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 Partner operating in the SaaS space. If you think a Partner 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.
Sahil Rekhi
Vice President Global Strategic Partnerships of RingCentral
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About RingCentral: RingCentral, a global distributor of cloud-unified communications and collaboration solutions, offers its users with technology services.
Kristin Waeterloos
Head of Partner Eco-System of Privitar
As Head of Partner Eco-System, Kristin is responsible for the development and management of global and local partnerships to support Privitar’s growth strategy. A major focus is on joint go-to-market with consultancies, platform providers and complementary software vendors. Kristin has over 25 years experience in the Financial Services Technology sector, including SAP Financial Services, Sopra Group and Finastra, where she held senior management and business development positions and has built up a successful track record in Alliance and Channel management over the last 7 years. She has an extensive network of executive relations across global and European consultancies and technology players.
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About Privitar: Privitar offers a data privacy platform that protect their customers’ sensitive personal data and to deliver comprehensive data privacy.
Michael Szalontay
General Partner of Flashpoint
Michael Szalontay joined Flashpoint Venture Capital as General Partner in 2010.
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About Flashpoint, Forbes Finance Council, IntelliBoard, QMENTA: Flashpoint is an international asset management firm investing in tech businesses.
Alexander Konoplyasty
General Partner of Flashpoint
Alexander Konoplyasty is the co-Founder at Flashpoint Group. Alexander Konoplyasty serves as Managing Partner Flashpoint Venture Capital. He co-founded an investment company focusing on start-up investments in Internet in CEE/Israel/CIS. He was Independent Financial Advisor for the sale of 100% in Ventrade; with Ivan Tavrin in 2010 and helped in the acquisition of a significant minority stake in Net-By-Net Holding in 2010 for debt/equity restructuring of OJSC RBC Information Systems, including restructuring of c. US$260 million of debt, sale of 51% stake for US$80 million to ONEXIM, sale of RBC Bank. Alexander Konoplyasty was Director and Associate in Investment Banking at UBS. He was coverage banker for media/telecom and financial services in the CIS and completed over 20 investment banking transactions in Russia and Ukraine. He was Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley in the European Telecom Media Technology group and the Leveraged Finance group. He was Consultant of Transaction Support at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Alexander Konoplyasty has wide experience of leading all types of corporate finance transactions: M&A, IPO, private placements, leverage buy-outs, raising and restructuring debt. He mostly acted as execution “deal captain”. Alexander Konoplyasty studied Advanced Bachelor of Arts (Specialist) in Economics from 1998 to 2003 from Moscow State University for International Relations (MGIMO).
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About Flashpoint: Flashpoint is an international asset management firm investing in tech businesses.
Donatella Callegaris
Managing Partner of Flashpoint
Donatella joined Columbia Lake Partners in 2014. She is involved in the entire deal life cycle including assessing, evaluating and post investment monitoring. Donatella is focused particularly on CLP relationships with the equity sponsors ecosystem and on identifying high growth technology companies in need of growth financing that best suits CLP’s investment criteria. Prior to joining CLP, Donatella spent seven years working at Kreos Capital, managing several aspects of the investment process on a pre-term sheet and post-term sheet basis as well as managing the portfolio for technology and life science companies based in the UK, continental Europe and Israel. Donatella also managed various levels of the fund corporate governance for Kreos II, Kreos III and Kreos IV funds. Prior to this, Donatella worked in trust management. She holds a degree in Business Management from Birkbeck College, University of London and speaks both Italian and English.
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About Flashpoint: Flashpoint is an international asset management firm investing in tech businesses.
Mads Jensen
Founder & Managing Partner of SuperSeed Ventures
Mads is an avid technologist, experienced SaaS entrepreneur and skilled business operator with more than 20 years track record in building and growing technology businesses. His passion is to build great tech companies, and today he does this as investor in and mentor of great founding teams. Mads is technically hands-on, and his expertise includes disruptive innovation using AI and data. He is the author of multiple US patents.
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About SuperSeed Ventures: SuperSeed invests in seed stage B2B SaaS/AI companies and help them reach their first £1m in revenue
Jonathan Gane
Business Development and Partnerships of ABAKA Holdings
Jonathan Gane, Business Development & Partnerships Director, was previously Managing Director at TP ICAP Institutional Services division covering strategy, acquisitions and origination. Prior to this he was CEO and co-CIO of the fund of hedge funds, Fort Rock Asset Management, investing in quantitatively driven hedge funds that included systematic trading, AI and machine learning strategies. He spent 15 years with Societe Generale in London and New York where he was Managing Director, Global Head of Origination & Structuring for the Newedge Alternatives division covering hedge funds and institutional investors.
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About ABAKA Holdings: ABAKA is the Enterprise platform powered by Artificial Intelligence enabling institutions to build digital retirement solutions
David Cottingham
Director, Product Management & Partner Engineering of Citrix Systems
David runs the product management and partner engineering teams for Citrix Workspace ecosystem and the Citrix Hypervisor virtualization platform. He has spent a decade working with engineering teams at a whole host of companies, listening to customers large and small, and forming product strategy. David holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Cambridge, and enjoys scribbling on whiteboards.
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About Citrix Systems: Citrix offers a unified platform to secure, manage, and monitor diverse technologies in complex cloud environments.
David Cottingham
Director, Product Management & Partner Engineering of Citrix Systems
David runs the product management and partner engineering teams for Citrix Workspace ecosystem and the Citrix Hypervisor virtualization platform. He has spent a decade working with engineering teams at a whole host of companies, listening to customers large and small, and forming product strategy. David holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Cambridge, and enjoys scribbling on whiteboards.
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About Citrix Systems: Citrix offers a unified platform to secure, manage, and monitor diverse technologies in complex cloud environments.
Tom Singell
Partnerships Manager of Showpad
Tom Singell is the Partnerships Manager at Showpad.
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About Showpad: The best thing to ever happen to your sales team
Ekaterina Almasque
General Partner of OpenOcean
Ekaterina (Katya) Almasque is a Venture Partner at OpenOcean and she leads the London Team and Operations. Before joining OpenOcean, Katya was a Managing Director of the Samsung Catalyst Fund in Europe, Samsung’s Electronics $500M venture capital multistage investment fund focused on core technology areas including robotics, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, digital health, data infrastructure and device level technologies. She led investments across Europe in leading companies such as GraphCore, Mapillary, AIMotive, Sentiance and Quobyte, as well as several venture funds. For over ten years prior to that, Katya was part of several corporate and independent venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and Europe, including EMC and Siemens Venture Capital. Additionally she was a founding partner of a global private equity advisory firm specializing in high-tech growth companies with $1B+ markets in the technology and environmental sectors, where she led investments in the US, Brazil, and Europe.
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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), OpenOcean, Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center: OpenOcean is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in B2B software across Europe.
Bob Geiman
Managing Partner of Cava Capital
Bob joined the Cava team in 2010 and led our investment in Neuehouse, LLC. With over 15 years of experience, Bob is a proven operator and investor in mobile and new media. Bob is the Founder and President/CEO of EveryScreen Media, a mobile advertising technology and data company in New York City. In addition, Bob is Chairman of the Board of Roundbox, a leading provider of mobile video software and applications and a member of the Board of Directors of Paradigm Creatives, a Hyderabad, India -based software company that creates mobile and social applications and enabling technologies for smartphones and tablets. Bob serves on the Advisory Boards of HatchLabs, an entrepreneurial sandbox building advanced mobile products that is funded by IAC and Xtreme Labs; Keynetik, a provider of software infrastructure and applications to facilitate the delivery of sensor-enabled, environment and context aware applications for the mobile, healthcare, sports and gaming industries; Paneve, a software programmable, video processing company for mobile devices and tablets; Perky Jerky, a guerilla marketing company that sells specialty food products; and Spring Partners, a company that is building a mobile application called SpringPad. Bob was recently a member of the Board of Directors of Paratek, a wireless semiconductor company that was acquired by Research in Motion in March 2012. Bob is a founding member of First Growth Venture Network, an organization with the mission of identifying high potential technology entrepreneurs in New York City and supporting these entrepreneurs with resources and networks to succeed through a nine month boot camp
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About Cava Capital, DigiSure, Summit Partners: Organic Development Stage (Cava Studio) through Early Growth.
Bryan Plofsky
Venue Partnerships Lead of Bizly
Bryan Plofsky is the Venue Partnerships Lead at Bizly.
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About Bizly, Bizly: Bizly is the enterprise’s fastest way to get people together
Mark Pearson
Managing Partner of Fuel Ventures
Mark is an award winning digital entrepreneur having achieved multiple successful exits over the last decade. Mark takes an active role in mentoring the Fund’s portfolio of companies.
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About Fuel Ventures, Groupola.com, HushHush, MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, MyVoucherCodes.co.uk: Fuel Ventures is a technology fund investing in marketplaces, fintech, platforms, and SaaS companies.
Ali Beklen
Founder and Managing Partner of HotelRunner
After working for several financial institutions and IBM, Ali Beklen co-founded HotelRunner with Arden Agopyan, with the ambition of converting the long-tail accommodation sales and distribution management from offline to online at global scale. For the last 10 years, he has been advising many organizations and initiatives focusing on digital transformation of the travel industry globally. He has publications in international refereed journals and conferences about service and cloud computing. He is Advisory Chair for Software Service Computation at the International Academy, Research and Industry Association. Beklen holds an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering and a B.A. in Economics. He is also a PhD candidate in computer engineering.
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About HotelRunner: SaaS enabled B2B network for accommodations and travel agencies to find, contract, connect, and transact with each other online.
Arden Agopyan
Founder and Managing Partner of HotelRunner
Arden Agopyan is an experienced entrepreneur and business development executive with a proven track record. Prior to founding HotelRunner, he led IBM’s Cloud Computing Software technical sales and market creation activities across Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa. His areas of expertise also include international team management, business execution, strategic marketing and financial management. As a talented hacker coming from software development background, along twenty years of business experience in technology, Arden is a Ph.D. candidate in Finance, holds a BSc in Computer Engineering degree and an MBA. Arden speaks five languages and is also Advisory Chair for Cloud Computing at International Academy, Research and Industry Association and co-author of a book, academic journals and articles.
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About HotelRunner: SaaS enabled B2B network for accommodations and travel agencies to find, contract, connect, and transact with each other online.
Nathan Sansby
Strategic Partnership Manager of Sorted Group
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About Sorted Group: Sorted Group is a global SaaS company that provides data-driven software for checkouts, warehouses, and shipping.
James Codling
Managing Partner of Volution
James has 14 years of Private Equity, Investment Banking and startup experience. He started his career at J.P. Morgan and moved to Montagu Private Equity in 2006. He held NED roles in a number of Montagu’s portfolio companies and was also responsible for all of Montagu’s financing activities between 2006 and 2011. James has successfully launched a number of startup businesses, including VentureFounders, and holds a MEng (hons) in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the University of Birmingham.
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About VentureFounders, Volution: Volution backs ambitious Fintech and SaaS businesses, ready to accelerate their growth to Series B and beyond.
Cynthia Nadal
Head of Partnerships of KIDSORTED
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About KIDSORTED: KIDSORTED is a technology platform for kids activities and services.
Mark Kukolus
Founder & Managing Partner of BICPM
Founder & Managing Partner
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About BICPM: Business Intelligence & Corporate Performance Management
Marta Jakubowska
Partner of Bookalook
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About Bookalook: Bookalook is the platform for the new generation of fashion professionals.
Pavel Dolezal
Partner of Keboola
Pavel has been building companies since 1999, starting with the largest portal network, CEE, under the group name Atlas Portal. After the group was sold, he built Ataxo, one of the EU’s largest digital agencies in the performing media space. Ataxo serviced 15,000 customers and had almost 200 agents in Customer Support. In addition, Pavel actively invests in early-stage tech companies in the EU, Brazil and the USA. In 2014, Pavel became a partner at Keboola.com and is responsible for its international expansion and business development, currently focusing on UK and Singapore operations.
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About Keboola: Keboola is a cloud platform helping clients combine, enhance & publish crucial information for internal analytics & data products.
Kerry Wright
Director Of Partnerships of Purple
Kerry Wright is one of the driving forces behind the world-wide success of Purple WiFi – one of the hottest Wi-Fi startups around. Kerry’s vision on how Wi-Fi is driving consumer engagement and how analytics can monetize free, social-media-based Wi-Fi services is unique and compelling. Don’t miss Kerry at Wi-Fi NOW.
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About Purple: Purple is a WiFi analytics and marketing platform.
John Welbourn
Director of Partnerships of Gnatta
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About Gnatta: Gnatta allows businesses of all sizes to listen and engage with their customers on an individual basis via one single interface.
