT (UK), Cable & Wireless (UK, France, EMEA), 9 Telecom (France) and Rosebud Technologies (a content management solutions vendor).
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About Stelae Technologies: Stelae Technologies is a software vendor that offers information management solutions.
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 Peto
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Aframe
David founded Aframe with a vision to create a video platform that is powerful enough to handle the huge volumes and myriad formats of video production, but is simple enough that anyone could use it. He’s taken this idea from a one-room office covered in post it notes, to a global business with offices across the UK and US, raising significant Venture Capital funding along the way.
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About Aframe: Aframe Media is a SaaS-based company that provides cloud video production storage and workflow.
Dominik Tomicevic
Co-Founder and CEO of Memgraph
Dominik Tomicevic serves as the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Memgraph.
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About Memgraph: Memgraph makes creating real-time streaming graph applications accessible to every developer.
Tony Pepper
Co-Founder & CEO of Egress Software
Tony Pepper co-founded Egress Software Technologies in 2007 and currently serves as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for the company. Tony has overseen the company’s rapid expansion, driving innovation and worldwide sales. Tony currently serves as Chief Executive Officer, overseeing all aspects of business growth and innovation, with particular focus on Sales and Marketing. Pepper has an in-depth understanding of the data security market and prior to Egress held executive management and integration roles at Reflex Magnetics Ltd, Pointsec Mobile Technologies, and Check Point Software Technologies. Over the years, he has presented on a variety of data security-related issues and strategies for mobile computing and best practices surrounding secure data exchange. Pepper holds a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in Politics from Nottingham Trent University. He also holds a Masters degree in Software Engineering from Liverpool University.
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About Egress Software: Egress is a software company that specializes in human layer security designed to prevent accidental and intentional data breaches.
Steve Marsh
Founder and CEO of GeoSpock
Steven Marsh is a Co-Founder of GeoSpock Limited and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Steven Marsh is also the lead architect of the Collide platform and co-lead architect of GeoSpock DB. He has experience of building real-time and highly-scalable systems he has overseen the creation of GeoSpock’s state-of-the-art geo-location and social networking mobile development platform. Steven Marsh is a computer scientist. As part of his research, Steve is part of a team building a customisable FPGA-based super-computer designed to carry out real-time simulation of extreme-scale neural networks such as the brain. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
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About GeoSpock: GeoSpock builds GeoSpock DB, the unique space-time analytics database that delivers rapid insights at a fraction of the cost.
Dobromir Todorov
CEO | Chief Cloud Officer & Co-founder of HeleCloud
Dob Todorov, CEO & Chief Cloud Officer, has co-founded and led many start-ups in the technology and financial services industries. With solutions architecture, security and systems engineering experience at organisations including HP, Accenture, Visa, BT Global Services and International Network Services (INS), he was subsequently employed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as CTO for Public Sector in EMEA, and Principal Architect for Security & Compliance in EMEA. He has supported clients as diverse as central and local government, large internationals and emerging start-ups in their design and implementation of cloud solutions following AWS best practice. Dob is passionate about the opportunities for business advantage coming from technology innovation and strategic digital disruption.
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About HeleCloud: HeleCloud provides strategic technology consultancy, engineering and managed cloud services on the AWS Platform
Jeannie Arthur
Chief Executive Officer of Call2Teams
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About Call2Teams: Call2Teams specializes in cloud-based telephony, VoIP solutions, unified communications, office 365, skype for business, PBX, and Microsoft.
Mike Wardell
CEO of Giacom World Networks
Mike joined Giacom from KCOM in 2016 and has more than 10 years of senior leadership experience in the IT and Telecoms sector. His dynamic approach means Giacom continues to exceed its targets. Mike is a commercially driven professional whose experience and outlook provides constant insight and direction for the business.
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About Giacom World Networks: Giacom World Networks is a cloud IT and communications solutions provider.
Charlie Horrell
CEO of Imagen Ltd
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About Imagen Ltd: Imagen Ltd is a modular enterprise video platform that enables content owners to publish and monetize media archives.
Furtak Aleksandr
CEO of Mighty Digital
I have a telecom engineering background and extensive entrepreneurial experience as a Product Owner in high-growth digital areas, including mobility, gaming, marketplaces. Currently, I’m a CEO at Mighty Digital, and we empower data-informed growth for digital consumer products. We help clients leverage data to acquire, activate, and retain more customers. We build full-scale data solutions and analytics teams. If that sounds interesting to you – drop me a line, and let’s grow together!
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About Mighty Digital: Mighty Digital is a growth engineering agency that empowers data-informed decision making for digital consumer brands
Colette Wyatt
CEO of Evolve-IT Consulting
Founder and Operations Director Colette Wyatt Colette has enjoyed a varied career in technology, specifically in IT, Telecoms and Biotech. Colette is passionate about delivering solutions that make the biggest impact and fundamentally improve business results, which is why being involved in e-Bate Limited was something she couldn’t refuse. Colette is responsible for leading the continued product development and architecture of e-Bate with our team and draws on her 28 years of experience leading innovative product and service development. Living in a village in the Leicestershire countryside, Colette enjoys walking Billy the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with her husband Brian, and trips to Italy, Greece and the USA.
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About Evolve-IT Consulting: Evolve provides bespoke software development solutions to improve business processes, user experience and loyalty, and top-line growth.
Russell Carter
Founder and CEO of Simply Mystro
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About Simply Mystro: Saas, fintech , banking , blockchain , validations
Richard Quigley
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Ventriks
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About Ventriks: Ventriks is a cloud platform that facilitates data discovery, engineering, management, and analysis.
Matthew Cheung
CEO of ipushpull
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About ipushpull: Live data sharing and workflow automation platform providing real-time interoperability of data across any application
Lawrence Ross
CEO of PrismTech
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About PrismTech: PrismTech provides software platforms and tools for the Internet of Things, Industrial Internet and advanced wireless communications.
Andrew Gilbert
Chief Executive Officer of Node4
Andrew started his career as a developer, working on big projects for PC World and Freeserve. Since then, he has held a number of positions within IT-related firms, including Dixons Stores Group (DSG). Prior to setting up Node4, he was Technical Director of another IT solutions provider, focussing on wireless internet access to rural areas along with hosted solutions.
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About Node4: Node4 is the fast-growing IT solutions provider.
Tony Heappey
CEO & Senior Consultant of Cloud Systems Group
Tony has been providing IT Services to businesses for 30 years and has seen the industry completely transform as a result. Starting his IT Career at the dawn of personal desktop computing he worked tirelessly to learn every aspect of these new devices before beginning the journey into servers, networking and business solutions. Over time, Tony’s Consultancy business grew into a self-perpetuating IT Support business which looked after both large enterprises and small businesses alike and took great pride in delivering exceptional service to all of its Clients. As the industry continued to progress, Tony quickly identified the shift towards more proactive services and implemented advanced monitoring and management technologies to further boost service levels which transformed the business into an early provider of Managed Services. In 2010, after having spent many prior years working with businesses to implement Private Cloud strategies, Tony once again identified the need for change and the requirement to embrace Cloud Technologies which resulted in the birth of CLOUD SYSTEMS. Tony grew up in Birmingham and spent much of his childhood travelling the world with his family. Today, he still has a passion for travel and enjoys touring the world with his wife Liz and the rest of their family. Tony’s other hobbies include Reading, Swimming, Golf and Walking his Dog!
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About Cloud Systems Group: Cloud Systems Group providing IT Services to a wide variety of Clients located around the globe.
Ben Portsmouth
Co Founder and CEO of Andromeda POS
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About Andromeda POS: POS , Digital Ordering and Cloud Services for Delivery Restauarants
Paul Chu
CEO – Co-founder of Ukkobox
Founder at Ukkobox.
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About Ukkobox: Multi cloud protected storage layer service for high sensitive data.
Jim Finnegan
Chief Executive Officer of FIELDMOTION
FIELDMOTION Founder and CEO Jim Finnegan is a tenacious and energetic Entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in the B2B Telecoms and Field Service Management Industry. In 1999 Jim founded telecoms company JMC Mobile Ltd. In July 2015 he successfully negotiated the sale of the company to O2 Telefonica. At the time JMC Mobile Ltd was one of the leading B2B telecoms companies in the UK and Ireland. In 2012 Jim founded Fieldmotion Ltd an innovative Field Services & Workflow Management software company. The Fieldmotion software solution was developed through necessity when his previous experience of existing CRM and workflow systems proved to be largely complicated or irrelevant to many SMEs. Fieldmotion’s intuitiveness and ease of use made it very attractive to businesses across the globe and its unique features have made it one of the most exciting Field Service & Workflow solutions on the market today. In 2015 after a major rebranding initiative, Jim launched and oversaw Fieldmotion’s Partner Channel in the UK and Ireland. Following on from the success of the Partner Channel here at home, Jim has now expanded to the USA and Australia and is currently undertaking a new recruitment drive to further expand Fieldmotion’s Partner Distribution network in these countries and plans to branch out further into Europe and Middle East in 2016.
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About FIELDMOTION: Field Service Management software, with workflow, skip logic and intelligent reports
Nigel Wright
Founder and CEO of Converge Technology Specialists
Nigel Wright CEO and founder of Converge Technology Specialists, Nigel has 18 years’ experience delivering technology services to the legal profession in both the enterprise and SME sectors. Nigel’s expertise in providing strategic analysis of IT systems and identifying opportunities for improved efficiency, drives competitive advantage for clients. Well-known and respected within the sector, Nigel is often invited to speak at events and to advise industry bodies on the issues and opportunities facing law firms today.
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About Converge Technology Specialists: Converge Technology Specialists is a specialist provider of hosted and managed IT services through private cloud.
David Everett
CEO and Principal Consultant of Microexpert
David Everett is a leading authority on the security design of electronic payment systems. With a cryptographic background and extensive knowledge of the tamper resistant properties of smart cards and HSMs (Hardware Security Modules) David is able to assist clients with a deeper understanding of electronic payment systems and digital currencies. His expertise also includes novel approaches to securing data in the cloud and IOT. David is the CEO of Microexpert which provides consultancy services in electronic payment and transaction systems. The company has been advising clients on digital security for over 30 years. David is the co-founder of Tibado, a central ledger electronic cash system and prior to that was commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mint to analyse the future of electronic payments which culminated in the design of MintChip, an electronic cash system for both the physical and virtual worlds. Previously he was engaged by NatWest bank to design a fiat based digital currency system using public key cryptography that became known as Mondex. This also led to the invention of Multos, a secure multi-application Smartcard OS with a PKI based control module. David also represented the UK banks on the original research work designed to improve card verification methods. This eventually led to the chip and pin system adopted internationally today. As a consultant to eftPOS UK David undertook the security design of a national debit card system which resulted in the first significant commercial use of public key cryptography. Previously he was contracted by CHAPS, the UKs Clearing House Automated Payment Scheme as co-designer of the security scheme. As a cryptography consultant, David is particularly able to help his clients with the business and technical architecture of modern electronic payment systems, authentication, IOT security and digital currencies. Apart from his numerous lectures David also undertakes training sessions on various aspects of electronic payments and transactions.
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About Microexpert: Microexpert are an independent data security consultancy and are leading experts in the application of cryptography.
Paul Donnelly
Founder and CEO of Teknov8
Paul Donnelly is the founder and CEO of Teknov8.
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About Teknov8: Teknov8 provides managed IT services to help businesses accelerate business activity and boost efficiency.
Alan Watson
CEO of 123friday
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About 123friday: 123friday backs up photos, videos, and contacts from their clients’ Android and iOS mobile devices.
David Trossell
CEO / CTO of Bridgeworks Ltd
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About Bridgeworks Ltd: Bridgeworks’ Accelerates datay even encrtpted/compressed flow up to 40Gb/s across WAN without changing or modifing the data.
