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 London based Founder operating in the Social 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.
Bernhard Niesner
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of busuu
Bernhard Niesner is the CEO and Co-Founder of busuu – the world´s largest social network for language learning with more than 35m users. busuu provides language courses in 12 different languages combined with direct interaction with native speakers from the community. The London-based start-up received several awards and was named “Best Education Start-Up in 2011” by TechCrunch. busuu is backed by renown business angels like Martin Varsavsky and received investment from PRO-Founders Capital. Before founding busuu, Bernhard worked at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. In addition to busuu, he is Associated Professor at IE Business School in the area of online marketing. Bernhard graduated summa cum laude in International Business from the University of Vienna and holds an MBA (with honors) from IE Business School. In 2009 he was awarded “Entrepreneur of the year” in Austria.
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About busuu: busuu is a mobile app for language learning with the goal of breaking down language barriers.
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Michelle Kennedy
Co-Founder & CEO of Peanut
Michelle joined Badoo originally as lead counsel over 4 years ago. Prior to joining Badoo she was a successful corporate lawyer at leading international law firm, Mishcon de Reya, before being poached by the firm’s successful biotech client, Quotient Bioscience to head up their legal team. During her time at Badoo, she built the legal, compliance, HR and talent teams before moving into a more operationally focused role, including a position on the board. Today, Michelle is responsible for most key areas of the business, and works closely with founder and CEO Andrey Andreev, on the existing product, and exciting ‘special projects’ coming soon….
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About Peanut: Peanut is an online platform that provides a safe space for women to connect across fertility and motherhood.
Max Keiser
Founder of StartCOIN Holdings
Max Keiser is an American broadcaster and film-maker. He hosts Keiser Report, a financial program broadcast on RT, an English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news; presents a weekly show about finance and markets on London’s Resonance FM; and writes for [The Huffington Post](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/huffingtonpost). Keiser is the CEO and co-founder of [StartJOIN](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/startjoin-2). He is also a co-founder of HSX.com. Max Keiser invented “Virtual Specialist Technology,” a software system used by the Hollywood Stock Exchange.
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About Heisenberg Capital, StartCOIN Holdings: Provides you with the world’s first rewards-based crowdfunding for startups.
Dhruv Ghulati
Co-Founder and CEO of Factmata
Dhruv holds a Distinction in Computer Science and Machine Learning from University College London, and a 1st Class BSc in Economics from the LSE. He was a product manager and co-founder of two London based machine intelligence startups, and is an Entrepreneur First alum and Forbes 30 Under 30 leader in Technology. He wrote his thesis in cost-sensitive classification and distant supervision for statistical claim detection.
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About Factmata: Factmata is an artificial intelligence company for automated content understanding..
Dylan Collins
Co-Founder and CEO of SuperAwesome
Dylan Collins is one of Europe’s most experienced digital media entrepreneurs, focusing on games, kids entertainment and the technology which underpins them. He is CEO of SuperAwesome, the #1 kid-safe brand engagement platform. SuperAwesome works with the biggest kids entertainment brands in the world including Disney, Hasbro, Warner Bros and Activision ensuring they connect safely with over a quarter of a billion kids each month. An active investor and advisor across both kids media and technology companies, he is Venture Partner with Hoxton Ventures and sits on the board of the UK’s top-rated marketing technology agency, Potato and Brown Bag Films, Europe’s leading kids animation studio. Previously Collins founded Jolt Online Gaming which became one of the pioneering social games publishers in Europe. Jolt was acquired by GameStop (NYSE: GME), the largest video games retailer in the world in 2009 to spearhead their digital media strategy. As founder and CEO of DemonWare in 2003, he led the company to become the leading online games technology firm in the global console games market. In 2007, DemonWare was acquired by Activision Blizzard (NYSE: ATVI), the world’s biggest video games publisher and is now the multiplayer backbone of the billion-dollar Call of Duty franchise.
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About Box of Awesome, brown bag films, Hoxton Ventures, Potato, SuperAwesome: SuperAwesome offers kid-safe tools and technology for the children’s digital media ecosystem.
Kirill Chliaifchtein
Founder & CEO of SwiftGift
Founder & CEO at SwiftGift
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About SwiftGift: SwiftGift is the world’s first Instant Gift Messenger App which allows you to send real gifts to anyone in your phone’s contact book.
Gerard Keeley
CEO & Co-Founder of Vidsy
Co-Founder & CEO at Vidsy.
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About Vidsy: Vidsy is the creative technology engine powering mobile video ad creation for brands.
Archie Campbell
Co Founder of Vidsy
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About Vidsy: Vidsy is the creative technology engine powering mobile video ad creation for brands.
Alex Morris
Founder of Vidsy
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About Vidsy: Vidsy is the creative technology engine powering mobile video ad creation for brands.
Priyanka Gill
Founder & CEO of POPxo
Priyanka Gill is the Co-Founder and President of MyGlamm. She is also the Founder & CEO of POPxo, India’s largest community of women.
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About MyGlamm, POPxo: POPxo is India’s online community for women that deals everything from fashion, beauty, lifestyle, work, and etc.
Rasha Khawaja
Founder of Toucan
Rasha Khawaja is the founder of Toucan. Rasha’s innate desire for knowledge took her to Brown University where she studied Psychiatry and Cognitive Science. Further education followed at both Oxford University and Cambridge University before Rasha started her career at Condé Nast Publications and went on to work at Christie’s. These experiences heightened her entrepreneurial drive and after spotting a gap in the market for a way to help creatives get their businesses out in front of influential business luminaries, Toucan was born. Rasha’s passion for innovation and nurturing new talent and business continues through her role as a member of the UKBAA, and being an active member of the advisory board of Innovation RCA and the development and strategy board of the ZSL. Outside of the world of Toucan, Rasha is a devoted mother and an adventurous traveller who one day hopes to conquer Kilimanjaro and The Great Wall of China. Rasha is also dedicated to a number of charities and sits on the board of ‘The Playing For Change Foundation’, as well as supporting her family’s charity, ‘The Said Foundation’. Toucan Ventures were proud to win ‘One to Watch – Best Entrant to the Angel Ecosystem’ at the 2016 Angel Investment Awards.
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About Toucan: Toucan Academy, our ever-growing online encyclopaedia where you can come to learn, refine ideas and find valuable business advice.
Paul Croft
Co-Founder & Chief Games Officer of Mediatonic Games
Paul Croft is a Co-Founder & Chief Games Officer at Mediatonic Games.
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About Mediatonic Games, Tonic Games Group: Mediatonic develops and publishes games for digital platforms such as smartphones, PCs and consoles.
Tom Hooper
Founder and CEO of Third Space Learning
Matr is Tom’s second venture in education technology. In 2009 he founded BrightSpark, an online teaching business he sold to TES in 2012. He graduated with an MA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Edinburgh, then worked in investment from 2003-9, when his start-up career began.
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About Third Space Learning: Third Space aims to help every student access great quality online tuition to help them succeed in, and love, their learning
Rodney Aldridge
Founder of The Aldridge Foundation
As the founder of the Capita Group in 1984 until his retirement in 2006, Sir Rodney Aldridge led the company from start-up to becoming a FTSE 100 company, with Capita thus becoming the market leader in the provision of support and professional services to the government and private sector in the UK. Capital Group is now the 50th ranked company on the FTSE 100, with a market capitalisation of over £8 billion. Prior to Capita, Sir Rodney worked in local government for ten years with East Essex County Council, Brighton Borough Council, Crawley District Group and West Sussex Council, becoming a qualified accountant with CIPFA in 1970, joining CIPFA in 1974, and ultimately becoming its Technical Director. Rodney was awarded an OBE in the 1994 New Years Honours List and was given the Freedom of the City of London in 1996. In 2006 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and in 2012 he received a Knighthood. In addition, Sir Rodney is Chair of the Lowry Arts and Entertainment venue in Salford; Chair of Acorn Care and Education, Patron and former Trustee of the Prince’s Trust; and founding member of the Prince’s Charities Council.
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About The Aldridge Foundation, The Prince’s Trust: Aldridge Foundation is an educational charity that helps young people reach their potential through the sponsorship of entrepreneurial
Muayyad Shehadeh
Co-Founder and CEO of Uhive
Over 25 years of experience, CEO of Genie9, BigMIND and UHIVE A long and broad experience in machine learning algorithms and A.I. systems.Created BigMIND cloud which was the first cloud solution to utilise cold and hot storage, and integrate A.I, Muayyad has a degree in Architecture. He is well known as a Windows C++/WIN API Guru with deep conceptual thinking; which is an ability he developed and enhanced through his Architecture degree Spent last 5 years working on UHive Social Network Idea
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About Uhive, Zoolz: Uhive is a social network that lets users socialize, interact, and find people across the world while earning its own digital currency.
Scott Button
Co-Founder & CSO of Unruly
Scott Button is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Unruly. Scott has 15 years’ experience in madtech. Before founding Unruly in 2006, Scott was a Chief Executive Officer of Connextra, a venture-backed UK ad serving firm, which he led to trade sale in 2005. Scott holds an M.A. from Cambridge and a B.Phil. from Oxford, both in Philosophy, and was named an E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012.
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About Unruly: Unruly is an advertising technology company that gets videos watched, tracked, and shared across the Open Web.
Samuel Huber
Founder & CEO of Admix
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About Admix, VR Focus: Admix is the first programmatic monetisation platform for in-game advertising
Joe Bachle-Morris
Co-Founder and COO of Admix
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About Admix: Admix is the first programmatic monetisation platform for in-game advertising
Caspar Lee
Co-Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of Influencer
Lee started his YouTube channel ‘dicasp’ in 2011, and later renamed it to simply ‘Caspar’. As of November 2017, Lee’s main YouTube channel has over 7.5 million subscribers and over 850 million video views, and is the 243rd most subscribed channel on the website; his second channel “morecaspar” has nearly 2 million subscribers and over 116 million video views. Lee was part of the ‘YouTube Boyband’ that raised money in 2014 for Comic Relief and was featured in The Guardian. He was named by Yahoo! News as one of “12 Web-savvy entrepreneurs to watch” in December 2013. In 2014 he starred, along with a number of other YouTubers, in the Style Haul series The Crew, described by teen website Sugarscape.com as “the male version of Loose Women, but a bit less pervy”. He featured in a 2014 episode of the American television series Web Therapy. Lee has over 6.1 million followers on Twitter and over 3.6 million on Instagram, as of April 2018. Lee played a character named Garlic in the comedy movie Spud 3: Learning to Fly, alongside fellow YouTuber Troye Sivan. In the UK version of the 2015 movie The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, he played the voice of a seagull. Lee and Joe Sugg are featured in a 2015 travel documentary, Joe and Caspar Hit the Road, and its sequel Joe and Caspar Hit The Road: USA, produced for BBC Worldwide. Also in 2016, Lee starred in Laid in America alongside YouTube comedian KSI (Olajide Olatunji). Lee appeared in the music video for Charli XCX’s 2017 single, Boys. In August 2017, it was announced that Lee would become Chief Innovation Officer of Influencer Ltd, a British influencer marketing agency. He has a series of videos where he comically interviews celebrities such as One Direction’s Liam Payne, actor Zac Efron, Channing Tatum, and a few others.
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About Banquist, Dash Water, FaceIT, Fy, Influencer, JustWears, Margravine, Proper Living, Streamloots, theUp.co, Wild, YouTube: We build meaningful relationships between brands and creators.
Amrit Johal
Founder of Convo App
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About Convo App: A sport social network where all fans can convo with one another!
Jasneel Nagi
Founder of Convo App
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About Convo App: A sport social network where all fans can convo with one another!
Robyn Exton
Founder and CEO of Her
Robyn is the CEO & Founder of HER the world’s largest brand for LGBTQ womxn & queer people. HER builds products and experiences that connect womxn in the way that works best for them. Their app is home to 4 million people across the world, with dating and community connections, and their events run in 15 cities, hosting 50,000 people per year. With content, events and communities, HER is opening up opportunities for LGBTQ womxn that never existed before.
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About Her: Her is a dating application for lesbians, bisexual and bi-curious women, allowing users to connect with each other and their community.
Alex Rea
Founder of Colony
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About Colony : Colony provides a social collaboration platform that makes it easy for people all over the world to build companies together online.
Nick Robertson
Founder & CEO of ASOS
Nick Robertson is a Founder & CEO At ASOS.
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About ASOS, ASOS Ventures: Asos is an online platform engaged in the retail of fashion and beauty products for men and women.
Jessi Baker
Founder & CEO of Provenance
Jessi Baker is the founder of Provenance, building the future of supply chain transparency and product trust on the blockchain. She is an Art and Science hybrid, with Master’s degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and Design from the Royal College of Art. She has worked with brands on technology strategy across the US and Europe, including Adidas, The Four Seasons, The Guggenheim Museum, British Airways and Will.I.Am. She is an associate researcher at the Intel Institute for Sustainable Cities and a regular speaker on technology and social business.
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About Intel, Provenance: Provenance is the leading software solution for sustainability communications
Harry ‘Tomi Davies
Co-Founder and President of African Business Angel Network
Harry Tomi Davies (TD) is a versatile technology business leader, keynote speaker and advisor with over two decades of outstanding experience building large-scale, national and regionwide IT infrastructure projects across Africa. He has held a variety of executive and non-executive leadership roles with influential global brands like Ernst & Young, Marks & Spencer, Elf, Sapient and the One Laptop Per Child project. Over the last decade TD has looked after a growing portfolio of Africabased tech-enabled early stage businesses and is the Founder of the Lagos Angel Network (LAN). He is also President of the African Business Angel Network (ABAN). He is a seasoned technology strategist and project development expert with significant market intelligence, research and project management skills. Author and regular keynote speaker with a substantial network of connections globally including on most major social media platforms. He is an inspiring thought leader TD is a volunteer to a number of non-profit organizations and Guest lecturer at the Pan Atlantic University’s Enterprise Development Centre. His rich and varied experience has been leveraged by organisations for advisory services, speaking engagements and nonexecutive board roles at companies like MBO Capital Limited (Private Equity), TextNigeria Limited (Telecoms) and Sproxil Nigeria (Anti-Counterfeit Technologies)
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About African Business Angel Network: ABAN is a non-profit association that seeks to promote a culture of Angel investing across Africa.
Till Behnke
Founder and Managing Partner of nebenan.de
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About nebenan.de: nebenan.de is a social network for neighbors.
Cherry Freeman
Founder of LoveCrafts
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About LoveCrafts: LoveCrafts is a start-up that builds social marketplaces for the crafts sector.
Edward Griffith
Founder and CEO of LoveCrafts
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About LoveCrafts: LoveCrafts is a start-up that builds social marketplaces for the crafts sector.
Nigel Whiteoak
Founder of LoveCrafts
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About Broadmargins, LoveCrafts: LoveCrafts is a start-up that builds social marketplaces for the crafts sector.
Max Cheremkhin
Co-Founder of Chappy
In 2006 Max co-founded dating app Badoo. It is now the world’s biggest dating app with 370m users, globally. Max is considered a pioneer in the digital dating sphere having been the first to launch freemium models, instant messaging and profile swiping functionality. Max is well versed in the mobile app dating space and is now applying his genius to the gay dating world. Max is largely responsible for Chappy’s design and product strategy.
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About Chappy: Chappy is an online dating app dedicated for gay men.
Rafe Offer
Founder and Executive Chair of Sofar Sounds
Rafe Offer has held senior marketing positions such as Global Marketing Director of Coca-Cola, Director of Global Marketing at The Walt Disney Company and Director of innovation for Diageo. Rafe is an internationally lauded specialist in teamwork, leadership and brand innovation. Now he’s focusing his energy on SofarSounds.com
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About Sofar Sounds, Sofar Sounds: Sofar Sounds is a global community hosting curated, secret performances in more than 400 cities around the world.
May Al-Karooni
Founder & CEO of Globechain
May Al-Karooni is the founder of Globechain – an award winning British reuse marketplace that connects corporates to charities and smes to redistribute free unwanted items, creating social impact data to its members. May previously worked within the investment banking and asset management industry, fundraising monies for venture capital, property and hedge funds for the last 10 years totaling over £120 million in funds raised. In 2013 May set up Globechain after seeing a demand for a new online circular economy within the waste management industry after her own employer expressed a need to reuse items in a more collaborative way. Globechain has gained huge momentum growing to 10,000 members with eBay as its mentors and securing contracts with some of the world’s largest brands as well as growing a large network of charities nationally and internationally. Globechain works within the retail, commercial and construction industry and last year diverted 5,100,000 kilos from landfill with items being re distributed within the UK as well as abroad as far as Sierra Leone, Guinea, Kenya, Libya and the Ukraine providing savings of over £1,500,000 to charitable causes.
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About Globechain: Globechain is a B2B reuse marketplace connecting businesses to charities, creating social impact data.
Nicolas Gonzalez Keller
Co-Founder of Banger Games
Nicolas Gonzalez Keller is the Co-Founder of Banger Games. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marketing at University of Westminster.
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About Banger Games: Banger is a blockchain-powered gaming platform that provides its users with an array of earning possibilities.
Ashley Friedlein
CEO & Founder of Guild
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About Ably Realtime, Cambridge Judge Business School, Centaur Media Plc, Econsultancy, Founders4Schools, Guild: Guild is the platform for professional communities and networking.
CARMEN HIJOSA
Founder & CEO of Ananas Anam
Carmen Hijosa Originally from Spain, Dr. Hijosa has a track record in the design and manufacturing of leather goods, selling through her own company and supplying key retail outlets such as Harrods and Liberties in London. While working in the Philippines as a consultant to the Product Development and Design Center of the Philippines in the ‘90s, Dr Hijosa became aware of the qualities of pineapple leaf fibres and began to explore possible ways to develop a new textile material that could be used as an alternative to leather and petroleum based textiles. As written in the Huffington Post, it took around 7 years to develop, what is now Pinatex. A strong and sustainable textile, that can be used in everything from bags to furniture. Even shoe companies like Puma and Camper have made prototypes with the textile. What started as an alternative to leather, have become its own product. Carmen believes that there is a place for Pinatex in the world, right between leather and petroleum based textiles.
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About Ananas Anam: Piñatex is a strong, versatile, breathable, soft, light, flexible textile that can be easily printed on, stitched and cut.
AF_initDataCallback({key: \’ds:1\'” alt=”” class=”wp-image-14850″ width=”154″ height=”152″/>Alex Packham
Founder & CEO of ContentCal
Alex Packham is the Founder & CEO at ContentCal.
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About ContentCal: ContentCal allows users to collaborate, share, plan and publish content to drive engagement on social media.
Daneh Westropp
Founder & CEO of Pickle
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About Pickle: Find different friends for different things!
Eshita Kabra
Founder of By Rotation
Founder By Rotation – UK’s fashion rental app • Worked at various large buy and sell side firms as an investment analyst • Singaporean Indian living in London
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About By Rotation: The World’s First Social Fashion Rental App.
Ben Silvertown
Founder of Lapse
Ben Silvertown is the Founder at Lapse.
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About Lapse: Lapse is a social disposable camera app.
Kevin Brown
CEO & Founder of FanCircles
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About Brandaisy, FanCircles: Reach followers and fans through your own fan club platform built for music artists, YouTubers, television shows and celebrities
Anton Isaykin
Co-Founder of Fundraise Up
Anton Isaykin is the Co-Founder at Fundraise Up.
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About Campus On Fire, Fundraise Up: The new standard in online giving.
Kwame Ferreira
Founder & CEO of Impossible
Kwame is founder and CEO of impossible.com which helps develop businesses through a planet centric design approach, aligning business goals with planetary needs. Kwame has, among many other things, created record labels (enchufada.com), emotional wearables (bond-touch.com), bot engines (nikabot.com) and kind insurance companies (kinsu.co.uk).
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About Impossible: A new social network of giving and receiving. impossible. Do good. Feel good.
Lily Cole
Founder of Impossible
Lily Cole is an actress, social entrepreneur and Founder of Impossible.com, a social network that encourages users to exchange skills and services for free in the hope of encouraging a peer-to-peer gift economy.
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About Impossible: A new social network of giving and receiving. impossible. Do good. Feel good.
AJ Joshi
Founder of Ikaroa
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About FIT.live, Gignify, Ikaroa, zessoo: Ikaroa is a full 360 service which means they’ve got you covered on design and content right through to digital.
Andrey Andreev
Founder/ CEO of Badoo
Andrey focuses the majority of his time and energy on product development, strategy and new projects to continually innovate Badoo across web and mobile platforms. In addition to Badoo, he founded several other highly successful internet businesses: SpyLog, Begun and Mamba.ru. His entrepreneurial spirit continues to inspire everyone on the team and today Badoo is the largest Social Network for Meeting New People in the World with over 135 million registered users, generating over $150 million USD’s per year and operating in 180+ countries. Andrey is the serial entrepreneur and founder behind Badoo, the 4th successful company he has built in the last 10 years. His successes include Begun, a company focused on selling contextual advertising by auctioning keywords – often described as an earlier version of Google AdWords. He also created Mamba.ru, which has evolved into Russia’s largest online dating site, with over 10 million monthly active users.
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About Badoo, Bumble, Chappy, Lumen, MagicLab: Badoo is a dating-focused social network, allowing users to chat, make friends and share interests.
Dimo Trifonov
Founder of Feeld
Dimo Trifonov is the Founder of Feeld
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About Feeld: Meet kinky, curious and openminded people.
Matt Isaacs
Founder & Executive Chairman of Essence
As one of the founding partners, Matt helped shape Essence into the company it is today. That agency is now the world’s largest independent buyer of digital media with billings in excess of $650MM USD, is 480 people strong, and has offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore and Tokyo. Current clients include Google, eBay, Financial Times and Barclays. Matt served as Global CEO of the agency until spring of this year. During his last four years in that role, both billings and headcount doubled every year. Today, as Executive Chairman, Matt oversees the Board, supports the execution of corporate strategy and helps to ensure the legacy of Essence exists well beyond the agency and the industry. Before co-founding Essence Matt was Chief Marketing Officer at Create Services & Goldfish Bank, a subsidiary of Lloyds TSB Group that handled all of the bank’s non LloydsTSB branded retail banking business across 15 brands and with £2B in assets. Matt’s ‘first career’ was in strategy consulting at McKinsey spin-off MMG, where he was part of the core team that built MMG Europe from 14 consultants to 400 across 13 offices. Matt lives on a small farm with his wife, 4 children, 5 hens, lots of sheep and bees in the depths of East Sussex, UK.
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About Essence: Essence, part of GroupM, is a global data and measurement-driven agency whose mission is to make advertising more valuable to the world.
Andoni Piña Sigg
COO & Co-Founder of Novus World
Andoni Piña Sigg is the COO & Co-Founder at Novus.
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About Novus World: The impact banking app that turns your everyday spending into a force for good
Jude Ower
Founder & CEO of PlayMob
Jude Ower is changing the world through game play. She has spent 10 years working within games, creating educational, training and awareness games across a range of organisations from corporate, government and education. Jude is now concentrating on social and mobile games, and how engaging mass audience of game players can make a world changing difference.
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About Department for International Trade, PlayMob: Playmob is the gaming engagement platform for brands with purpose.
Matthew Cockerill
Creative Director and Head of Studio of Swift Creatives
Matthew is a well-established designer who has been creating world-leading products and experiences for over 20 years. Working internationally across multiple sectors to help brands increase their business value through innovation and the design of physical and digital products and experiences. His work includes consumer electronics, healthcare, domestic appliances, alcoholic beverages, endurance sports, transportation and environments. He created the world’s first ethical and modular smartphone for Fairphone which won a Cannes Lion award in 2017, imagined future lifestyles and product categories for Samsung Electronics, created luxurious whisky experiences for Diageo, retail activations for Gatorade, award experiences for Google and helped define the passenger experience at Heathrow T5. Matthew regularly brings his innovative thinking to the wider world through speaking at conferences, panel talks, commentating in the press, university lecturing and judging industry events, including the steering group for the 2017/18 Cannes Lion Award. Before joining Swift Creatives, Matthew was a board director at Seymourpowell for 10 years and has worked in-house in Seoul, South Korea for Samsung Electronics.
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About Swift Creatives: Swift Creatives is an international design studio, helping brands create innovative designs and meaningful experiences
Emanuele Musumeci
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Anakando Media Group
Mr. Musumeci, co-founded Advirally in 2012, with Alki David. He is an acknowledged authority on all aspects related to the development of Social Media marketing strategies and has more than 12 years of specialist international experience in this field. Emanuele has devised and delivered a number of award winning digital advertising and social media awareness campaigns for leading global brands including; Vodafone, Lipton, Microsoft, Toshiba, Samsung and Tempo. Prior to co-founding Advirally, he was the Senior Vice President of Marketing at London based Anakando subsidiary, FilmOn TV UK, the global IPTV platform. He was also the founder of Italy based social media marketing company INVIOTRAFFICO, which won a number of prestigious international industry awards for its work. He studied Modern Languages with a specialization in Web based Public Relations & Digital Marketing, at the University of Palermo, Italy. In his role as Vice President, Emanuele is responsible for customer acquisition and the development and implementation of the social media marketing strategy of Advirally, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Anakando Media Group.
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About Anakando Media Group: The Anakando Media Group is a rapidly expanding and innovative digital media company with global interests.
Michael Breidenbruecker
Founder and CEO of Last.fm
Michael is the founder of RjDj, a London – and New York – based startup. RjDj is an app that generates a dynamic soundtrack using the Phone’s external audio input. He is a musician who used to play saxophone, changed to laptop and now plays mobile phone and iPad. In the past, Michael was one of the original founders and CEO of Last.fm.
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About Last.fm, Reality Jockey: Last.fm is an online music catalogue providing users with personalized recommendations based on their taste in music.
Mats Stigzelius
Founder of Takumi
Having started his career at McKinsey & Company, Mats Stigzelius has spent the last dozen years working in Strategy Consulting and Private Equity. His experience includes developing brand strategies, implementing business plans and arranging financing for companies across a number of industries in Europe and North America, including Retail, Consumer Goods, Financial Services, Media and Telecoms sectors. Before joining Rainmaking in January 2010, Mats spent five years in Private Equity with a focus on the Retail sector, completing 15 acquisitions, refinancings and exits in that period, in addition to sitting on the board of a number of companies as a Non-Executive Director. Mats holds a 1st Class Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Manchester University and over the years he has lived in Finland, Holland, USA and the UK. Mats currently lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife and two young sons.
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About Rainmaking, Takumi: Takumi is a platform that gives large brands and advertising agencies access to branded influencer creative at scale.
Gummi Eggertsson
Co-Founder,COO & CFO of Takumi
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About Sidekick Health, Takumi: Takumi is a platform that gives large brands and advertising agencies access to branded influencer creative at scale.
Antoine Amann
Founder & CEO of Echobox
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About Echobox: Echobox is the leading content automation platform
Gus Machado
Co-Founder of Paraslate
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About Paraslate: Internet
Luke Saunders
Co-Founder and CTO of AmaZix
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About AmaZix: AmaZix is the full-service consultancy for blockchain businesses.
David Kershaw
Co-Founder ,CEO & Exec Director of M&C Saatchi
David Kershaw is a founding director of M&C Saatchi. He joined Saatchi & Saatchi in 1982 after obtaining an MBA at London Business School. He became managing director in 1990 and was made chairman and chief executive of the UK agency in 1994.
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About M&C Saatchi: M&C Saatchi Group is a creative company that connects specialist expertise, fuelled by data and technology.
Victor Frumkin
Co-Founder of Bookmate
Cofounder at Instreamatic.ai, the Voice AI platform powering voice-enabled advertising. CoFounder, Board member at Bookmate.com, the mobile story-on-go subscription service providing fun&convenient access to ebook, audiobook, other long-form content.
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About Bookmate: Bookmate is mobile story-on-the-go subscription service providing convenient access to ebooks, audiobooks and other long-form content
Andrea Manfredi
Founder & CEO of Blasting News
After graduating from Bocconi University in 2005, Andrea earned an MBA at INSEAD, studying in Paris and Singapore. He spent several years working as a manager in top strategic consulting firms mainly in the UK and Italy. Working as a journalist since 1998, Andrea is the Founder & CEO and the Editor-in-Chief of Blasting News.
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About Blasting News: Blasting News is the leading social news publisher. Where every voice counts.
George Palmer
Founder of SendOwl
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About SendOwl: SendOwl is a software company that develops tools for selling digital products through social media and blogs.
Sean Riley
Founder & CEO of Ad Dynamo
Sean Riley is founder and CEO at Ad Dynamo. Prior to this, he was managing director at Entelligence Ltd. and had worked one at E-Data Solutions and Credit Suisse.
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About Ad Dynamo: Ad Dynamo is Africa’s largest digital media sales house. Ad Dynamo manages sales in Africa for Twitter, Oath, Snapchat & Spotify.
Yohann Merran
Founder, CEO, Lead Dev of Meet My Friends
Founder, CEO, Lead Dev at Meet My Friends
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About Meet My Friends: MMF is a hybrid app between a social network and a city guide, to spontaneously discover events you’ll love exploring with your friends.
Jonathan Wanono
Co-Founder of Meet My Friends
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About Meet My Friends: MMF is a hybrid app between a social network and a city guide, to spontaneously discover events you’ll love exploring with your friends.
Asaf Peled
Founder and CEO of Minute Media
Asaf is the Chief Executive Officer of Minute Media, parent company of 90min. Asaf founded 90min in 2011as FTBpro. Since then, 90min has grown to be the world’s largest football media platform, driven by a contributor-driven model, and has expanded the brand throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia. Asaf is involved in all aspects of Minute Media’s growth and operations, from product development to marketing and content. Prior to 90min, Asaf was the founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Top 7 International and also spent four years at Cisco Systems Israel where he was responsible for business development in the Israeli market. Asaf has a M.B.A. from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and a bachelors of arts from Tel Aviv University. He resides in London and his favorite team is the San Antonio Spurs.
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About 90min, Minute Media: Minute Media is a media and technology brand focused on two main pillars—platform and content.
Noor Alkhadra
Founder & CEO of WeGeek
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About WeGeek: We are passionate geeks who take great pleasure in bringing gamers together by creating AWESOME gaming events.
Daniel Couchman Kendall
Managing Director & Founder of Mission Based Media
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About Mission Based Media: Mission Based Media creates and produces audio content that depends on the organization’s goals.
Andrew Dent
Founder of Family Traveller
Andrew Dent is the Founder at Family Traveller
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About Family Traveller: Family Traveller is a multi-platform brand operating across familytraveller.com, social media and email.
Nik Kafka
Founder, Chief Executive Officer of Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF)
Nik Kafka is the founder and Chief Executive of Teach A Man To Fish. Leaving a successful banking career in the City of London for a local microfinance institution in Paraguay, Nik discovered an innovative school aiming not only to teach the poor how to become rural entrepreneurs, but to do so as a self-financing social enterprise. Having helped transform this school into a replicable model, and realising the huge potential for funding education through enterprise rather than charity, he returned to the UK to found Teach A Man To Fish. Under his stewardship Teach A Man To Fish has grown into an international network whose membership now numbers over 4,500 education institutions and experts in more than 125 countries. Over 50,000 young people have benefited directly from Teach A Man To Fish programmes across Africa, Asia & Latin America. Honoured as a Young Global Leader in 2009 by the World Economic Forum, he was more recently named in 2011 as one of Devex’s 40 Under 40 International Development Leaders in London. He holds a first-class BSc in Chemistry from the University of Bristol, an MSc in International Development from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London, as well as professional qualifications in finance.
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About Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF): Encouraging and supporting education projects that generate sustainable livelihoods for young people across the developing world.
Ari Last
Founder & CEO of bubble app
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About bubble app: Bubble, an on-demand mobile app, connects parents with babysitters that their friends already know and trust.
Adrian Murdock
Co-Founder of bubble app
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About bubble app: Bubble, an on-demand mobile app, connects parents with babysitters that their friends already know and trust.
Jeremy Jauncey
Founder, Chief Executive Officer of Beautiful Destinations
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About Beautiful Destinations: Beautiful Destinations is a media company that shares authentic, inspirational, and immersive travel stories.
Emma Clark
Founder of The Sauce
Emma Clark is the Co-Founder at The Sauce.
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About The Sauce: The Sauce has a vision for bringing the next generation back together in real life using the power of social video profiles.
Sachin Karia
Co-Founder and CEO of The Sauce
Sachin Karia is the founder and CEO at The Sauce.
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About The Sauce: The Sauce has a vision for bringing the next generation back together in real life using the power of social video profiles.
Bonnie Takhar
Lead Founder and CEO of LetsBab
Bonnie Takhar is the founder and CEO of LetsBab, a digital mall that is disrupting the way you shop and digitalising word of mouth. Takhar, a seasoned fashion executive with over 20 years experience, has held a number of high ranking positions.
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About LetsBab: LetsBab is a digital mall revolutionizing the way you shop and share products with others.
Ben Knight
Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Croud
Ben is the Co-founder of Croud, Google’s fastest growing agency in the UK in 2013 and 2014 Having worked within search for over ten years, Ben realised that there was a gap within the industry to deliver a more innovative and creative service to clients that could rival other agencies. In 2011, Ben, founded Croud as a new concept in digital to deliver excellence to clients expertise to help their clients grow their businesses. Prior to Croud, Ben has worked for a number of prestigious search agencies. Ben spent his first 6 years at The Search Works where he joined a small team learning his trade and later heading up the financial search vertical, Ben was a key member of the team during it’s growth from 12 to over 100 people. Following the sale at TSW, he joined Harvest Digital as Head of Search in a full service digital agency where he was responsible for paid and natural search as well as social media and analytics, in the 2 and half years he spent at Harvest he grew the size of them team 7 fold and revenues 10 fold before leaving this role in early 2011. Outside of work, Ben is an avid but often disappointed Liverpool football fan.
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About Croud, Croud: Croud is a digital marketing agency that provides services including SEO, PPC, content, programmatic, paid social, and analytics
Tim Perkins
Co-Founder & Director of Nudge Global
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About Nudge Global: Brighter financial futures for everyone, everywhere
Jeremy Beament
Co-Founder & Director of Nudge Global
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About Nudge Global: Brighter financial futures for everyone, everywhere
Richard Knight
Co Founder of Grafter
Co founder of a tech start up that represents the future of labouring. Highly experienced media professional with outstanding industry knowledge across a wide spectrum of the media sector. Exceptional experience of the media distribution and consumer electronics sector with a strong track record of launching key strategic broadcasting and IP initiatives. Professional accounting background with board level experience Property Developer
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About Grafter, RKnight Consulting Limited: The free digital service for connecting businesses with people looking for temporary work
Andy Nunn
Co Founder of Buzzbike
Andy’s the biggest cycling nut among the founders. After a decade in corporate strategy, he’s following his passion by helping Buzzbike give more Londoners the chance to cycle around town.
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About Buzzbike, Ops Stories: Buzzbike is launching a tech-driven cycle scheme for London, creating a new sponsorship platform for brands.
Tom Hares
CEO & Co-Founder of Buzzbike
Prior to dreaming up Buzzbike, Tom led advertising for Apple, inspiring him to create something that not only made an impact on the world, but did so with craft and care at every turn.
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About Buzzbike: Buzzbike is launching a tech-driven cycle scheme for London, creating a new sponsorship platform for brands.
Julian Assange
Founder of WikiLeaks
Julian Assange is the founder of [WikiLeaks](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wikileaks). He was a physics and mathematics student, a hacker and computer programmer before setting up WikiLeaks. He is currently a citizen of Australia.
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About WikiLeaks: WikiLeaks is an international non-profit organisation that publishes classified information provided by anonymous sources.
Mike Adam
Founder and Architect of Amigo Technology
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About Amigo Technology: Amigo is a cloud-based marketing technology platform that turns marketing ideas into brilliant digital experiences.
Jon Burkhart
Founder & Chief Creative Officer of TBC London
Jon is the co-author of Newsjacking: The Urgent Genius of Real-time Advertising. He’s also founder of content marketing consultancy TBC Global where he finds truly unique ways for brands to earn and keep their fans’ attention. In 2010, he co-founded Urgent Genius, the world’s first blog dedicated to reactive creativity. A seasoned keynote speaker, Jon’s spoken at South By Southwest (SXSW) 7 years in a row and now serves on the programming committee. A crazy sports fan, he brings is content strategy/ fun/ games to the SEAT (Sports and Entertainment Alliance in Technology) conference as well. Previously, Jon was social content director at Iris Worldwide.
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About TBC London: TBC London is providing news , real time contents , events and planning.
Josh Thomas
Co-Founder, Head of Innovation of Karakoram
I’m Josh Thomas, an engineer, designer and innovation specialist with a career devoted to discovering and exploiting opportunities that arise when emerging technologies or business changes create new consumer and user needs. I build and lead cross-disciplinary teams of designers, engineers, developers, strategists, stand-up comics, and experiential artists who focus on new approaches to creating digital and physical products, platforms and organizational design.
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About BuyLevel, Glorious Labs, Karakoram: Karakoram is an award-winning innovation consultancy that creates breakthrough solutions for the world’s toughest humanitarian challenges.
Femi Dada
Founder of Okiki App
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About Okiki App, Parseal: Okiki is a movie streaming social app that enables movie viewers connect with each other/celebrities via chat and live-streaming.
Adebayo Dada
Founder of Okiki App
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About Okiki App: Okiki is a movie streaming social app that enables movie viewers connect with each other/celebrities via chat and live-streaming.
Khing Oei
Founder & CEO of AlphaSwap
Khing is an investor and entrepreneur. Prior to founding AlphaSwap, Khing founded and ran Eyck Capital, a hedge fund with peak AUM of $200mm. Khing started his career at Goldman Sachs in M&A and subsequently worked as an investor/portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Investing Group and multi-billion dollar hedge funds Fortress and Halcyon. Khing holds a Master of Science in Econometrics and an Associate’s Degree in Business Mathematics & Computer Science from VU University in Amsterdam.
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About AlphaSwap, Privium Fund Management: AlphaSwap is an investment technology platform, bundling its analyst community’s best stock ideas into Data-as-a-Service
Joshua Nino De Guzman
CEO, Co-Founder & Director of Dexerto
Joshua Nino De Guzman is the CEO & Co-Founder at Dexerto
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About Dexerto: Dexerto is the world’s largest digital esports and gaming lifestyle platform news platform.
Chris Marsh
Co-Founder & Director of Dexerto
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About Dexerto: Dexerto is the world’s largest digital esports and gaming lifestyle platform news platform.
Robert Imonikhe
Co-Founder of Ideal Flatmate
Rob has worked in publishing and has had stints at a number of media outlets. A positive bundle of energy, he is the ideas man and provides some philosophical insights to the team, having completed a BA in philosophy.
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About Ideal Flatmate: Ideal Flatmate is the first UK website dedicated to helping its users find the right flatmates.
Thomas Gatzen
Co-Founder of Ideal Flatmate
Tom has spent time working in politics and financial PR and loves getting things done. He enjoys travelling and is a sports nut, playing cricket for Middlesex Youth, and being found most weekends following Watford FC.
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About Ideal Flatmate: Ideal Flatmate is the first UK website dedicated to helping its users find the right flatmates.
Seth Ward
CEO & Founder of Pynk
Online since the ’80s, I grew up eating my cereals off of arcade game machines which led to my first thriving business aged 8 – running a lunchtime arcade sanctuary for my school buddies in my garage (in true Silicon Valley style). Serial tech entrepreneur and incubator since the ’90s. A hands-on, can-do leader, I’ve: – Raised investment (and delivered ROI) – Coded prototypes, alphas and betas – Set up data-driven analytics that enabled rapid growth – Recruited and led globally disperse tech teams – Built a business from $500 to eight figures in 4 years with zero investment – Pioneered digital download and mobile video streaming platforms for AOL, Vodafone, Orange and Universal Music – Co-founded a business which transformed professional soccer scouting before selling to an industry leader And I… – love to immerse myself in the most positively disruptive technology (from those arcade games and pre-WWW internet in the ’90s, web in the 90s, mobile in the 00s and now blockchain and AI in the 10s – learn to teach, and teach to learn; I feel most alive when I’m learning and applying new thinking – realise that as a society we need to actively shape our use of technology to help us reach our human potential rather than allowing it to rule our lives and diminish our connection to each other I first started mining Bitcoin in 2011. I’m currently focused on the blockchain space, dedicated to helping everyday investors and startups. I love blockchain, and I kinda love capitalism – both are broken right now, but could fix each other. Let’s make things better!
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About Pynk: Pynk is where everyday people invest better together.
Mark Little
Co-Founder, COO & CMO of Pynk
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About Pynk: Pynk is where everyday people invest better together.
Ole Fjelberg
Co-Founder & COO of Brandbassador
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About Brandbassador: Ambassadors – engage with brands to earn money, freebies and other rewards. Brands – harness the power of passionate customers and fans.
Justine Roberts
CEO , Founder & Owner of Mumsnet
Justine Roberts is the Founder and CEO of Mumsnet. Over the last 20 years Mumsnet has grown into the UK’s busiest and most influential network for parents, with over 10 million unique users per month. Mumsnet regularly campaigns on issues including support for families of children with special educational needs, improvements in postnatal and miscarriage care, and freedom of speech on the internet. Mumsnet was awarded the Online Comment Site of the Year (Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards) 2011 and 2014. Justine was the Institute of Internal Communication Communicator of the Year in 2014 and EY Entrepreneur of the Year London and South Winner in 2016. Justine was one of EU-Startup’s Top 50 Most Influential Women in Startups and VC in 2019. Before Mumsnet, Justine wrote about football and cricket for the Daily Telegraph and the Times and before that she was an economist and strategist for SG Warburg. She is a mother of four (and two dogs) and was appointed CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the economy.
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About Gransnet, Mumsnet: Mumsnet is the UK’s busiest social network for parents.
Patrick Beraud
Founder & CEO of bemoir
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About bemoir: Bemoir is a social media platform that enables its users to share their stories with photos and videos.
Christopher Molozian
Co-Founder & CEO of Heroic Labs
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About Heroic Labs: Heroic Labs builds social infrastructure for games and apps.
Andrei Mihu
Co-Founder & CTO of Heroic Labs
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About Heroic Labs: Heroic Labs builds social infrastructure for games and apps.
Sarah Miller
Co-Founder of Triptease
Founder at Triptease
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About Sarah Miller & Partners, The Wall Street Journal, Triptease: Triptease is a travel SaaS company that empowers hotels to recapture guest relationships and increase direct bookings.
