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 Edinburgh based Director operating in the Software space. If you think a Director 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.
Andrew Nagle
Global Account Director, EMEA of Microsoft
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About Microsoft: Microsoft is a software corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports, and sells a range of software products and services.
Jane Richardson
Senior Director, Europe Middle East and Africa of Oracle
Senior Director, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Oracle Academy.
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About Oracle: Oracle is an integrated cloud application and platform services that sells a range of enterprise information technology solutions.
Mark Anderson
Senior Director of Global Solutions Enablement – EMEA of Equinix
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About Equinix: Equinix is an internet company that provides data center services for companies, businesses, and organizations.
Raymond O’Hare
Member of the Board of Directors of Exception
Raymond has held a number of high profile board positions in Scotland including, Chairman of the IOD, board member of Young Scot, and member of the Government’s Skills Utilisation Leadership Group. He is currently on the boards of a number of ambitious and growing SMEs, as well as being a member of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) board of management and member of the government’s National Economic Forum. Raymond worked for Microsoft for over 12 years and was the corporation’s director for Scotland for five and a half years.
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About : Exception is an IT Consultancy and Services company that collaborates with many of the UK’s largest companies and Government organisations.
Martin Burke
Founding Member of the Board of Directors & Chairman of the Board of Directors of Exception
Martin is a founding director of Exception and also serves as chairman. His responsibilities include strategic development of the business, consulting services, digital, and technology delivery. Martin is also responsible for Waracle, an Exception Group company, who provide mobile app solutions and services. Having worked on both the client and service side of the industry throughout his career, Martin has extensive experience of technology transformation across a number of sectors.
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About : Exception is an IT Consultancy and Services company that collaborates with many of the UK’s largest companies and Government organisations.
Alan Anderson
Founding Member of the Board of Directors of Exception
A founding director of Exception, Alan has been instrumental in the growth and development of the company since it was formed in 2002. Alan has director responsibility for our programme delivery services and provision of overall Customer Service. With over 20 years-experience on both the client and supply side of the industry, coupled with the ability to draw on his Financial Services, Government and Utilities expertise, Alan is ideally placed to ensure that the services delivered meet or exceed customer expectations.
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About : Exception is an IT Consultancy and Services company that collaborates with many of the UK’s largest companies and Government organisations.
Alan Anderson
Founding Member of the Board of Directors of Exception
A founding director of Exception, Alan has been instrumental in the growth and development of the company since it was formed in 2002. Alan has director responsibility for our programme delivery services and provision of overall Customer Service. With over 20 years-experience on both the client and supply side of the industry, coupled with the ability to draw on his Financial Services, Government and Utilities expertise, Alan is ideally placed to ensure that the services delivered meet or exceed customer expectations.
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About : Exception is an IT Consultancy and Services company that collaborates with many of the UK’s largest companies and Government organisations.
Peter Ferry
Commercial Director of Wallet.Services
Peter’s background as a software developer spanned the societies’ adoption of the PC and the Internet. As a hotshot techie he co-founded Microsoft Scotland and spent much of the dot com boom incarcerated in large financial services institutions, consulting on scary web, infrastructure and security projects. Peter’s corporate career continued ultimately leading Microsoft’s Cloud and Partner programs and running the Microsoft Technology Centre in Scotland demonstrating the business impact of disruptive tech. Peter gets very excited about leapfrog technologies that reshape the world. That’s why he founded Wallet.Services – to simplify and realise the potential of blockchain technologies for Business and Government. Peter has a passion for Digital Technology’s positive impact on society, learned during a few years in Estonia – Europe’s Baltic breakaway Digital Nation. He served on the board of ScotlandIS from 2013 to 2015, is on the Westminster All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Blockchain, and was primary author of “Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy: Distributed Ledger Technologies in Public Services”. Peter was appointed the Honorary Consul for the Estonian Republic, a global leader in digital public services, in July 2017.
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About Wallet.Services: Connecting and protecting business and society.
Richard McBride
Managing Director of Edesix
Richard McBride is Managing Director at Edesix.
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About Edesix: Edesix provides professional body worn video camera solutions.
Nara Kaveripatnam
Director of Nara Iyer Research
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About Crossing35: Nara Iyer Research is a Scotland based boutique consulting company specializing in Artificial intelligence.
Craig Douglas
Managing Director of Reserve Apartments
With extensive experience in developing directory based web-sites within the travel industry and online booking systems that blow the other guys out of the water – Craig’s here to do the same within the short term rental market.
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About Reserve Apartments: Reserve Apartments provides web-based solutions for the short term letting/self catering market.
Craig Turpie
Director of Storm ID
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About : Digital transformation
Bob Lawson
Director, Co-Founder of Kumulos
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About Kumulos: Kumulos is the intelligent personalized mobile messaging platform helping brands better engage and communicate with customers
Margaret Coughtrie
Non-Executive Director of Cognitive Geology
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About : A specialist software provider for the oil industry
Howard Baker
Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director of Powerphotonic
Howard Baker received B.Sc.in Physics and Ph.D. in Laser Physics from Manchester University. Postdoctoral research at Manchester was on pulsed iodine photo-dissociation lasers. In 1980, he became a Lecturer in Applied Physics at Hull University, with research on mercury halide and TEA CO2 lasers and magnetic switching circuits for electrical pulse generation. In 1987, he became Senior Lecturer in Physics at Heriot-Watt University allowing research specialisation in both laser physics and laser engineering. He played a leading role in development of scalable lasers with RF discharge excitation, and CO2 planar waveguide and array lasers were pioneered. The work aided the establishment of a currently successful laser manufacturer in the UK. This expertise in the new CO2 laser technology led to applications research on laser drilling of circuit boards, machining of unfired LTCC ceramic laminations and precision micro-machining and polishing of silica optics. His main interest has been in high power diode lasers, used directly or as pump units for solid-state lasers. A novel diode pumping scheme led to world-leading performance from planar waveguide solid-state lasers. He devised a new technique for fabricating optics to correct the poor beam quality of diode laser bars, combining a novel wavefront measurement technique with custom laser micro-machining. He co-founded PowerPhotonic Ltd, aimed at commercialising this process. Current research continues on the use of laser direct-writing techniques in optics manufacture, and application of laser-cut optics in the general area of high average power industrial diode lasers. A new area is ceramic technology research on vacuum sintered, transparent laser materials for solid-state laser amplifiers and laser-machined LTTC ceramic substrate technology for diode laser packaging.
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About Heriot-Watt University, Powerphotonic: Powerphotonic designs and fabricates freeform refractive micro-optics for laser beam correction and beamforming.
Eleanor Barnard
Finance Director of Reactec
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About Reactec: Reactec is the market leader in monitoring and management support solutions for hand and arm vibration syndrome
Mark-Paul Buckingham
Non-Executive Director of Reactec
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About Reactec, Xi Engineering Consultants: Reactec is the market leader in monitoring and management support solutions for hand and arm vibration syndrome
Nik Plevan
Founder and Managing Director of eTalent
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About eTalent: eTalent gives businesses access to an effective recruitment tool which includes personality and behavioural profiling.
Josh Carson
Director and Designer at GearedApp of GearedApp
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About GearedApp: Creating Exceptional Mobile and Web Platforms.
