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 Corporate Training 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.
Gerard Grech
CEO of Tech Nation
Gerard is CEO of TechCity UK in London.Prior, he headed up global marketing for Blackberry World (e-commerce store for apps music & film), in New York. Before that, he was with Nokia, where, in New York and London, he led the app store’s marketing operations, ran the app strategy and portfolio development team and, most recently, identified and assessed equity investment opportunities for Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia’s venture arm, with $600M under management in the mobile space. At Orange in Paris and London, Gerard was the content division’s group director of strategy and business development, and group head of music and video, launching multiple pioneering content services with Facebook, Universal Music and Sony Pictures, among others. He was EMEA chapter founder and chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and board director of DDEX, the Digital Data Exchange consortium. Before his MBA, Gerard’s career began as a new-media correspondent, covering the digital revolution in the music industry for Music Week and New Media Age, among others. He also co-founded a music label. He read Acoustics Engineering as his first degree.
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About Tech Nation: Tech Nation is focused on accelerating the growth of digital businesses across the UK.
Euan Blair
Founder & CEO of Multiverse
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About Multiverse: Multiverse is a tech startup that matches talent who have not graduated from college with apprenticeship opportunities.
Rajeeb Dey
Founder & CEO of Learnerbly
Rajeeb Dey joined Learnerbly as Founder & CEO in 2016.
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About Learnerbly: Learnerbly is a Learning Development Platform.
Fadl Al Tarzi
Founder & CEO of Nexford University
+15 years of experience in media & technology-related businesses. Hands-on experience building successful strategies, growing companies, raising VC funds, building & managing teams. Founded and played pivotal role in growing several successful businesses,
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About Nexford University: A next generation online university providing students with access to quality, affordable, dynamic education.
Sean Dukes
Founder and CEO of Learnsmarter
Sean Dukes is the founder and CEO of Learnsmarter.
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About Learnsmarter: Learnsmarter provides on-demand training administration solutions for organisations of any size.
William Macpherson
CEO of QA Ltd
William has been leading education and business services groups for over 20 years. He has been the CEO of QA since 2008. He led the development of QA from a value of £25m in 2008 to £700m in 2017 (when a majority stake was acquired by CVC, the leading private equity group). QA now employs over 2,000 staff including more than 700 education professionals. Prior to this, he served as the CEO of Kaplan Professional, Inc. from 2006-2008. He led the management buyout of The Financial Training Company (which became FTC Kaplan) from Wolters Kluwer in 2001 and sold the business to Kaplan in 2003 doubling the value of the business in two years. Between 2004-2008, he led Kaplan’s businesses outside the US, which included operations in six countries. Prior to Kaplan he worked at Bain & Company management consultants and at a corporate finance boutique. William holds an MA in Law from Cambridge University and an MBA from INSEAD.
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About QA Ltd: QA is the UK’s leading training company, providing the complete range of training, talent development and learning services.
Jeremy Basset
CEO of CO:CUBED
Jeremy has built his career by helping large corporates define and build their future organisation. Through CO:CUBED, he works with some of the worlds largest businesses to re-think their organisational approach to innovation and helping them build and execute their collaborative innovation capabilieis. Prior to launching CO:CUBED, Jeremy spent 13 years at Unilever where he was responsible for launching and then leading the Unilever Foundry, Unilever’s platform to engage with startups and innovative companies who can help Unilever pioneer the future. Through the Foundry, over 1500 of Unilever marketers have worked with over 150 startups, brining innovative technology and an entrepreneurial culture to Unilever. Originally Australian, Jeremy’s career has taken him from Australia to New Zealand, Singapore he now resides in the UK. Jeremy has a marketing and commercial background, with a degree in Accounting & Marketing, he’s CPA qualified and has an MBA from London Business School.
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About CO:CUBED: CO:CUBED helps FTSE100 companies to embrace the startup revolution, by defining and executing their collaborative innovation capabilities.
Boyd Mulvey
CEO & Founder of Chorus Intelligence
Boyd started his career in 1990 as a data analyst for Credit Suisse Financial Products (CSFP), an investment bank which created and traded derivative financial instruments based in London. At CSFP Boyd created a database for analysing capital at risk for the bank called FRED (Financial Risk Exposure Database) which is still in use today. Boyd moved from analyst to strategy at UBS and then into investment banking where he helped to raise money for and float several technology companies on the UK Stock Exchange before launching a Venture Capitalist Fund called the CREATE East of England Fund, which specialised in investing into early stage tech companies around the Cambridge area. Following the completion of that Fund, Boyd founded Chorus Intelligence to focus on data analytics once again.
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About Chorus Intelligence: Chorus Intelligence provides technology that allows authorities to investigate crimes using mobile phone records.
Kaan Akın
Founder, CEO of Hackquarters
Tech investor, startup mentor and founder of Hackquarters Startup Accelerator. He is involved with corporate accelerator programs.
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About Hackquarters: Hackquarters accelerated 150+ startups and helped 40+ corporates to innovate with startup collaboration
Igor Cenar
CEO of JollyDeck
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About JollyDeck: Great e-learning for your people. Better analytics for your business.
Nadeem Azam
CEO of Azam Marketing
Nadeem Azam has been at the cutting-edge of entrepreneurship for nearly forty years and generated over £1 billion in sales for clients during his illustrious career. He is also an experienced writer, journalist and sub-Editor, having had his work published in local and national press in the UK as well as several magazines and academic journals. His fiction and non-fiction is studied in schools and universities in the United States, Germany and other countries. Nadeem Azam founded Azam Marketing, an international, full-service digital marketing and design agency in 1997. The company is headquartered in Covent Garden, central London and its corporate website is at https://www.azam.net . Nadeem had been a successful computer programmer as far back as the 1980s in his childhood, and had also enjoyed an acclaimed career as a writer and sub-editor at various British newspapers, magazines and journals in the 1990s. Nadeem foresaw the decline of ‘old media’ and decided to pioneer an internet business. Azam Marketing specialise in search, email, social media and performance marketing, as well as web design, business consulting and corporate training. The multi-award-winning agency’s clients range from the world’s largest corporations such as Disney, Coca-Cola, Hilton, Warner Bros., Nike, Fitness First and BT, to small and medium size companies. Nadeem is often invited to be interviewed on television and radio stations around the world to share his expertise and is highly-rated public speaker.
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About Azam Marketing, Azam Marketing, Azam Marketing: Azam Marketing is a full-service digital marketing and design agency which focuses on results.
Ben Muzzell
Co-founder and CEO of Looop Online Limited
Ben Muzzell is the Co-Founder and CEO at Looop Online Limited.
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About Looop Online Limited: Looop LMS — guaranteed performance at the speed, scale, and quality your business needs.
Kate Lander
CEO of Ivy House London
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About Ivy House London: Ivy House London is a personal and professional development company that offers leadership and life skills training and coaching programs.
Emma Rush
CEO and Co-founder of Think And Do
Emma Rush is the CEO and co-founder of Think And Do.
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About Think And Do: Think And Do provides Atlassian training and services to teams of all sizes.
Kerri Smith
CEO and Co-founder of Think And Do
Kerri Smith is the CEO and co-founder of Think And Do.
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About Think And Do: Think And Do provides Atlassian training and services to teams of all sizes.
