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 Aerospace 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.
Louis Tag
Founder / CEO of Passnfly
Louis is a serial-entrepreneur and founder of multiple tech-based start-up companies such as PASSNFLY, Helicopters Worldwide or Fast-Track. A visionary entrepreneur, from Germany, currently residing in London. To those who know him, it’s no surprise that WIRED named him Top100 Entrepreneurs in Europe. Helicopters worldwide (est. 2021) is already today a leading provider for heli-transfers. Users can book on partner sites door-to-door transfers combining heli+limo. WallStreetJournal calls PASSNFLY ”the check-in app for frequent travelers”. Louis says himself, that “My journey in business started with my first tech company at the age of 21, but not every youthful project came to prosper still it gave me what it took, to succeed at innovation.” His most popular initiative is a disruptive travel tech startup – PASSNFLY. “When I see an apparently overdue market gap I ask myself if the solution I envision could be useful on a daily basis and turn out to be a new trend. Airlines ask passengers to check-in themselves – 20+ clicks until the boarding pass. Making check-in a 1-click experience is what I believe to be useful for every of the 8 billion annual air passengers.” PASSNFLY provides what every passenger needs to fly – the boarding pass. Today PASSNFLY automated check-in service is available for most airlines worldwide. Customers are some of the world’s well-known travel brands. Investors and advisers are some of the leading heads from the travel and aviation industry. PASSNFLY provides seamless travel solutions for Passengers, Travel Distributors, Airlines and Airports around the globe. For more info visit http://www.passnfly.com Louis Tag, 37, is originally from Germany, where he studied law. With just 21 years age and while still studying, he built his first company. With his first startup and only 30k investment, he accomplished a 100x return on sales in less than a year. Since then he continues on the entrepreneurial path. When Louis is not working he enjoys running, reading, and golf. He is married to Elizabeth and has a daughter Violetta and a son Peter. The family lives between Munich, Barcelona and London – with Barcelona being their absolute favorite. Specialities: business plan, cash flow, executive management, finance, investments, leadership, travel, positioning, pricing, purchasing, data processing and encryption technologies, telematic infrastructures, accreditation technologies, aeronautical engineering, architecture of informatics and communication systems, research, risk analysis, sales, strategic planning, vision.
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About Helicopters Worldwide, Passnfly: Passnfly is a mobile application that provides users with automated multi-airline flight check-in solutions.
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Matthew C Martino
Founder & Managing Director of Lets Fly Academy
Matthew Martino (Full Name) – Matthew Mathetes Chihwai Martino born 27 October 1992 is a British Entrepreneur, Film Producer and Author. Educated at Shenfield High School in Brentwood , Martino has always held a passion for writing – He has always focused on educational writing and research. His first book Lets Fly which was published by DM Aviation was well received by pilots and aviation enthusiasts around the world. During his early years Martino showed all the qualities required to maintain proven success.
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About Lets Fly Academy: An online resource academy which was built to provide information and resources to aspiring pilots and aviations enthusiast.
Ming Kong
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of TG0
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About TG0: TG0 is an R&D start-up creating novel 3D controls.
Charles Black
Founder & CEO of Sen
Charles Black is an entrepreneur and the founder of Sen. It has been Charles’ dream since the age of 18 to build a space television network that films in space. Charles’s interest in space began as a child. In 1990 aged 18 Charles discovered his original instinct and vision to create a business that would be capable of existing and expanding forever in space and time, and that meant a business that gathered news and information about space, essentially filming the Universe for ever more. The vision for Sen had been born. With a belief that law would be a useful education for a life in business, Charles studied law at London University and graduated with a law degree in 1995. During his time at university the internet emerged in to the commercial world and Charles saw this as a means to start a business with just a computer and internet connection. He studied the internet and saw the potential for using it as a television medium and wrote a research paper entitled A Human Right to Broadcast ‘Television Speech’? This paper was published in 1996 by Tolley’s Communications Law. The paper argued that the internet meant anyone could technically broadcast by distributing video and therefore the law should be used to protect content rather than requiring a government license to broadcast. Charles’s vision of starting a space television channel using the Internet without the need for a government license was the motivation behind the paper. Charles’s interest in law continues and he is currently researching space law because of its relevance to the future regulation of space exploration. Having completed his legal training, qualifying as a barrister in 1997, Charles set up Space Internet Ltd. The original idea was to market businesses with videos on the internet which would provide the experience for making programmes about space. The business became focussed on web sites and web hosting as customers in the late 1990s were happy just to have a web site without the cost of video. Space Internet Ltd therefore developed in to a pure hosting company and re-branded as Nasstar. In 2004 Nasstar launched hosted desktop and hosted email services, becoming one of the pioneers of hosted desktop cloud computing. Nasstar was admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 under the symbol NASA. During his time as CEO of Nasstar Charles raised over £15m from investors, growing Nasstar both organically and through acquisitions. Nasstar plc now has a market cap of £30m and is a profitable and growing business. Charles stepped down as CEO in January 2014 to focus on developing his space business, Sen. Sen is Charles’s lifelong ambition has been to create a global space television network that promotes interest and education in space exploration, launching a network of video cameras into space and filming the Universe. In pursuit of his dream Charles is committed to pursuing a research degree in space law.
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About Sen: Streaming real-time videos from space for the benefit of humanity.
Lori Hanlon
Executive Assistant to Chairman & Founder of VistaJet
Lori Hanlon is the Executive Assistant, Chairman, and Founder at VistaJet.
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About VistaJet: VistaJet, the world’s fastest growing private aviation company, offering private jet services through its Program and On-Demand solutions.
Hira Virdee
Founder and CEO of Lumi Space
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About Lumi Space: Lumi provide precise positioning for satellites and space debris, using laser ranging.
John Bavister
Co-Founder & CFO of Odyssey Airlines
John Bavister is the CFO at Odyssey Airlines.
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About Odyssey Airlines: Odyssey Airlines will begin offering premium non-stop business class services
Jonathan Nicol
Founder & Managing Director of Stratajet
Jonny Nicol Ranked as one of Aviation Week’s Top 10 Leaders of European Business Aviation (at EBACE 2016), Jonny Nicol has undoubtedly risen to be one of the most prominent and influential figures in the private aviation industry. A military man through and through, Jonny is adamant that preparation is the key to success. This is why his vision to revolutionise the private jet industry took five years to develop. Having trained as a fighter pilot and served as an officer and pilot for a decade with the British Army, Jonny Nicol left the British Armed Forces to pursue a career as a an entrepreneur. A self-taught computer scientist, Jonny developed a passion for using technology to disrupt typically traditional industries, his first two businesses doing precisely that in the recruitment and military sectors. After selling the second business to Hewlett Packard’s EDS Defence, Nicol spent time as a freelance commercial pilot, during which time he was struck by the archaic and inefficient nature of private aviation. Noting that old-fashioned systems, such as the means of booking a private jet over the phone via a broker, were holding back the industry from advancing in line with other travel innovations, Jonny set about building a system that could bring private jets into the modern age. Reinventing the industry was no mean feat, involving five years of highly advanced computer programming and overcoming major hurdles, but Stratajet, dubbed ‘the world’s most sophisticated price comparison site,’ is the result. The first of its kind, Stratajet is the world’s fastest private jet booking service. With a technology sophisticated enough to filter through all the necessary variables that go into calculating the cost of flights, it’s the only platform that gives customers direct access to the private jet market. It returns accurate costs of a large range of aircraft in seconds, all of which can be booked instantly. Streamlining an old-fashioned and time-consuming booking process, Stratajet is solving the major problems hampering private aviation; inefficiency and wastage. By cutting costs for aircraft operators and in turn driving down prices for the passenger, Stratajet is making private jet travel more widely accessible to the mainstream traveller.
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About Stratajet: Stratajet is a real-time private jet booking platform using the power of technology to give its passengers total control and freedom.
Rafael Jorda Siquier
Founder and CEO of Open Cosmos
As CEO and co-founder, Rafael leads the Open Cosmos team. From leading the team to deliver the first satellite mission within eight months, to managing the expanding team and range of customers today, Rafael has overseen the overall company strategy and directed its execution, all while working towards the original mission of democratizing access to space. After studying aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona and completing an MBA, Rafael has worked at large corporations, such as Airbus Defence and Space, as well as small, innovative space start-ups. His desire to make space more accessible led him to develop Open Cosmos while at the prestigious Entrepreneur First incubator program in July 2015. For his work leading Open Cosmos, Rafael has been recognized most recently as Entrepreneur of the Year 2018 by EuroConsult.
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About Open Cosmos: Open Cosmos provides simple and affordable space missions.
Arpana Gandhi
Co-Founder & CEO of Disarmco
Arpana Gandhi is Co-Founder & CEO at Disarmco.
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About Disarmco: Disarmco was formed in 2012 as a services business targeting munitions disposal.
Jamie Welton
Founder of SpaceLS
Founder of SpaceLS.
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About SpaceLS: SpaceLS is a small satellite launch service that specializes in dedicated small satellites (<500kg).
