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 Bristol based Founder operating in the Internet 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.
Dominic Mills
Co-Founder & CEO of Yuup
After starting his career as a consultant with global system integrator Unisys, Dominic founded Auros, a digital agency specialising in tech build, in 2001. Auros built a reputation for delivering large-scale, technically complex digital projects for clients such as the NHS, Swinton Insurance and Virgin Media. Auros was acquired by Zone in 2013 with Dominic joining the Zone board. As CTO he played a key role in the team that led the combined business through a period of significant growth, following a minority investment from BGF in 2015 to fund further acquisition. Zone was acquired by NASDAQ listed Cognizant in 2017 and Dominic stayed with the business until September 2019 to oversee the transition. He was a non-exec director of community interest company Bristol Media from 2017 to 2020. In January 2020 Dominic conceived and co-founded Yuup – a startup inspired by his vision of what experiences could be and driven by a desire to help local people and enterprises identify new opportunities to thrive.
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About Yuup: Online marketplace for local experiences
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
Simon Norris
Founder & CEO of Nomensa
An experience strategist, Simon has inspired and transformed numerous organisations, strengthening their connections with their audiences and increasing user engagement. His understanding of technological advances and behavioural psychology alongside his business acumen allows him to guide people to think differently and create and implement future-proof strategies that make a measurable difference. Simon is one of the most respected thinkers in his industry, having been involved in ‘digital’ and UX since the start and has played a fundamental role in shaping it.
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About Nomensa: Nomensa are a strategic UX design agency transforming digital experiences.
Thomas Palmer
Co-Founder & CEO of Zenstores
Thomas R. Palmer is Executive Chairman and co-founder of iModules Software. Tom’s experience includes being a Managing Director and General Partner with two venture capital firms, AH Ventures and Kansas City Equity Partners. In these capacities, he led investments in the areas of information technology and communications, serving on company boards and through to successful exits including IPO and acquistions. Tom was also a Kauffman Fellow with the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, with KCEP as his resident firm. He also served as a Manager of Business Analysis at Trans National Group, where he performed strategic planning, international expansion, investments, and divestitures. As a Lecturer at the University of Missouri, Tom taught Venture Capital Finance for six years. He holds a MBA in Entrepreneurial Finance and Marketing from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern University and an undergraduate degree in Economics and Computer Science from Dartmouth College.
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About AH Ventures, iModules Software, Zenstores: Zenstores is a platform to propel online sellers to ecommerce greatness.
Ben Reynhart
Co-Founder & Product Developer of Zenstores
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About Zenstores: Zenstores is a platform to propel online sellers to ecommerce greatness.
Robert Ashcroft
Co-Founder & CTO of Zenstores
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About Zenstores: Zenstores is a platform to propel online sellers to ecommerce greatness.
Simon Hills
Co-Founder of Helpfulpeeps
Co-founder of HelpfulPeeps
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About BibShot, Helpfulpeeps: Helpfulpeeps is a social marketplace for local help
Saf Nazeer
Co-Founder and CEO of Helpfulpeeps
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About Helpfulpeeps: Helpfulpeeps is a social marketplace for local help
Huw Owen
Co-Founder of TravelLocal
Huw is originally from Wales, as his name gives away, and is a failed musician, which has had no effect whatsoever on TravelLocal. However, he has lived and worked in some far-flung places – as a teacher in Japan, managing a local travel company in Cambodia and latterly working with the UN to mentor local travel entrepreneurs in Uganda and Egypt. He has worked in the travel industry since 2003, and spends most of his time extolling the benefits of buying local to just about anyone who will listen, whilst ensuring that our customers are well looked after. Huw has travelled all over the globe, but seeing a mountain gorilla at close quarters is like no other travel experience he’s ever had. He was in thick forest in Bwindi, Uganda, where he came across not one, but three silverbacks. Their sheer size and strength simply took his breath away.
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About TravelLocal: Global managed marketplace for tailor-made holidays.
Silas Adekunle
Co-Founder and CEO of Reach Industries
Silas Adekunle is the Co-Founder and CEO at Reach Industries.
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About Reach Industries: Reach Industries focuses on developing cutting-edge products for companies.
Chris Beck
CTO and Co-Founder of Reach Industries
Chris Beck is the CTO and Co-Founder at Reach Industries.
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About Reach Industries: Reach Industries focuses on developing cutting-edge products for companies.
Neil Pollard
Founder of Ents24
Neil graduated with a MSc in Advanced Computing from Bristol University in 1997. He developed the UK’s first ever mobile website in 1999 – “The UK Entertainment Centre” – which won several awards and formed the basis of Ents24, a company that he co-founded in 2000. Ents24.com now receives 2m visitors per month, making it the third most popular destination for tickets in the UK, after Ticketmaster and See Tickets.
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About Ents24: Ents24 is a live entertainment website covering live music, comedy, theatre and shows.
Carl Shaw
Founder of Cerberus Security Laboratories
Carl has over 25 years experience of designing, developing, analysing and securing embedded system hardware and software for military and consumer electronics. An experienced entrepreneur, he was co-founder of MathEmbedded Ltd., a well-respected company providing advanced embedded software development services globally in which he also built a software security capability and analysed the security vulnerabilities of a wide range of products. Prior to that, Carl was Technical Leader of the Linux OS team at STMicroelectronics, a global silicon manufacturer. In that role he ran a multinational team that supported customers with complex issues and developed the Linux OS on embedded and proprietary chip architectures. He also developed low-level security software and worked alongside the hardware security architects to ensure that next generation hardware security features could work effectively with complex operating systems. In the past he has also designed embedded system PCBs, programmed too many CPUs of all shapes and sizes to remember, worked in big-data analysis and signal processing and gained a Ph.D. in astrophysics. A regular speaker at events, he is particularly interested in security vulnerabilities at the hardware / software boundary.
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About Cerberus Security Laboratories: Cerberus Security Laboratories is a business that is focused on delivering leading edge embedded system security for connected IoT devices.
Steven Herd
Founder of Zoetrope
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About Zoetrope: Zoetrope is an interactive 3D photography service for online retail.
Tom Metcalfe
Founder of rain cloud
Founder of rain cloud.
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About rain cloud: Raincloud is a weather technology company.
