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 Education 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.
David Shrier
Co-Founder & CEO of Esme Learning Solutions
David is a globally recognized thought leader in technology and educational innovation, serial entrepreneur, and author. The portfolio of digital classes he created for MIT and University of Oxford have engaged more than 15,000 innovators in over 140 countries, and revolutionized the model for university short-course offerings. He is a Professor of Practice (AI and Innovation) with Imperial College Business School, and holds a secondary appointment as Associate Fellow with SaÏd Business School, University of Oxford. David has published five books in the past five years focused on technology disruption, the three most recent of which with MIT Press or Little Brown. His latest book, Augmenting Your Career: How to Win at Work in the Age of AI will be published by Little Brown in spring 2021.
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About Adit EdTech, Colorado School of Mines, Copper, Esme Learning Solutions, FINRA, Imperial College Business School, MIT Press, Riff Analytics, University of Oxford, Visionary Future: Esme Learning is transforming the world’s workforce for the Fourth Industrial Revolution using AI.
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Sriram Emani
Co-Founder and CEO of IndianRaga
Sriram Emani completed his undergraduate studies at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, where he was Overall Coordinator of Mood Indigo – India’s leading student festival. After graduating from IIT Bombay, Sriram worked in strategy management consulting in India and USA, and then launched the Marketing and Business Development team at India’s premier performing arts centre, the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai. Sriram is currently a final year MBA student at MIT Sloan School of Management, and the Co-President of the MIT Sloan Entertainment, Media and Sports (EMS) Club. This summer, Sriram worked as a Strategy Fellow with President Reynold Levy at Lincoln Center, working on media and digital strategy, and new revenue generation opportunities. He also launched the MIT AITI initiative in India to develop mobile technology and entrepreneurship skills in undergraduate students. Sriram is a Siebel Scholar, Class of 2013.
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About IndianRaga: IndianRaga is an initiative to promote talented Indian musicians to help them build sustainable careers using technology.
James Hamet
Founder & President of LIT Conversations
Collaborations in neurotechnology, education, and mental health, have enabled a variety of James’ professional contributions, including patents, published research, & business partnerships. The focus of his work is to reduce paralysis & increase agency.
Currently, James is founder & CEO of Vistim Labs, a neurotechnology company started in 2021 to provide high resolution monitoring for cognitive decline. In this way, detection of Alzheimer’s Disease (and other neurodegenerative conditions) and early intervention is possible ahead of the more traditional/advanced symptoms of disease. Vistim Labs collaborates with pharmaceutical companies and universities around the world to help patients access needed care to live symptom-free lives.
James believes preparing the next generation for the problems of tomorrow is critical to creating a better world for everyone. He started LIT Conversations at the height of the pandemic after speaking at a number of schools and realizing the impact he was having on the students. As of today, LIT has served 5+ schools and 800+ students and continues to expand to new school systems and communities.
And then about LIT Conversations:
LIT Conversations offers middle and high school students the opportunity to start exploring potential professional careers in a meaningful way while they are still in school. We do this by teaching and helping students practice key conversation skills. Our programs are custom designed with school administrators to meet student needs and to include volunteers with backgrounds that best represent the students and their aspirations.
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About LIT Conversations: 501c3 providing career readiness training to high school students
Ned Sahin
Co-Founder & CEO of Brain Power
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About Brain Power, Harvard University, Startup Leadership Program: Brain Power builds software and hardware to transform Google Glass™ into an assistive device for people with autism.
Catharina Paukner
Co-Founder, Chief Scientist of Cambridge Nanosystems
As co-founder and Chief Scientist of Cambridge Nanosystems Ltd., Catharina Paukner is responsible for both the research strategy of the company and its technology roadmap. She leads her team in the production and development of high quality graphene flakes derived from hydrocarbon gases in a unique and industry leading atmospheric pressure plasma cracking process. Currently her industry research covers a broad range of application developments for both graphene flakes and carbon nanotubes in areas such as inks and polymer composites. With a background and Master’s degree in chemistry, her PhD research in Materials Science at the University of Cambridge focussed on the development of a completely new system for the controlled continuous synthesis of carbon nanotubes. She has recently been awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in recognition of her role in the design of new nanomaterial manufacturing systems.
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About Cambridge Nanosystems: Cambridge Nanosystems is a UK-based start-up born out of Cambridge University that specialises in advanced materials.
Amber Kho
Founder of Lovelogica
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About Lovelogica: A Media Company Specializing in Scientific/Research Based Dating Advice for Women
Azizjon Azimi
Founder of TajRupt
Azizjon Azimi is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of TajRupt. He is currently a dual-degree Master’s in Public Policy candidate at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he is pursuing a concentration in political and economic development, and Master’s in Business Administration candidate at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He has been named a Knight-Hennessy Scholar by Stanford University as a member of the program’s inaugural cohort, receiving full funding for graduate studies at Stanford Graduate School of Business from the largest scholarship program in the world. Born and raised in Tajikistan, he arrived to the United States to attend high school at the age of 11 after winning a global olympiad in sustainable energy with a group of fellow Tajik students. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (cum laude) degree from New York University with high honors in economics and honors in international relations, having been the youngest degree candidate of the Class of 2016. It was during his time at NYU that he came to value the essence of critical thinking skills that systemically lack in Tajikistan’s educational landscape through extracurricular activities and academic studies. He served as president of NYU Model United Nations – the largest student organization on campus – and was appointed to the all-university Student Activities Board. He was also named a Holten Family Research Scholar for his academic achievements and spent summer of 2015 studying abroad in Dubai, UAE. Upon graduation, he worked at United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and in the banking division of Simon-Kucher & Partners, a strategy and marketing consultancy, in New York. Recognizing that the vast majority of Tajikistani youth did not have the opportunities that were endowed to him, Azizjon made it a personal goal of his to empower talented young leaders in his homeland to realize their full potential and enact grassroots social change. From gender equality activism as part of HerStory, to media freedom in State of Affairs and dialogue through debate in Model United Nations, Azizjon’s vision for TajRupt has pioneered extracurricular activism with a liberal arts focus for high school and university students in the country. He is confident that TajRupt will ultimately disrupt the status quo and educate a new generation of civic-minded leaders passionate about community service.
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About TajRupt: TajRupt is a Tajikistan-based NGO dedicated to empowering youth in the country by encouraging critical thinking and community awareness.
Erin Osborn
Co-Founder & COO of BetterLesson
Erin Osborn is the Co-Founder & COO at BetterLesson.
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About BetterLesson: BetterLesson connects K-12 educators with comprehensive professional learning that helps them thrive in an increasingly complex world.
Zack Perkins
Co-Founder & CEO of CollegeVine
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About CollegeVine: CollegeVine brings data-driven college guidance to families.
Nicolaas Matthijs
CEO, Founder of Fronteer LTD
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About Fronteer LTD: Creating awesome Educational Technology experiences
Nicolaas Matthijs
CEO, Founder of Fronteer LTD
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About Fronteer LTD: Creating awesome Educational Technology experiences
Meghan M. Biro
Co-Founder & CEO of TalentCulture LLC
Meghan M. Biro is a globally-recognized leader, talent management and career strategist, and social community catalyst. As founder and CEO of TalentCulture Consulting Group, she has worked with hundreds of companies, from early-stage ventures to global brands like Microsoft, IBM and Google, helping them recruit and empower stellar talent. Meghan believes that, for companies to succeed in the 21st century world of work, they must build dynamic cultures that are hardwired to social media. This creates ongoing real-time communities, not only within an organization, but also with its partners and customers, both current and potential. As an ever-evolving, cross-pollinating, idea-sparking culture takes hold – leadership, unity, morale, flexibility and performance improve. Meghan began her recruiting career while working on a research team at Yale University and then moved into software technology business markets. She is a leader with a passion for sharing ideas – and creating thriving communities that serve both organizations and people. As a humanist, for Meghan it all comes down to people – social media is at heart a human tool. It connects us and takes collaboration to a whole new level. Meghan lives what she preaches about social communities. With vision and passion for the human dynamics that drive business success, she founded TalentCulture, and has grown the community and its flagship #TChat Twitter presence to unparalled popularity. She also co-hosts a weekly #TChat Radio program with TalentCulture co-founder, Kevin W. Grossman, and serves as an advisor to other Twitter interest groups, such as #HRTechChat. Along the way, Meghan’s living metaphors for today’s networked organizations have become standards for best practices in social community engagement and development. She writes about these strategies and principles as a regular contributor at Forbes.com. Her ideas have also been featured in other innovative blogging communities such as CBS MoneyWatch, Dice, SHRM, Monster, Mashable and Glassdoor. While Meghan has her finger on the world’s digital pulse, she also embraces traditional media. She has been a guest on numerous radio and television shows, has been a featured speaker at global leadership conferences and forums.
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About TalentCulture LLC: TalentCulture is a media outlet and marketing and communications consultancy dedicated to elevating the World of Work.
Yscaira Jimenez
Founder & CEO of Plexx
Yscaira Jimenez, a Dominican immigrant, grew up attending public schools in the Bronx, taught English to students in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, and has spent most of her professional career working for high-impact tutoring. She founded and ran La Pregunta Arts Cafe, an arts cafe in Harlem, for five years. Yscaira also worked for three New York education startups (Rocket Learning, Learn-It Systems, Platform Learning) in business development, operation, and corporate trainer roles bringing tutoring to more than 10,000 low-income students across the United States. In addition to English, she speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. As a Legatum Fellow, Yscaira is CEO of and has spent the last year working on Plexx, a mobile app that’s reinventing the job search, training, and application process for young people without college degrees. Her focus is on the United States and Brazil. She has partnered with local municipalities, foundations, workforce development agencies, and employers and will be running two pilots this summer in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil and the Bronx, New York. Yscaira received her MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. She also holds a 2003 BA in English and Latin American Studies from Columbia University.
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About LaborX, Plexx: Plexx is a mobile application where people can train skills to get a job.
Kevin Lee
CTO and Co-Founder of Erbi Biosystems
Kevin Lee is the Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder of Erbi Biosystems.
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About Erbi Biosystems: Erbi Biosystems is a transformative microfluidic bioprocess instrumentation company.
Ashish Fernando
Founder and CEO of iSchoolConnect
Ashish Fernando is the Founder and CEO at iSchoolConnect.
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About iSchoolConnect: Artificial Intelligence, international student admission, international universities and colleges.
Kin Lo
Founder & CEO of Kaymbu
Founder at Kaymbu
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About Kaymbu: Kaymbu empowers early childhood educators to make learning visible and strengthen school communities.
Daniel Watts
Founder & Managing Director of Aluminati Network Group
Daniel leads the Aluminati team and has overall responsibility for defining the company’s technical and business strategies and with his deep sector knowledge he leads product innovation. Daniel founded the company in 2002 when he graduated from Oxford with an honours degree in Computation. An expert in online engagement, Daniel is regularly invited to speak at industry conferences and is in regular attendance at multiple CASE events per year. In his spare time Daniel enjoys the physical and mental challenges of basketball and has also coached the Darwin College ladies team to Cambridge championship titles for 4 consecutive years.
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About Aluminati Network Group: Aluminati Network Group provide online services and platforms to unite alumni, student and member networks.
Harvey A Silverglate
Co-Founder of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Harvey A. Silverglate, an advocate for civil liberties since the 1960s, is also an attorney, writer, and non-profit activist. Currently practicing law with the Boston-based firm, Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP, Silverglate specializes in criminal defense, civil liberties, and academic freedom and student rights cases. In addition to his legal work, Silverglate has led parallel careers as a newspaper columnist, book author, and chairman of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Silverglate currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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About Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: FIRE’s core mission is to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities.
Raoul-Gabriel Urma
CEO and Founder of Cambridge Spark
Raoul-Gabriel Urma is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge. His research centers on programming languages and software engineering. He is an author of the upcoming book Java 8 in Action: Lambdas, Streams, and functional-style programming published by Manning. In addition, Raoul has written over 10 peer-reviewed articles and given over 20 technical talks at international conferences. He has worked for large companies such as Google, eBay, Oracle, and Goldman Sachs, as well as for several startup projects.
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About Cambridge Coding Academy, Cambridge Spark: Cambridge Spark is a leader in personalised Data Science training.
Will Hunt
Co-Founder of In.security
Will Hunt is an information security enthusiast who has worked in IT security for the past 9 years. He is an Associate Director at NotSoSecure and was an infrastructure hacking trainer at Blackhat USA 2017. Prior to this he was a pentester and trainer, developing and delivering technical and non-technical courses for a leading IT security firm. Before pentesting Will was an experienced digital forensics consultant and trainer. He runs the blog stealthsploit.com and has identified and responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities in various software.
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About In.security: In.security is a specialist cyber security organisation providing technical and educational services.
Owen Shearing
Co-Founder of In.security
Owen Shearing has worked in the IT industry for a number of years, the last 6 specifically within security. He is an Associate Director at NotSoSecure, a specialist IT security company delivering high-end IT security consultancy and training. Owen has delivered NotSoSecure training courses at Blackhat Asia, USA and EU over the past couple of years. He runs the blog rebootuser.com and has authored tools which can be found at github.com/rebootuser.
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About In.security: In.security is a specialist cyber security organisation providing technical and educational services.
Nancy Traversy
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Barefoot Books
Ever since we took our first steps back in 1993, living Barefoot for me has been about stories — the stories we make, the stories we share, the stories that are in all of us and the stories that connect us. My own story began in Canada where I spent my childhood on the move from army base to army base, living in obscurely named places like Chilliwack and Petawawa. So it was pretty easy for me when I was in my early twenties to pick up and move across the world from Toronto to London when I transferred with my first job at Price Waterhouse. The day in 1985 when I was asked by a male partner in the company to go home and change because I was wearing trousers which “women didn’t wear” was the day I knew my story needed to change. I have always loved numbers and, coming from a family who like to design, paint and create, this made me a bit of a black sheep. So it was a surprise when, in my mid-twenties, I discovered my own passion for colour and design and decided to leave the big corporate world of finance to work in a small design house in Covent Garden in London. I stayed in the design industry for many years, where I learned the ropes of running a creative, entrepreneurial company and was lucky to be able to do business in amazing places like Japan, Korea and Taiwan. I think my willingness to take risks, passion for travel, and real appreciation for stories were born in those early years. When I met Tessa in 1992, my eldest daughter was three weeks old, and I had just started my own company advising small creative start-ups. As a new mum, I was captivated by the idea of starting Barefoot and creating amazing books for children that celebrate diversity and imagination. I didn’t really know much about the publishing industry back then and, in hindsight, that was probably lucky as Barefoot has always strived to be more of a pioneer than a follower. I had three more children over the next few years, and my kids have all grown up Barefoot, actively involved in testing stories, picking artists and generally helping out in our little business. In 1998 we jumped off our first big cliff and decided to set up shop in NYC. And in 2001, my family moved to America, and we made our home in Concord, MA where we now live happily with our ever-expanding menagerie of animals and lots of colour. As we navigate our way through the ever-changing publishing landscape, we have certainly had many twists and turns on our Barefoot journey. I am proud to still be standing to tell the Barefoot story, to continue to create outstanding stories for children and to be part of a global, grassroots community of storytellers.
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About Barefoot Books: Barefoot Books is an award-winning independent publisher of books, gifts and digital content for children, with a focus on multicultural
