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 Identity Management 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.
Itamar Lesuisse
Co-founder & CEO of Argent
Itamar is the co-founder and CEO of Argent. Prior to Argent, Itamar founded and led Peak, the top ranked mobile cognitive training service with over 50,000,000 users and 500,000 subscribers. Itamar led Peak to a profitable 8 digit per year business. He successfully sold it to Lagardere SCA in 2016. Before Peak, Itamar worked at Boston Consulting Group, Amazon and VISA. He holds a Masters in Computer Science and Electronics Engineering.
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About Argent, Imperial College London: Argent is the most simple and secure smart wallet for crypto.
Owen Hall
CEO of Heliocor
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About Heliocor, Heliocor: Heliocor is a regulatory technology company.We are building a global anti fraud ecosystem based on our Robolitics and Dokstor SaaS products.
John Lord
Founder & CEO of Trunarrative
Appointed in 2009, John Lord leads the Group’s growing global capability to provide fraud, risk and compliance solutions to many of the world’s largest commercial organisations, governments, as well as disruptive start-ups. Prior to GBG, John led global sales before heading up the UK business for one of the world’s largest credit rating agencies, Dun & Bradstreet, and also led a major data analytics, outsourcing and contact centre business.
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About Trunarrative: Trunarrative is a risk and financial crime management platform that offers fraud prevention, identity, and compliance solutions.
Nicholas Dryden
CEO of Fingopay
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About FinGo, Fingopay, Sthaler: Identity authentication platform
Richard H Harris
Group CEO, Founder of Ensygnia
Richard is known as a hands-on, technology entrepreneur with a track record of building and transforming early-stage technology companies such as Ensygnia, Swivel Secure, Mobix, SAVortex, Clearswift and Tumbleweed. As Chief Executive and a founder of Ensygnia, Richard conceptualised and patented a visual alternative to NFC called Onescan. Ensygnia’s Onescan platform enables a consumer to go from looking to buying in under 10s from first contact – including new customers! At the Mobile World Congress over 1500 industry leaders voted Onescan as one of top 3 the innovations most likely to have the greatest impact on the mobile industry over the next ten years! Ensygnia beat tough competition from AirWatch, CloudX, Metrical and SpatialBuzz to win the Mobile Industry Awards 2014: Best Use of Software. In his spare time, he enjoys Ceroc & Scuba, is a campaigner for the rights of vulnerable adults and mental health issues when possible working with Zacchaeus 2000 Trust and Mental Health Research UK as well as mentoring Nicholas Fearn a young man with Asperger’s. Also enjoys mucking around with molten glass, composing music, painting and digital art.
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About Ensygnia: Ensygnia delivers integration Platform as a Service for large payment companies and corporations deploying omnichannel solutions
Zia Hayat
Founder and CEO of Callsign
Zia is Chairman, CEO and founder of Callsign. With a PhD in Information Systems Security from the University of Southampton, he has served in various roles in the cybersecurity industry. From research engineer at BAE Systems to internet banking security architect at Lloyds Bank. Zia oversees the overall direction and strategy of the company while contributing to innovation and design of the service.
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About Callsign: Delivering digital trust through simple secure customer interactions
Donald Andrew Gillies
CEO & Co-Founder of Passfort
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About Passfort: PassFort is a turnkey compliance solution for onboarding customers in regulated markets.
Irra Ariella Khi
Co-Founder & CEO of Zamna
Irra Ariella Khi is a serial entrepreneur based in London, who is obsessed with cyber security and data privacy. She is the co-founder and CEO of VChain, a deep tech company that is developing and patenting a blockchain solution for Digital DNA, to identify each person online and reinvent verification, privacy and trust. Irra speaks 9 languages, and graduated from Oxford University with 1st Class Honours. She is a speaker and mentor at General Assembly, StartUpBootcamp and Oxford
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About Zamna: Award-winning blockchain-powered data verification platform improving airport security while delivering a seamless passenger experience
Robin Tombs
Co-Founder & CEO of Yoti
Robin Tombs is Founder of Yoti, a digital identity system which helps you prove who you are and confirm who other people are, online and face to face. Robin was Co-founder at Gamesys, one of the world’s leading online gaming operators with annual revenues over £200m, 950 staff and offices in 8 countries. He worked at PWC as a Chartered Accountant from 1993 to 1997 in the UK before co-founding IDM, a web game business which was sold in 1999. Robin is also an investor in a handful of early stage for profit and social UK businesses, including Infinitesima, Trumin, Luxdeco, Working Knowledge and the National College for Digital Skills. Robin is passionate about creating opportunities for young people to achieve their potential in life and to bring scalable web and mobile technologies to the not-for-profit sector. As such Robin set up ZING in 2009. He is a Trustee at Future First, a charity which is designed to help state schools build and manage an alumni community. He holds a degree in Economics and Politics from Bristol University. He is a keen sports enthusiast mostly watching either his 3 children play or great teams on the TV.
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About Gamesys Group, Yoti: Yoti is a digital identity platform that provides a simple and secure way of proving identities, online and in person.
Andersen Cheng
CEO of Post-Quantum
Andersen Cheng has considerable experience in venture investing, incubation and consulting, achieving significant growth and exits for several high-tech companies including L3-TRL. He was the COO of the Carlyle Group’s European venture fund and a founding member of LabMorgan, the e-finance unit of JP Morgan. He has been involved in the spinoff and incubation of a number of trading and transaction system ventures. Prior to that, he was JP Morgan’s European Head of Credit Risk Management and was involved in many system implementation and risk management projects connected to credit risk, swap transactions, EMU and Y2K. Andersen holds a BSc in Civil Engineering and an MSc in Management Science from Imperial College. He then qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte & Touche, specialising in computer security and data interrogation.
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About Post-Quantum: Post-Quantum is a world-leader in quantum-safe encryption, blockchain and digital identity
Paul McGuire
Co-Founder & CEO of tru.ID
Paul McGuire is the Co-founder & CEO at tru.ID. Serial Entrepreneur – previously founded two leading international transaction platform businesses. Now at JustInvesting, building the online transaction platform for the next-generation of Angel investing – moving venture investing online, to the benefit of Investors, Entrepreneurs and the whole economy. Prior to JustInvesting Paul co-founded Paymo, later acquired by BOKU, and led the company to become one of the leading mobile payments platforms, available in over 50 countries. Prior to Paymo, Paul co-founded mBlox, the world’s leading mobile transaction network, where he led the company’s sales and marketing organizations, guided the company’s expansion into the European market, and led M&A efforts to acquire six companies. Before founding several start-ups in the telecommunications sector, Paul began his career in management consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton.
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About tru.ID: tru.ID is reinventing mobile authentication for today’s world through a modern developer platform.
Singe (StJohn) Deakins
Founder and CEO of Citizenme
StJohn Deakins As Founder and CEO, StJohn oversees the commercial and technical direction for citizenme. His vision was to create a service for everyone that lets us take back control of our digital identities and asset our right to self. He works with our team, partners, suppliers, advocates, the media and the general public to ensure that the citizenme vision realises its potential to positively impact the lives of every single digital citizen. . StJohn is a successful serial Internet entrepreneur, digital visionary, mobile evangelist, and documentary producer. In late 2010 he sold his mobile multimedia platform company, 3ple-media, to a US private equity firm. StJohn subsequently advised on the acquisition of the NSN Wimax business unit by SkyView. In 1995 he was instrumental in helping to put Lloyd’s List, the world’s oldest daily newspaper, online. Later, his team at Agency.com developed the first British Airways booking system and global Internet presence. . StJohn produced the acclaimed crowd sourced documentary Twittamentary. He provides formal and informal advisory to a number of start-ups including Distrify, the innovative Internet movie distribution platform. StJohn returned to London to found citizenme after spending 12 years living in Singapore where he worked to advance mobile data services in the emerging markets of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America.
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About Citizenme: CitizenMe empowers us people and organisations with the true value of personal data.
Jonno Hulford-Funnell
CEO of Novatiq
Jonno Hulford-Funnell is the Chief Executive Officer of Novatiq.
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About Novatiq: Provider of privacy-first identity solutions that enable telcos, brands and publishers to verify and reach their audiences.
Andrea Carmignani
Co-Founder & CEO of Keyless
Andrea Carmignani serves as the founder and CEO of Keyless.
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About Keyless: Pioneering privacy-preserving cloud-native biometric authentication to enable businesses adopt zero-trust passwordless authentication.
Michael Garrett
Chief Executive Officer of Omada
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About Omada: Identity Management & Access Governance Solutions and Services
Laura Degiovanni
CEO and Founder of TiiQu
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About TiiQu: TiiQu is a trust mechanism derived by immutable verifiable sources about one’s ID, Work, Knowledge, Performances
Riten Gohil
CEO of Sphonic
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About Sphonic: Sphonic is a Context-Broker that leverages 3rd party vendor data with a workflow engine to enable fraud prevention, AML, KYC
Robert Kay
CEO of DISC Holdings
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About DISC Holdings: DISC networks reduce costs, improve security and give individuals ownership based control of their transaction and identity information.
Tom Eggleston
Managing Director & CEO of ProofID
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About ProofID: ProofID is a specialist provider of fully managed identity management solutions, both on-premise or cloud hosted.
Michael Newman
Founder & CEO of My1Login
Michael has twenty years leadership and management experience in the technology sector spanning sales, marketing, operations and product development in a number of UK PLCs.
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About My1Login: My1Login is a next generation Identity and Access Management solutions for Enterprise.
Schehrezade Davidson
CEO of Tricerion
Schehrezade Davidson is the CEO of Tricerion. Her focus is primarily Sales, Marketing and developing the Partnership route for Tricerion. In addition, Schehrezade has 30 years’ experience in financial services and equity fund management, where her expertise covered investing in large and small cap companies. She has over 10 years’ experience in early stage technology investing, especially in companies on the cusp of commercialisation. Schehrezade was an early stage investor in Tricerion.
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About Tricerion: Strong Authentication Solutions Provider
Schehrezade Davidson
CEO of Tricerion
Schehrezade Davidson is the CEO of Tricerion. Her focus is primarily Sales, Marketing and developing the Partnership route for Tricerion. In addition, Schehrezade has 30 years’ experience in financial services and equity fund management, where her expertise covered investing in large and small cap companies. She has over 10 years’ experience in early stage technology investing, especially in companies on the cusp of commercialisation. Schehrezade was an early stage investor in Tricerion.
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About Tricerion: Strong Authentication Solutions Provider
