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 Cambridge based Founder operating in the FinTech 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.
Shuo Wang
Co-Founder & CRO of Deel
Shuo Wang co-founded Deel in 2018. Most recently, Shuo was a co-founder and CTO of Aeris Cleantec. Shuo holds a BS degree in Robotics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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About Deel: Deel is a payroll and compliance platform for international employees and contractors.
Paul Maeder
Chair and Partner, Founder of Highland Capital Partners
Paul focuses on startups in robotics and online education. He is a Founding Partner of Highland Capital Partners and has 32 years of experience in venture capital. He has served as a director of many public and private technology companies and is currently the Board Chair of 2U (Nasdaq: TWOU), is on the board of Imprivata (NYSE: IMPR), and manages Highland’s investments in Avidyne, Carbon Black, BlueTarp Financial, Jaunt VR, and Rethink Robotics. Paul has been recognized by the Forbes Midas List as one of the top venture capitalists in the industry and was the 2011-2012 Chair of the National Venture Capital Association during the creation and passage of the JOBS Act. He is also the 2008 recipient of the Mass Technology Leadership Council Commonwealth Award. Paul serves on the Board of Trustees of Princeton University and is Co-Chair of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Campaign Committee. He is also a former Board Chair of Buckingham Browne & Nichols School and of the Massachusetts Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. Paul earned BSE in Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences at Princeton University, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
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About Highland Capital Partners, Highland Transcend Partners: Highland Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that offers seed, early, and growth-stage funding solutions.
Luana Lopes Lara
Co-Founder of Kalshi
Luana is from Brazil and studied Computer Science and Math at MIT. She’s passionate about the Kardashians, movies and music.
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About Kalshi: Kalshi is an exchange app that allows people to trade on event outcomes.
Tarek Mansour
Founder of Kalshi
Tarek Mansour is the Co-Founder of Kalshi.
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About Kalshi: Kalshi is an exchange app that allows people to trade on event outcomes.
Maia Heymann
Founder & General Partner of Converge
Maia brings insight and deep experience to her role as Converge Founder & General Partner, leveraging her 25 years investing in and financing B2B enterprise tech companies. From her days launching BancBoston Venture’s west coast office in Palo Alto, Maia has spent 17 years in venture investing in software application, infrastructure, Internet, and data-enabling start-ups. She has developed industry leading expertise based on her involvement with over 50 M&A transactions, 17 IPOs, 22 board and observer roles. Maia’s investments and involvements include OnDisplay (IPO), Verstata (IPO), Docent (IPO), Iowa Telecom (IPO), InQuira (acquired by Oracle), Watchfire (acquired by IBM), and WebCT (acquired by Blackboard). Maia headed BancBoston Ventures’ $340M portfolio, served as an MD of Shott Capital’s $2.7B in LP commitments to venture capital funds, and underwrote over $2.5B in structured debt facilities to finance numerous acquisitions for her technology company clients. Maia mobilized Converge’s robust venture partner network to align these skilled executives with our entrepreneurs. This powerful network, when called-upon, helps our entrepreneurs achieve their goals faster and accelerate their companies’ growth. A trustee and alumna of Wellesley College, Maia currently serves as the Vice Chairman at the New England Venture Capital Association and is passionate about supporting initiatives that super-charge the entrepreneurial climate. Maia understands that the player on the field is the CEO, not the VC, and owes her success to the meaningful relationships she’s built with entrepreneurs over time.
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About Converge, Crayon, Smartvid io, Wellesley College: Converge is a venture capital firm that specializes in seed, startup, early Series A, and early-stage investments.
Meghan McCormick
Co-Founder & CEO of OZÉ
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About OZÉ: OZÉ is a habit-forming mobile app that makes it easy for SMEs in Africa to keep digital records, make better decisions and access capital.
Jonathan Hakim
Founder & CEO of Cignifi
Jonathan Hakim is the Founder & CEO at Cignifi.
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About Cignifi: Cignifi uses mobile behavior data in emerging markets to deliver credit scores and marketing tools to telecom and financial companies.
Allen Lee
CEO and Founder of Beta Finance
Allen Lee is the CEO and Founder of Beta Finance.
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About Beta Finance: Beta Finance is a a decentralized finance startup providing money market protocol for lending, borrowing, and short-selling crypto assets.
Elise Moussa
Founder & CEO of Snapay INC.
Elise Moussa is the founder and CEO of Snapay, a company that solves financial fragmentation for the modern world. Prior to Snapay, Elise also founded Qifil where she also served as CEO in 2012. Elise holds a master of science degree from Boston College.
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About Snapay INC.: Snapay — Solving financial fragmentation for the modern world
Goncalo de Vasconcelos
Founder and CEO of Rnwl
A serial entrepreneur himself, Gonçalo is only too aware of the long path leading to a successful funding round. In September 2011 Gonçalo graduated with an MBA from Judge Business School, University of Cambridge where he was awarded the ‘Best Dissertation’ prize and the Benavitch Scholarship for academic and professional achievements. His past experience has shown him that often entrepreneurs have to spend too much time chasing investors instead of focusing on the most important part of their business: their customers. He has a vision of how to help great entrepreneurs to fulfil their dreams and that vision is called “SyndicateRoom”. He is passionate about giving the crowd access to the top deals into which experienced business angels are investing their own money. This is what drives his vision for SyndicateRoom. Gonçalo is also a contributor for Forbes, writing regularly about equity crowdfunding, business angel investment and venture capital investment and speaks regularly at public events about the same themes. In his spare time Gonçalo cycles long distances to raise money for charities (his last ride was from Cambridge to Paris), plays tennis and, when in warmer climates, sails with his wife whenever there is half a chance.
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About Fund Twenty8, Rnwl: Rnwl is an over-the-top insurance platform making insurance simple for consumers. Insurtech.
Kelsey Theriault
Co-Founder and Senior Front-End Engineer of Ledgie
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About Ledgie: Ledgie is an upcoming personal finance app for cryptocurrency users.
Jeff McAulay
Co-Founder & President of Energetic Insurance
Jeff McAulay is the Co-Founder & President at Energetic Insurance
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About ADL Ventures, Energetic Insurance: Energetic Insurance unlock solar financing for unrated or below investment grade organizations.
Benjamin King
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Tumelo
Benjamin King is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Tumelo.
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About Tumelo: Tumelo is an impact-focused financial technology firm with the mission of giving every investor a voice.
Hamish Anderson
Founder & CEO of Money Mover
Hamish has worked in senior roles for some big banks, and has spent most of his career trying to explain complicated stuff in a simple way. Most recently at HSBC, and formerly at Merrill Lynch, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Schroders, his clients were a variety of companies, institutions and asset managers. Hamish took the leap into entrepreneurship and co-founded Money Mover to help SMEs benefit from a transparent and cost-effective way to make international payments. At Money Mover he embraces all aspects of the day-to-day business with enthusiasm, in addition to directing its marketing and development.
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About Money Mover: Money Mover is a global payments and currency exchange platform for small/medium enterprises (SMEs) and the mass affluent.
Justin Washtell-Blaise
Founder & Chief Data Scientist of SubjectiveSystems
Ph.D. CTO & Co-founder ForecastThis. Data Scientist and specialist in development of Machine Learning, NLP & high-throughput systems.
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About SubjectiveSystems: Financial modeling, decision science, data science.
Harry Evelegh
Founder of Methodise.net
Founder at Methodise.net
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About Methodise.net: Delivering crypto liquidity in Africa
Daniel Weitzner
Co-Founder of TrustLayers
Daniel J. Weitzner is Founding Director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative, Principal Research Scientist at CSAIL, and teaches Internet public policy in MIT’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. He was United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy in the White House where he led initiatives on privacy, cybersecurity, copyright, and digital trade policies, and was responsible for the Obama Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the OECD Internet Policymaking Principles. Weitzner is a founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology, led the World Wide Wed Consortium’s public policy activities, and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is recipient of the International Association of Privacy Professionals Leadership Award (2013), the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award (2016) and is a member of Council on Foreign Relations.
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About Massachusetts Institute of Technology, TrustLayers: Real-time policy engine enables companies’ confident personal info use at big data scale, while preserving consumers’ and partners’ trust.
