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 Founder operating in the Smart Building space. If you think a Founder 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.
Ian Hetherington
Co-Founder of WRLD
Ian has been involved in the video game industry since 1982. He founded and was Managing Director of Psygnosis Limited, which became one of the most successful UK based publishers. Psygnosis was sold to Sony in 1993 and Ian was retained as the Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe from 1994-1997 where he was instrumental in the design and implementation of the hardware and software for Sony’s new Playstation console, and oversaw the development of the European launch catalogue (80% market share at launch).
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About Midoki, Realtime Worlds, WRLD: A 3D cloud-based platform of real-world environments to create digital twins.
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.
Patrick Sheehan
Founder and Managing Partner of ETF Partners
Patrick is a founder and Partner of the Environmental Technologies Fund. Patrick has worked in venture capital since 1985. He was instrumental in founding 3i’s venture capital practice, and later became the founding Managing Director of its Silicon Valley operation. Before this, he was a research engineer for GEC and Marconi Space Systems. He was a member of the Executive Committee and Board of EVCA from 2007 to 2010, during which time he also chaired the Venture Capital Committee. Patrick has a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from UCL, London.
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About ETF Partners: ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience.
Peter Horsburgh
Venture Partner and Founder of ETF Partners
Founder and Chairman at ETF Partners (Environmental Technologies Fund).
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About ETF Partners: ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience.
Yodit Stanton
Founder and CEO of OpenSensors
Software and Data engineer working to helping people understand their physical space. Currently growing OpenSensors. OpenSensors aggregates data from a variety of sensors for the next generation of smart Building Management Systems. Our dashboards help you make the most effective use of your office space. With experience in helping more than 100 companies to combine data from new workplace sensors seamlessly, interoperating it with existing and familiar mobile and desktop systems, we aim to give you a fully comprehensive overview.
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About OpenSensors: OpenSensors is an internet of things company that builds a connected world that puts people first.
Malcolm Sparks
Founder of OpenSensors
Founder at OpenSensors
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About JUXT, OpenSensors: OpenSensors is an internet of things company that builds a connected world that puts people first.
Will Brocklebank
Founder & Chairman of Shepherd Network
Prior to founding Shepherd, Will spent a decade as the CEO of a leading systems integration company which he founded in 2005. He has spoken at Smart Buildings conferences & been featured in a range of leading trade magazines. Will is a serial entrepreneur who holds an MA from Edinburgh University and is an alumnus of the Goldman Sachs 10k SB programme.
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About Shepherd Network: Shepherd Network uses predictive analytics and machine learning to monitor connected building systems and alert users to potential losses.
Serge Lubensky
Founder | Executive Managing Director of ReTool Ventures
Serge is a geek who enjoys finding pragmatic solutions to difficult problems. Along the way, he managed to become a successful entrepreneur with a track record of starting, growing and selling technology companies. Serge grew up in a family of scientists and artists. Not smart enough to become a scientist and not creative enough to be an artist, Serge chose to pursue a computer engineering degree in his hometown of Minsk strictly to avoid being drafted into the Russian Army during the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan. Serge’s first successful exit, from a failing 70-year old startup called the USSR, occurred in 1988. Fresh off the boat, Serge joined a computer company in Queens, NY, developing software for service contractors. Architecting and supporting a system that businesses relied on allowed Serge to learn the intricacies of the commercial repair and maintenance trades and ways to apply technology to solve real-life challenges for business owners and their field technicians. In the process, Serge and the company’s founder, Steven Gottfried, became friends and business partners and started to formulate plans for their next business venture. In 1999, Steven and Serge founded a cloud-based facilities management platform, ServiceChannel, with the goal of transforming the highly inefficient multi-billion dollar commercial repair and maintenance industry. As with their previous company, which was successfully sold, Steven was the idea generator and a master salesman, while Serge worked behind the scenes as CTO to help ServiceChannel achieve a dominant position in the global facilities management marketplace. In 2016, Serge moved to London to accelerate ServiceChannel’s expansion in Europe. In the summer of 2017, Accel, an elite technology VC firm, invested $54M in ServiceChannel continuing to fuel its growth and allowing Steven and Serge to realize a highly successful exit. Now Steven and Serge run ReTool Ventures, a technology investment firm.
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About Equip ID, ReTool Ventures: ReTool Ventures is a new technology investment firm that seeks to retool the facilities management industry by curating a “digital toolbox”
Vassilis Seferidis
Co-Founder & CEO of Zeetta Networks
Vassilis has more than 25 years of experience in the Telecom and Consumer Electronics (CE) industries mainly in Strategic Business Planning and Development roles. Before co-founding Zeetta Networks, Vassilis was VP of European Business Development for Samsung Electronics responsible for driving revenue growth and strategic development of the company’s Consumer Electronics business in Europe. Prior to Samsung, he held senior management positions with British Telecom, Toshiba Information Systems, Philips Electronics, and British Standards Institute. During 2006-2009 he was the CTO of QIO Systems Inc., a pioneer in wearable electronics based in New York City. Vassilis holds a BSc and MSc from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a PhD in Electronic Systems Engineering from Essex University and an MBA from Cass Business School, University of London. In 2011 he was included in Euro50, a list of Europe’s 50 most influential people in Broadband &Telecoms industries.
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About Zeetta Networks: Zeetta Networks simplifies the monitoring, management and automation of complex ICT networks
Reza Nejabati
Co Founder, Director of Zeetta Networks
Reza is currently a Senior Lecturer in Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol, UK. Prior to moving into academia he worked in project management and network architecture roles with leading telecom vendors. Reza has over fifteen years of experience in the field of telecommunication and computer science and has been actively involved in SDN and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) standardisation. He has made important and pioneering contributions to the research fields of Optical Networking, Software Defined Networking, Network & Data Centre Infrastructure Virtualization, Grid Networking and Large Scale Future Internet Experimentation. He has co-/authored over 150 peer reviewed papers and three SDN standardisation documents.
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About University of Bristol, Zeetta Networks: Zeetta Networks simplifies the monitoring, management and automation of complex ICT networks
Conall Laverty
Founder & CEO of Wia
CTO and Co-Founder at Roll TV
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About Wia: Wia unifies the IoT to help businesses better understand occupancy, air quality and energy to create smarter, safer and greener environments
James Weston
Founder/Sales Director of Teletower
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About Teletower: Teletower provides alternative to fixed scaffolding, podiums, and other mobile access towers.
Mathieu Bellanger
Technical Director and Co-Founder of Lightricity
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About Lightricity: Lightricity Ltd was founded in 2017 to commercialise its high-efficiency energy harvesting technology.
Rishi Chowdhury
Co Founder of Incube
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About Incube, Momentum London, Your Hidden Potential: Incube specializes in the fields of commercial real estate, proptech, and smart buildings.
William Makant
Co-Founder and CEO of Plumis
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About Plumis: Intelligence in the fabric of every building
Yusuf Muhammad
Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer (CDO) of Plumis
Yusuf is a co-inventor of Automist. He has an Honours Masters degree in Engineering and a double Masters in Innovation Design Engineering. He has won numerous design awards for a host of innovations across a number of industries including the James Dyson Award, the Toyota IQ Design Challenge & Transport Design of the Year by the Design Museum to name a few. He also starred in the BBC 2 Show ‘The Big Life Fix’.
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About Plumis: Intelligence in the fabric of every building
Marco Matera
Chief Commercial Officer & Co-Founder of Gideon
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About Gideon: Gideon allows users to control all of their smart devices irrespective of brand, from a single application.
James Pulver
Founder of Housahedron
Founder at Housahedron
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About Housahedron, Spacesweets: Housahedron creates live visualizations of indoor climates and energy performances of buildings.
John Donovan
Founder of Housahedron
Founder at Housahedron
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About Housahedron: Housahedron creates live visualizations of indoor climates and energy performances of buildings.
