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 Rental 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.
Alexander Edward Chesterman
Founder & CEO of Cazoo
Alex Chesterman is the founder and CEO of Cazoo. He was the Founder & CEO of ZPG Plc, a FTSE-250 listed company. Previously Alex co-founded Lovefilm, Europe’s leading digital movie rental business, which was successfully sold to Amazon. Alex is also one of the UK’s most active tech angel investors having backed dozens of early stage digital startups and was awarded an OBE for services to services to digital entrepreneurship in 2016.
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About Cazoo, Zoopla Property Group Plc (ZPG): Cazoo is an online used car marketplace designed to transform the way people buy, finance, or rent used cars.
Chaz Englander
Co-Founder & CEO of Fat Llama
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About Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace which allows people to rent spare items to others nearby, fully insured.
Mark Hirschfield
CEO & Director of A.H.Field Properties
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About A.H.Field Properties, Conscious 2, Copypress, Orbital Witness, Techstars, Techtopia, Techtopia: A.H.Field Properties is a real estate company that specializes in property management, selling, renting of houses and apartments.
Tom Allason
Founder and CEO of Residently
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About eBay, Residently, Residently: We’re building the world’s home brand with a digital experience that combines the freedom of renting with the rewards of owning.
Alexander Limpert
Co-Founder and CEO of GuestReady
Before launching GuestReady, Alex was a Country Managing Director in Taiwan and Philippines at Rocket Internet owned foodpanda, a global food delivery company. Prior to this, he was a management consultant at Oliver Wyman in London, where he advised leading companies across a variety of industries including travel and hospitality. He holds an MSc with Distinction from London School of Economics (LSE) and a BA in Business Administration from University of St.Gallen (HSG). Alex has travelled to more than 50 countries for business and leisure, and therefore understands the needs of the modern business traveller and how any property can be turned into a guest-ready Airbnb home.
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About GuestReady: GuestReady is a platform for real estate management with a focus on short-term rentals.
Ines Djelassi
CEO & Co-Founder of AirBetter
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About AirBetter, Lodgeo: AirBetter provides expertise in all travel and hospitality services.
James Jenkins-Yates
Founder & CEO of Houst
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About Houst: Houst (prev. Airsorted) is a short-let management service that increases yields and handles everything including cleaning, laundry and keys.
Ceanne Fernandes-Wong
CEO and Co-founder of Cocoon
Ceanne Fernandes-Wong is the CEO and co-founder of Cocoon.
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About Cocoon: Cocoon is a handbag subscription service that gives its members access to luxury designer handbags.
Russell Gould
CEO & Co-founder of Vesta Property
Russell has held leadership, director, operating board, advisory and senior level positions across the FinTech, digital, technology, travel retail, holiday tour operating and cruise, financial services, insurance and banking sectors. He also started and ran two new ventures in consulting and digital business finance (selling one of them). He has extensive experience across the full e-commerce model including – new product development, omni-channel marketing and branding, including customer acquisition, retention (CRM & eCM), customer conversion (look to book / user experience) and performance optimisation (decision science / analytics). He has managed large online businesses (+£500m sales), built start-ups and worked in major FTSE companies, built large high performance teams, lead the redesign and launch of many websites including the full rebuild and implementation of over seven completely new e-commerce platforms (including a full multi-million pound ATG implementation). Russell has over 30 caps representing England and achieved a Bronze Medal at the 2015 Touch World Cup in Coffs Harbour, Australia, a Gold Medal at the 2013 Touch Home Nations in Dublin, a Gold Medal at the European Touch Championships 2012 in Italy, a Bronze Medal at the 2011 Touch World Cup in Edinburgh and a Silver Medal in the 2010 European Touch Championships in Bristol. For more information visit http://www.englandtouch.org.uk/
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About Vesta Property: Vesta (www.vestaproperty.com) is a data-driven marketplace for buying and selling residential investment property.
Paul Besnainou
Founder & CEO of Sweet Inn
Paul Besnainou is a 31-year old French-Israeli entrepreneur, who is entirely self-taught. After his high school diploma, he opted to pursue his studies at the Mir Yeshiva rather than attend a prominent business school. Following his seven years of Talmudic studies, he emerged filled with intellectual curiosity, discipline, and an analytical spirit – characteristics that would lead him to found and direct, only a year later, Sweet Inn. In just 5 years since its founding, Sweet Inn is already located in 13 cities around Europe and in Israel, totaling over 700 apartments and employ more than 200 employees.
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About Sweet Inn: Sweet Inn is a booking platform intended for hotel services for tourists and business travelers.
Matt Ovenden
CEO & Founder of Borrow A Boat
Matt is an entrepreneur who is passionate about building teams and successful businesses to meet market opportunities on the forefront of technological or consumer trends. A Chartered Mechanical Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with MSc in Innovation & Design for Sustainability, Matt established leading energy & sustainability company Bright Green Shoots in 2009 to help organisations embrace sustainable “green” innovation as the UK makes the transition to a low carbon economy. Bright Green Shoots has acted as a focus point for activity in this industry for 7 years during which Matt has spun out two more companies, Free Wind Ltd in 2011 a prominent UK wind development company and Free Island Energy in 2014 a pioneer of remote renewables, eco-island and microgrid projects. Matt’s latest project is launching the new online peer-to-peer boat charter marketplace www.borrowaboat.com
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About Borrow A Boat, British Marine, Department for International Trade, Helm, Institution of Mechanical Engineers: Borrow A Boat is a Peer-to-peer boat charter and charter aggregator site.
Paul Bennett
Co-Founder & CEO of PerchPeek
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About PerchPeek: PerchPeek uses AI to guide people through every stage of their relocation from search to settling in.
Stepan Dobrovolskiy
CEO and Co-Founder of Mashroom
Stepan Dobrovolskiy is the CEO and Co-Founder at Mashroom.
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About Mashroom: Mashroom is a proptech startup that provides end-to-end property letting services to landlords and tenants.
Founder & CEO of Home Made
Asaf Navot is the Founder and CEO of Home Made. He has extensive experience in strategy and operations, having previously advised multi-billion corporations as a strategy consultant with Bain & Company and Wilson Perumal. Asaf holds an MBA from INSEAD.
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About Home Made: Home Made is a London-based property tech rental agency, focusing on mid to high end rentals. It is London’s largest hybrid agency.
Karin Cabili
Founder & CEO of Dropit Shopping
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About Dropit Shopping: Dropit provides a digital handsfree shopping solution for malls and central shopping districts, delivering bags from store to door.
Rebecca Kelly
Founder & CEO of VenueScanner
Combined experience across economics (1st class MA Edinburgh), investment management (CFA level 1), digital marketing (M&S, Naked Wines, Majestic Wines). Passionate about using data and analytics to drive business growth, obsessed with customer insight, understanding big problems and trying to solve them. Launched VenueScanner in 2016 after experiencing so many problems in trying to book event spaces for team offsites, parties, meetings etc at M&S. Now relentlessly trying to address the problem of matching under-utilised supply to demand in the venue and events industry. In the spare time that I used to have before I launched a company I loved travelling adventures (Richshaw Run…), micro-finance projects (Grameen Bank) and outdoor sports (mainly extreme or including at least a mild risk of life!)
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About VenueScanner: VenueScanner is a self-serve marketplace platform for event organisers to discover and book venues online.
Doug Stephenson
Founder and CEO of TravelNest
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About TravelNest: TravelNest is an advertising optimisation platform for holiday rental owners.
Doron Meyassed
Co-Founder & CEO of Plum Guide
In 2008 Doron founded Promise Communities (now C Space): a company specializing in solving brand, innovation and insight challenges through mass online collaboration. In eight years, he grew it into a 140+ person leading innovation agency delivering programs for the likes of Twitter, Spotify, Samsung, British Airways, Hilton, EE, and Diageo. Having sold the business to Omnicom, Doron now lives and breathes travel. Having moved country every few years and having a total undetectable accent, no one is really sure where Doron is from. He is also into some seriously bizarre music no one can quite understand, but that won’t stop him trying to explain.
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About Plum Guide: Plum Guide is the definitive list of the world’s best vacation rentals.
Calum Brannan
CEO & Founder of Howsy
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About Howsy: Howsy is a real estate management platform that provides repairs management and renewal services for landlords and tenants.
Franz Dörr
Founder & CEO of flatfair
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About flatfair: Secure your rental with flatfair’s flexible solutions
Camran Khan
Founder & CEO of brightLET
My passion for technology has featured me among the top 10 best CTO’s in the Country, with awards and recognition from Barclays, NatWest, and KPMG to name a few. In 2017, I was scouted by the University of Cambridge as one of the top 20 disruptive CEO’s in the UK to join Judge Business School (JBS). I have a very strong interest in Machine Learning (ML), AI solutions, Blockchain, and clever automation to reduce huge operational overheads. I have successfully worked closely with brands such as; Microsoft, Intel, EA Games, Coca-Cola, Virgin Media, Mo Farah, Microsoft, Intel, Dabs.com, and Amazon.
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About brightLET: brightLET is a UK based multi-award winning automated property rental technology for landlords, tenants, and tradesmen!
Sebastien Goldenberg
CEO and Co-Founder of TheHouseShop.com
Seb is co-founder and CEO at TheHouseShop.com, UK’s largest property marketplace. It offers free property advertising for private landlords, private sellers and estate agents. TheHouseShop is disrupting the whole property ecosystem, using technology to make rental transactions fully-digitized, safe, secure and cost-effective. TheHouseShop is also the only fully secure property website, where every private advertiser is verified. Seb is the also chair of the start-up and SME club at the French Chamber of Commerce in the UK.
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About TheHouseShop.com: The House Shop is the UK’s number 1 place for property, working with homeowners, landlords, estate agents.
Gray Stern
Founder & CEO of Dot Residential
A New Zealand native with a banking background, Stern founded Dot in 2018. Frustrated with the innate inefficiencies of the property market, Dot’s mission is to decouple housing from bureaucracy using intelligent processes. Gray previously co-founded Landbay, a fast-growing marketplace lender that provides mortgage finance to the UK’s private rented sector.
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About Dot Residential, LANDBAY: Turnkey investment properties optimised for short-term rentals
Henry Bennett
Co-Founder / CEO of YourWelcome
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About YourWelcome: YourWelcome is a SaaS platform enabling short term rental managers to add a service layer to their business.
Andrea Guzzoni
CEO & Co-Founder of RENTUU
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About easyHire, RENTUU: Cloud-based technology platform and franchise network for the multi-billion pound sterling equipment hire industry.
Elmar Gasimov
Founder and CEO of Rentoo
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About Rentoo: Rentoo offers apartments with all-inclusive comforts that you can instantly rent online for medium to long-term stays.
John Newton
Chief Executive Officer & Chairman of the Board of Gravity Media Group
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About Gravity Media Group: Gravity Media Group is a global provider of live broadcast facilities and production services.
Andy Hibbert
CEO and Founder of Car & Away
An experienced senior executive of the travel sector who has led, grown and sold travel-related businesses that were private equity backed. Most recently led Reed & Mackay through 9 years of EBITDA growth +20% CAGR. Led the sale of the business from Living Bridge to ECI Partners returning 4.8x returns. Grew the business for 4 further years resulting in the sale of the business from ECI to Inflexion at 3.4x returns. Previous experience as Head of Ancillary for easyJet, Online / Commercial Director for STA Travel and a combination of Management, Commercial, Pricing, and Aircraft trading roles at British Airways.
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About Car & Away, Karshare: Car & Away offers peer-to-peer car lending and renting.
Marco Lessacher
CEO of Alphabet Business Mobility
Marco Lessacher became Head of Alphabet International in July 2019. He started his career at the BMW Group in 2007 and held various CEO functions, among others at BMW Financial Services and Alphabet Germany. He was subsequently responsible as Head of International Corporate, Direct and Special Sales at the BMW Group. In 2017, he assumed responsibility for BMW Group’s Financial Services business in Central and Southeastern Europe and further developed the region with its eleven markets in a very successful and forward-looking manner as Chairman of the Board of BMW Austria Bank GmbH.
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About Alphabet Business Mobility: Alphabet operates as a provider of business mobility solutions.
Ben Grech
Chief Executive Officer of Reposit
Ben Grech is a Co-Founder and Non-Executive Chairman at Uniplaces. He is also the CEO of Reposit.
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About Reposit, Uniplaces: The tenancy deposit alternative. A new way of renting without the hassle of a deposit
Will Handley
Founding Partner & CEO of HomeRenter
Our CEO Will has over twenty years experience in advertising and marketing roles across service and content businesses. He’s been a private landlord since 2008.
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About Explovia, HomeRenter: HomeRenter is a marketplace for private rentals, connecting tenants and private landlords.
David Bulley
CEO of DBpixelhouse
David Bulley is the CEO at DBpixelhouse.
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About DBpixelhouse: DBpixelhouse is a supplier of audiovisual and IT rental services for customers on promotional activities.
Solomia Boretska
Co-Founder, CEO of LendoBox
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About LendoBox: Matching product rental demand with supply
Matthew Whitaker
Founder and CEO of Gkhouses
Matthew is a student of the book Good To Great and is passionate about building gkhouses to become the best property management company on the planet; and maybe even the universe if Elon Musk will hurry up. To do that, he spent the first seven years of gkhouses in the trenches but now focuses most of his time facilitating growth in other markets. Entrepreneurship runs in the family. His wife runs a successful business called Engaged. You can usually find Matthew at the baseball field with his son, at a dance recital with his daughter or at his favorite restaurant with his wife, when he’s not in the office. And if you can’t find him any of those places, it probably means he’s traveling.
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About Gkhouses: Gkhouses is a professional property management services company, managing single family homes.
