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 Software 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.
Jonathan Scudder
Founder of ForgeRock
Jonathan held key roles in a variety of large identity projects before co-founding ForgeRock in Norway, running finance and operations and then relocating to build the ForgeRock engineering lab in Bristol. He believes that awesome humans are the basis of great companies, and has spent the ForgeRock years proving this. He has sat on several voluntary, political and private boards and founded a handful of small companies in the past, but thinks ForgeRock is the best thing since sliced bread. Jonathan is a qualified youth and community worker, and has a degree in Informatics from the University of Oslo, Norway.
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About ForgeRock: ForgeRock is a multinational software company that develops commercial open source identity and access management products.
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Dave Ettle
Co-Founder & CTO of Zynstra
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About Zynstra: Zynstra is transforming edge computing at the retail edge.
Simon Walker
Co-Founder VP Engineering of FiveAI
Simon Walker is a Co-Founder and VP of Engineering at FiveAI.
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About FiveAI: FiveAI provides a software platform designed for providing a solution in urban mobility in public transport to complex urban environments.
Tom Carter
CTO and Co-Founder of Ultraleap
Tom started exploring ultrasound technology during a study in the final year of his Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Bristol. He further developed the initial concept to form the basis of his PhD studies, during which time he published numerous papers and filed various patents. Recognising the technology’s commercial viability, Tom founded Ultrahaptics in November 2013. Ultrahaptics has developed a unique technology that enables users to receive tactile feedback without needing to wear or touch anything. The technology uses ultrasound to project sensations through the air and directly onto the user. Users can ‘feel’ touch-less buttons get feedback for mid-air gestures, or interact with virtual objects.
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About Ultraleap: Ultraleap is working to create the most remarkable connection between people and technology.
Tom Holder
Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Personal Privacy Solutions (Tapmydata)
Tom Holder is the Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Tapmydata.
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About Contactzilla, Personal Privacy Solutions (Tapmydata): Tap is a mobile app and new breed of CRM to help companies build a positive privacy dialogue with their customers.
Christos Ellinas
Co-Founder and CTO of Nodes & Links
Dr. Christos Ellinas holds a doctorate in Complex Systems from Bristol University (UK), where he was a faculty member, and was a Visiting Professor at Stevens Institute (USA). His research is award winning, has been published in leading scientific journals and industry guides, has attracted EU and industry funding and has been piloted across several large-scale projects.
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About Nodes & Links: Nodes & Links empowers organizations across all domains to tame project complexity.
Martin Jonik
Co-Founder and CEO of Techmodal
Martin Jonik is a co-founder and CEO at Techmodal.
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About Techmodal: Techmodal is a consultancy and technology company that offers data-driven decision support for the defense, commercial, and public sectors.
David Evans
Co-Founder of Techmodal
David Evans is a co-founder at Techmodal.
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About Techmodal: Techmodal is a consultancy and technology company that offers data-driven decision support for the defense, commercial, and public sectors.
John Rudin
Founder, CTO, and COO of Folium Optics
John studied Engineering at Durham University, and Optics at Reading University. After working as a product design engineer he joined Hewlett Packard and helped found their UK based displays research group. In 2013 he and Steve Kitson set up Folium Optics to further the commercialisation of colourful, low power plastic displays.
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About Folium Optics: Folium Optics was founded in November 2013 by Steve Kitson and John Rudin.
Gareth Williams
Founder & Non-Executive Director of YellowDog
Gareth hounds the YellowDog kennel, spearheading the vision to build a world where people do more, create more, discover more; unleashed from limited computing power. Following an MEng in Information Systems Engineering from the University of Durham, Gareth cut his canines working in software and telecoms at companies including Orange, Experian QAS, FREEDOM4 and Arieso, where he was part of the Management Team that completed the successful sale of the company to JDSU in March 2013 for $85m. One day he had a brilliant idea for using spare mobile capacity which, following a chat with someone in the animation department at the University of the West of England, gave birth to what is now YellowDog. When not coming up with brilliant ideas, he is a dad, a keen cyclist, an ardent reader, a Samaritans Listening Volunteer. He also likes ale and talking to anyone (usually together). You can email Gareth on gareth@yellowdog.co or phone +44 (0) 330 223 2499.
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About YellowDog: Helping businesses power their innovations with the most scalable cloud native scheduling and provisioning technology.
Tom Griffin
Director and Co-Founder of Ripjar
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About Ripjar: Ripjar is a data intelligence company that transforms global institutions ability to manage strategic risks.
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
Ian Cray
CTO and Founder of Clekt
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About Clekt: Clekt gets corporate data to improve performance, generate innovation, and expand the organization.
Warren Russell
Founder & CEO of W2 Global Data
Over 14 years’ experience in working within the Financial Service Sector. Warren has extensive expertise in AML (Anti Money Laundering), Anti-fraud, CTF (Counter Terrorism Financing), Loss Prevention, Regulation and Compliance working within companies such as HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Cheltenham & Gloucester and C6 Group.
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About W2 Global Data: W2 Global Data is a provider of international data, software and services.
Joe Roper
Co-Founder of Star2Billing
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About Star2Billing: Star2Billing provides a full featured Softswitch & auto-dialer systems used in outbound call centers
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.
Neciah Dorh
Co-Founder and CEO of FluoretiQ
Neciah Dorh is a Co-Founder and serves as the Chief Executive Officer at FluoretiQ.
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About FluoretiQ: FluoretiQ is a medical device company designing simple and effective bacterial detection systems for rapid diagnosis of infection.
Shaun Lancaster
CEO/Founder of Mbition
Sports marketing expert, brand specialist, ex retail chain owner, lover of tech, triathlete, muddy runner, surfer.
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About Mbition: Mbition is a training app for runners that creates a CUSTOM training plan 100% built around you.
Craig Hooper
Co-Founder and CEO of DWCC
Craig Hooper is the founder and CEO of DWCC. He has over 20 years’ experience in global solution selling and has also worked in senior IT buying positions across a number of successful global technology start-ups. His other experience includes stints at Airbus and JP Morgan, where he served as SVP of EU Supply Chain Product Management.
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About : One Partner for Immediate In Country, Dedicated White Label Presence with offices in US, UK, Spain, Germany and Australia
Nikolaos Lygkonis
CEO & Founder of PeopleGoal
Co founder of PeopleGoal.
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About PeopleGoal: PeopleGoal is a configurable employee performance and engagement platform.
Paul Wickers
Founder of Huggg
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About Huggg: Impactful gifts for your people, sorted in seconds
Rupert Jabelman
CTO & Founder of Col8
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About Col8: Unlocking the potential in every video by allowing you to search and use it more intuitively
Charles Smith
CEO & Founder of Col8
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About Col8, Coremination Ltd: Unlocking the potential in every video by allowing you to search and use it more intuitively
Andrew Blogg
Founder and COO of Dronecloud
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About Dronecloud: Dronecloud is a platform created to manage a complex drone operation with ease from start to finish.
David Bush
Founder and CMO of Dronecloud
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About Dronecloud, Future Aerial: Dronecloud is a platform created to manage a complex drone operation with ease from start to finish.
David Telford
Founder of Seg
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About Seg: Connecting your ecommerce platform and your website to email.
Kornel Lesiński
Founder of ImageOptim
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About ImageOptim: ImageOptim is a free app that makes images take up less disk space and load faster, without sacrificing quality.
Richard Blackwell
Co-Founder & CEO of Quinn Blackwell Media Ltd
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About Quinn Blackwell Media Ltd: A New Audiovisual Platform for Audiobooks & eBooks
Francisco Martín
Co-Founder and Senior Software Engineer of Wenenu
Francisco has been part in different start-ups, all about making lives safer, from road safety devices, to risk management, and now on the cloud with Wenenu, whose mission is to democratise reliable Backups and Disaster Recovery verification tools for everyone, with ease, with a DevOps first approach and cost effectiveness as goals, as opposed to heavy, expensive and boring competitors. Wenenu is based in London, UK, being a fully remote company. Francisco has a MCc in Computer Science and Engineering by the University of Granada, Spain.
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About Wenenu: Verify your cloud backups and Disaster Recovery plans ahead of time with ease, sleep better.
Moody Boles
Founder & CEO of Imaginators
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About Imaginators: Imaginators is an online platform that helps people to showcase their work professionally and interactively.
Steven Herd
Founder of Zoetrope
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About Zoetrope: Zoetrope is an interactive 3D photography service for online retail.
