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 Wearables 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.
Tania Boler
Founder and CEO of Elvie
Tania is an internationally recognized women’s health expert and has held leadership positions for various global NGOs and the United Nations. Passionate about challenging taboo women’s issues, Tania founded Elvie in 2013, partnering with Alexander Asseily to create a global hub of connected health and lifestyle products for women.
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About Elvie: Elvie is a British femtech company developing smart technology for women.
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Sara Murray
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Buddi
Sara Murray (M.A. Oxon) is a serial entrepreneur. She founded Ninah Consulting, which uses proprietary software to advise clients, including GSK and Coca-Cola, on marketing effectiveness, and sold it to Publicis Groupe. In 1999, Sara founded Inspop, which owns the brand Confused.com. She built and sold the online company to the Admiral Group. She was a non-executive Director of Schering Health Care and a founding board member of Seedcamp. Sara won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2009 and sits on the Technology Strategy Board Governing Board. Sara was awarded an OBE for services to Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2012 and is a qualified helicopter pilot.
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About Buddi, Confused.com: Buddi is an innovative, high-growth and british technology company that develops location and health monitoring technologies.
Jamie Grant
CEO of Carv
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About Carv: Carv is the first wearable dedicated to skiing that speaks to you as you ski, serving as a digital ski coach.
Graeme Cox
CEO/CTO of Emteq
Graeme Cox has a degree in artificial intelligence, over 20 years experience in scaling product development teams, and has a track record of building profitable, high-growth technology businesses. He has founded and managed four technology businesses and has served as board member and advisor on several more across the range of software, hardware and services. A project and person manager with 20 years of continuous experience in the management of teams and individuals with project ownership, management and delivery of individual budgets up to $100 million.
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About Emteq: The world’s first emotion recognition and analysis platform in smart glasses
Sergei Nossoff
CEO & Co-founder of Teslasuit
An international hands-on senior executive, private equity and investment banking professional with over 20 years of experience. Creative, with clear strategic vision, excellent interpersonal, negotiation and problem-solving skills, with a proven ability to manage and build winning teams. Committed to the highest levels of professional and personal excellence and credibility. Currently focused on New Technologies (VR/AR/MR) and MedTech sectors.
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About Teslasuit: Teslasuit is a team of talented developers and designers, creating innovative products for XR and MedTech.
David Hayes
Chief Executive Officer of WaveOptics
David Hayes is the CEO at WaveOptics, a company that designs and manufactures waveguides for AR wearables.
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About WaveOptics: WaveOptics designs Augmented Reality (AR) wearables with enhanced features.
Carina Cunha
Co-Founder & CEO of Be Nosy
Carina is a business strategist and inventor of Nosy with passion for science, sales and marketing. In her former role as MD and Launcher of Crimson Education Europe, she created sales, marketing and service delivery teams from scratch, achieving millions in ARR and 150%+ YoY growth. Prior to working with startups Carina was corporate strategist at JPMorgan, Strategy Consultant at Accenture, Investment Banker at Credit Suisse, and a fashion model with Elite. Carina is also an innovation and commercial consultant through Meta Strategy and Founders Intelligence where she helps startups and scale-ups find product-market fit and corporates build new revenue lines. She has a B.A. from Columbia University and PgD. from the University of Edinburgh.
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About Be Nosy: Nosy is a MedTech startup developing wearable air filter and air pollution tracking network.
Stephen Lane
Founder & CEO of Prop Store
The founder of The Prop Store of London, Stephen became interested in movie memorabilia while his previous sign-making company was working as a contractor on the sets of Eyes Wide Shut. Stephen began networking with Industry technicians and found his first few treasures, which led him to pursue Prop Store as a full time business. At that time, no one in the UK was selling this type of memorabilia as a full-time operation. Stephen has been a steady pioneer in the industry, constantly developing and evolving the business and constantly trying fresh initiatives. He has located some of the most significant caches of film memorabilia of the past decade and both his personal and company collections reflect this- they are amongst the finest in the world.
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About Prop Store: Prop Store, one of the worlds leading vendors of original movie props and costumes.
Emilio Sanz Pereiras
CEO of Acurable
Emilio is a serial entrepreneur and leads Acurable’s strategy, operations and commercialisation activities. Emilio spent the last 15 years building 3 successful start-ups across Europe and Asia, where he learned first hand how to successfully commercialise highly innovative technologies and how to to scale start-up operations in both B2B and B2C industries. Originally from Spain, Emilio holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from Telecom ParisTech, a MSc in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and an MBA from London Business School.
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About Acurable: The first wearable medical device able to accurately diagnose and manage respiratory conditions at home
Chris Mitchell
CEO & Founder of Audio Analytic
Dr Chris Mitchell founded Audio Analytic following the completion of his self-funded PhD in sound information systems and signal processing. Chris received a prestigious Kauffman/NCGE Fellowship to investigate the commercial implications of his research, through which he received training at Harvard Business School and worked with Cisco Systems in San Jose, US. Subsequently, Chris attended the Ignite programme at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, funded by the East of England Development Agency. He is an internationally published author, an associate lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University’s Design and Technology Department, and holder of multiple patents.
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About Audio Analytic: Audio Analytic creates exceptional human experiences through giving consumer technology a greater sense of hearing.
Ramsey Faragher
Founder & CEO of Focal Point Positioning
Ramsey Faragher is the CEO and CTO at Focal Point Positioning. He is a world-leading expert in GNSS-denied positioning and is pioneering the development of game-changing new technologies to set new standards in indoor positioning and autonomous positioning systems. He holds a first class degree in Physics and a PhD in opportunistic radio positioning, both from the University of Cambridge. Ramsey is also a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation, and a Bye Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge. Previously he was a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, where he developed the first online SLAM-based indoor positioning system for smartphones. Prior to this he was a Principal Scientist at the BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre where he developed the award-winning and patented NAVSOP opportunistic positioning suite and other GNSS-denied tracking technologies.
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About Focal Point Positioning: Focal Point has developed next generation navigation and positioning software for smartphones, wearables and autonomous vehicles.
Gerard Rubio
CEO & Founder of Kniterate
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About Kniterate: Kniterate is an affordable and compact digital knitting machine for your workshop.
Mark Bernstein
Founder & CEO of Wearable Technologies
Having qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young, Mark has spent the bulk of his career taking early stage technology companies from inception to exit. He has been involved in five IPOs, and has sat on UK LSE and AIM public company Boards for 20 years, including Moss Bros. Plc, a leading UK clothing retailer. Mark has worked with VCs and strategic equity partners including IBM, Motorola, BT, Sky and Dixons.
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About Visijax, Wearable Technologies: Wearable Technologies designs, manufactures, and distributes intelligent clothing that are embedded with washable electronics.
Faii Ong
Founder and CEO of GyroGear
Faii Ong is the founder and CEO of GyroGear.
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About GyroGear: GyroGear is developing a wearable to help individuals with hand tremors.
Jan-Philipp Kruip
Co-Founder & CEO of FitSense
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About FitSense: Uses wearable data for the pricing & selection of risk in health & life insurance
Leo Scott Smith
Founder & CEO of Tended
Leo Scott Smith is Tended’s CEO and founder, having started the business in 2017 to create transformative tech solutions that can put an end to occupational fatalities. He was named as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 2021, the Midlands Startup Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2019 Great British Entrepreneur Awards, and sits as the Lead Digital Advisor and Vice Chair for Lincoln City’s £20m economic regeneration plan. As a serial entrepreneur with eight years’ experience in AI and IoT, Leo has grown Tended into an award-winning safety technology company that has raised over £4.5m of private investment to date.
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About Tended: Tended combines wearable technology with behavioural psychology to transform safety in high-risk working environments. With five years’ 5 years’ experience developing safety wearables, Tended has deployed over 10,000 wearables in safety-critical environments. The company counts industry-leading organisations, including Network Rail, Siemens, and Unilever, as its clients, helping them solve complex safety challenges.
The company develops its solutions alongside behavioural science and psychology experts and has developed a first-of-its kind safety culture change solution, which is now part of HS2’s main safety strategy.
Colleen Wong
Founder & CEO of Techsixtyfour
Techsixtyfour was founded in September 2015 by Colleen Wong, an investment banker turned entrepreneur. As a new mum on a day out with her children she witnessed a parent’s panic when their child when missing and was inspired to develop something that would help children and their parents stay better connected but without tying them to a smart phone, which comes with so many unnecessary distractions. Techsixtyfour’s first product, the Gator watch, is a wearable mobile phone and tracker made for young kids and now available to purchase at John Lewis, Amazon and at Bentalls Kingston.
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About Techsixtyfour: The UK’s coolest wearable mobile phone and tracker made just for kids.
Alfredo Belfiori
Founder & CEO of Flicktek Ltd
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About BetterSpace, Flicktek Ltd: Gesture control for smartwatches, IoT and VR
Jordan McRae
Founder and CEO of Mobilus Labs
Jordan McRae is an inventor, engineer, and entrepreneur. He is currently the Founder and CEO of Mobilus Labs where they’re developing a wearable hands free / ear free voice platform using cutting edge innovations in bone conduction technology, voice recognition, and digital signal processing.
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About Mobilus Labs: Mobilus Labs is a tech startup with the mission to provide frictionless voice communications.
Charles Burr
CEO & Co-founder of Corner
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About Corner: Transformative fitness, wherever you are
Mark Knowles Lee
CEO of Fracture Reality
Mark Knowles Lee the co-founder of Fracture, a digital creative company focused on Mixed Reality. Our goal is to push the boundaries of what is possible on the new Mixed AR platforms. Previously I have setup and run commercially successful games teams and studios, run digital incubation teams and going back further had a successful career in Technical Art and Creative direction. My interests are wide – I’m passionate about Technology, Computer Vision, Real time CGI, AR, VR, Mixed Reality, UX and how they all come together to change our world. I get a kick out of using data to improve design, experience and revenue, from qualitative data, (user experience and testing), through to analysing quantitative data of millions of player interactions. Coordinating between Tech – Creative – Acquisition – Marketing teams has been recent step up for me which I have relished. Solving creative problems, optimising pipelines for both collaborative design and efficient 3d content creation and working in tight sync with the best creatives and engineers is how I like to spend my time when I’m hands on. When its hands off time I love to present, attend talks (on as wide a topic range as I can manage) and meet interesting folk from as many different spheres as possible. London & Brighton are amazing places to do all this right now.
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About Fracture Reality, Origami Blue: Mixed Reality specialists, offering design, production and installation of high quality, innovative experiences on Microsoft Hololens.
Yang Liu
Co-founder & CEO of JustWears
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About JustWears: JustWears is an essential wear brand for urban men.
Elin Haf Davies
CEO of aparito
Elin initially qualified as a Children’s nurse at Great Ormond St Children’s Hospital, going on to gain a BSc (Neuroscience) and MSc (Research Methods). After years of recruiting children to clinical trials Elin embarked on a PhD at the Institute of Child Health (UCL) to develop a clinical outcome measure and biomarker of ataxia in children with neuro-metabolic disease. Elin was part of the paediatric team at the European Medicine Agency from 2007-2013, responsible for implementing the Paediatric Regulation in Europe. Elin now works independently advising physicians, learned societies, EU funded consortiums and patient groups about regulatory requirements and opportunities in research. She has a personal interest in empowering children to become involved in the health / research agenda. In January 2015 Elin launched a social enterprise using wearable technology and mobile phone apps to monitor disease progression. When not working Elin is an adventure-addict! She played rugby for Wales A for seven years before embarking on a completely new challenge – spending 77 days rowing across the Atlantic Ocean with fellow GOSH nurse, and raising £190,000 for metabolic research. In 2009 she was part of the first ever-female crew to row across the Indian Ocean, a 3,600m trip that took 78 days. Elin completed a hat-trick of oceans by sailing 6,000 miles across the north Pacific. Her adventures over the years have raised over £250,000 for charities close to her heart. Her book, On Tempestuous Seas holds the record for the most amount of books sold in one night at the National Geographic Store in London.
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About aparito, Metabolic Support UK: aparito provide wearable devices and disease-specific mobile apps to provide remote patient monitoring outside of the hospital environment.
Hassan Rajwani
CEO & Co-Founder of REFSIX
Hassan is a Level 5 referee and is on a mission to help referees across the globe reach their potential. Hassan created REFSIX to help grassroots referees have greater insights into their games so they can develop and improve, enabling them to reach whatever level they aspire to be. Hassan’s background is in technology, specifically leading a digital design team at American Express where he worked for six years before embarking on REFSIX. A huge Newcastle fan enjoying the Rafalution!
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About REFSIX: REFSIX is a smartwatch and mobile app for Football Referees.
Paul van Zyl
Founder & CEO of Maiyet
Kristy Caylor is a Co-Founder and the President and Creative Director of Maiyet. Kristy brings to the team a keen entrepreneurial spirit, a successful track record of growing globally recognized fashion businesses, and hands-on experience working within developing countries. Kristy began her fashion career in merchandising at Gap, Inc. While at Gap, Kristy led the Petite business for Banana Republic where she opened stand-alone stores and tripled the business over 2 years. She then relocated to Tokyo to lead the BR Japan merchandising division. Engaging an entirely new customer, Kristy was instrumental in positioning the BR brand and customizing product for the Japanese market. Upon returning to the US, Kristy became the head of merchandising for Gap Accessories and Product (RED). There, she redeveloped the accessories lines, led the development and launch of Gap Jewelry, and focused intensely on creating a more creative and effective business model for Product (RED). Kristy left Gap to start her own consulting business, during which time she worked with brands such as Stronghold Denim, All Saints, and Mercado Global, a fair trade company based in Guatemala. As a design consultant for Mercado Global, Kristy worked directly with indigenous artisans, teaching new techniques and guiding product development for an assortment sold to Nordstrom and Levi’s. After working as a consultant for the LA based luxury brand Band of Outsiders, Kristy joined the company full time as their President and COO, initiating a long-term growth plan that resulted in new product launches and expanded wholesale penetration. Kristy graduated with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University and holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Finance from University of Southern California.
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About Maiyet, New York University, The Conduit: Maiyet is a modern, artisanal luxury fashion brand that designs, sources and produces apparel, accessories, and jewelry.
Marija Butkovic
Founder and CEO of Women of Wearables
Marija Butkovic is founder and CEO of Women of Wearables – an initiative that supports, connects and empowers women in wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT and VR/AR.
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About Women of Wearables: Women of Wearables is first global organisation supporting and connecting women in wearable tech, fashion tech, health tech, IoT, VR and AR.
Pauline Issard
CEO & Co-Founder of Trackener
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About Trackener: Trackener is revolutionising the equine care with data and technology.
Ryan Genz
CEO of CuteCircuit
Ryan Genz is a CEO at CuteCircuit.
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About CuteCircuit: A pioneer in the field of wearable technology, design and manufacture of 3D audio products, sensor enhanced apparel, illumination, haptics.
Paul Lamkin
Co-CEO of Wareable Media Group
Prior to founding Wareable, Paul was a contributing editor on Pocket-lint where he was nicknamed ‘news monkey’ due to his comprehensive coverage of everything and anything new in tech. He then edited a laptop magazine where the pace was a little bit slower (as were some of the readers). When he wasn’t writing about RAM or SSD options Paul also penned more interesting reviews for Tech Radar and T3. Most recently the senior editor of MSN Tech, Paul is a self-confessed geek and has been accused of being both an Apple ‘fanboy’ and a Google ‘fandroid’ – so at least you know that his bias is balanced.
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About Pocket lint, Wareable Media Group, Wareable Media Group: Wareable Media Group has expanded to three publications: Wareable, The Ambient and Get Sweat Go.
Mark Sorsa-Leslie
CEO & Co-Founder of Beringar
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About Beringar: Beringar is a technology has revolutionised the way they live and work.
