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 CEO’ operating in the Social Network space. If you think a CEO’ 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Tomas Utting
Assistant to CEO of Combyne
Tomas Utting is an Analyst of combyne.
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About Combyne: Combyne is a social tool for creating outfits. It’s the fusion of a game, a practical utility and a social network.
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.
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
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.
Gian Paolo Ziletti
Founder & CEO of My Circle Golf
Founder and CEO of My Circle Golf, the business networking service for golf players. I’m a MBA graduate with 7 years previous experience in management consulting (Deloitte, KPMG, Accenture) advising clients developing Transformation Programme with a particular focus on the technology, processes and communication. While working on multinational clients across Europe I have been able to build a broad range of skills in such as managing cross-functional and multinational teams, product development and launch, managing commercial relationships with large organisations and driving business development.
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About My Circle Golf: Networking service for Golf players that helps golfers organise golf games and connect with like minded people
Pip Jamieson
Founder & CEO of The Dots
Pip Jamieson is the Founder & CEO of The Dots (https://the-dots.com), a professional network for people that don’t wear suits to work -‘dubbed “The next LinkedIn?’ by Forbes. Delightfully Dyslexic with a distinctive marmite laugh (you either love it or you hate it) Pip was named by The Sunday Times as one of the Top 100 Disruptive Entrepreneurs innovating in their respective fields & as one of the trailblazing leaders having a positive impact on the world. Being a dyslexic sole female tech founder, Pip has put promoting social responsibility and helping business build diverse teams at the heart of everything they do! 68% + of The Dots community is female, 31% + BAME & 16% + LGBT+. The Dots also do a lot of work around socioeconomic diversity and neurodiversity to fuel a more balanced industry of the future.
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About The Dots: The professional network for people who don’t wear suits to work.
Kerim Derhalli
Founder and CEO of invstr of Invstr
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About Invstr: Invstr is a fintech app empowering investors to invest with commission-free investing and banking.
Will Read
CEO & Founder of Sideways 6
Will Read is Founder & CEO at Sideways 6.
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About Sideways 6: Sideways 6 is a platform helping organisations including british airways and sainsbury’s to harness the innovative ideas of their employees.
Rutger Bruining
Founder & CEO of StoryTerrace
Rutger Bruining is the founder and CEO of Story Terrace. Prior to founding Story Terrace in 2014, Rutger worked as an investment director at Arle Capital Partners for five years. Rutger starterd his career as a senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in 2014. In 2003, Rutger graduated from University of Amsterdam where he completed master’s degree in Business & Economics (Finance). He also graduated with honors at Columbia University – Columbia Business School for his MBA in 2008.
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About StoryTerrace: StoryTerrace helps people to capture their life story using professional writers and software.
Simon Hellier
CEO of GLOBALDRUM
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About GLOBALDRUM: GLOBALDRUM enables secure mobile-to-mobile social interaction for enterprises and their audiences.
Robert Proctor
CEO of Audioboom
Robert Proctor is CEO at AudioBoo.
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About Audioboom, Audioboom Group: Audioboom is a podcasting distribution platform.
Tomas Vohradnik
CEO of NEARBER
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About NEARBER: App which tracks your position via Google Maps API and shows you everything that’s happening nearby.
Olga Egorsheva
CEO & Co-Founder of Lobster
Entrepreneur at Lobster. Building a bridge between every individual online and creative professionals. Inspired by independent creativity. Inspiring by breaking the rules. The world is my home country to learn, work and start companies.
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About Lobster: Lobster is a platform which enables brands, agencies and the media to licence visual content directly from social media users.
Matt Rantell
CEO & Founder of The Square
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About The Square: The Square is an award winning workforce management platform & hiring marketplace for construction businesses.
Guido Meardi
CEO & Co-founder of V-Nova
Former senior Partner at McKinsey, where he was head of the Organization and Operations Practices of the Mediterranean Complex, Guido has a breadth of business experience and access to senior executives in a variety of industries and geographies, with well-established experience in telecoms, technology, healthcare, insurance, aerospace and defence. He led transformational projects in all continents, and was instrumental in setting up some of McKinsey’s own innovation-related business building activities. Guido is also a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, with many previous business ventures and half a dozen exits. Having retained his engineering expertise, he contributed to the foundational development work for PERSEUS of his co-founder Luca Rossato and is joint inventor of a number of essential aspects of the technology as well as of several of its latest developments, with over 200 patents co-authored and filed. Guido holds an MBA from MIT Sloan, where he was a Siebel scholar, and a M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Politecnico di Milano, where he was an Intel scholar, and University of Texas at Austin.
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About : Next-generation video and image compression that works today
Reid Jackson
Founder & CEO of Calfix
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About Calfix, OpenOcean, Teenage Republicans, Verdict: Calfix is a mobile application that allows users to compare their calendars.
Farid Jumah
CEO & Founder of ONE
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About ONE: ONE is a social networking platform that unifies all your social media accounts into ONE profile for you to share and connect.
Reto Bolliger
CEO & Co-founder of Follow Alice
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About Follow Alice: We make adventure travel a truly holistic and personal client experience by blending technology with human interaction.
Eashan Maheshwari
Founder & CEO of Zappel
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About Anime Monk, Draper University, Zappel: Zappel is a mobile app that spontaneously connects the humans via hyperlocal informal events (known as Zappels).
Andrew Kron
CEO of Unet
I have an ability to create complex IT projects, that’s what i do.
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About Unet: Unet helps businesses stay in touch with customers.
Gavin Poolman
CEO of Apollo Media
After 3 years as a software developer working on government and private sector contracts, Gavin moved to the UK to attend the London Film School. He spent 10 years working as a finance and acquisitions executive for companies including Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas’s Glinwood Films/ Films Trustees, and Mayfair Entertainment International. In 1996, together with investment banker Mark Beilby, Gavin founded media finance boutique Apollo Media, where he has been involved in the production and/ or finance of over 14 films with an aggregate production value of over $350M, including The Zookeeper (w Sam Neill), Festival Express (w Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, The Band), and Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea On The Rocks. In 2008, Gavin and Mark co-founded mobile tech company Lumi Insight (www.lumiinsight.com), based on a unique and proprietary state-of-the-art content management system enabling real-time interactivity on any mobile device. Lumi was awarded 5 innovation grants in 2010/ 2011 by the UK’s Technology Strategy Board. Originally created for viewers to interact in real time with live TV, Lumi’s patented software has been deployed in music, market research, digital polling, CRM, and meetings & events for clients including YLE, SVT, Mediaset and NBC, EMI, CI and Abbey Road Live, WPP, Kantar, Ipsos, IBM, Vodafone, and MBI (for Unilever, Pepsi, and London Transport), YouGov, and eBay. Lumi’s shareholders now include advertising giant WPP and Chris Morris, founder of Computershare. In June 2013, Lumi completed the acquisition of IML, a UK-based tech company providing software services to meetings & events. In 2013, together with Ingenious Media, Apollo developed and launched the Ingenious Senior Film Fund, a data-driven fund that finances independent films with budgets over $10M, which Gavin co-manages. Investments include The Dressmaker (w Kate Winslet), Hunter’s Prayer (w Sam Worthington), and director Jim Sheridan’s new film The Secret Scripture (w Rooney Mara). Specialties: Media and technology finance, investment and strategy
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About Apollo Media: Code name for Bevy, Inc. See Bevy Inc.
Iskren Kulev
CEO, Founder of KindLink
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About KindLink: Online platform for businesses to manage and engage with employees through their social responsibility
Neelesh Mohun
CEO of WhatsActive
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About WhatsActive: Book activities & invite friends to attend – A unique platform combining activity bookings with social networking through a smartphone app.
Ameer Abbas Ali
Founder and CEO of SalamYou
Ameer was born and raised in the UK. At a young age, he had the fortune of gaining Islamic knowledge in the city of Madinah, Saudi Arabia where he memorised Qur’an under the late Shaykh UbaidAllah al-Afghani – a teacher in the Prophet’s Mosque. He continued seeking knowledge from senior scholars in the Arabian peninsula, namely Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Returning to the UK he studied Computer Science at the University of Aston. He subsequently returned to Amman, Jordan, where he opened a company (CommnetiX) specializing in providing cutting edge technology in the healthcare sector. He also advised local Arab firms with marketing and gaining foreign investment for their new projects. He founded TurnToIslam in 2006 after meeting many non-Muslims who had little knowledge about Islam
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About SalamYou: SalamYou is an online social network that aims to expand and promote true understanding of Islam among Muslims.
David Rey
CEO of The Cloud
David Rey is CEO at The Cloud Networks.
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About The Cloud: The Cloud is a provider of public access Wi-Fi hotspots.
Paul Rice
Founder & CEO of Taggr
BIMA Hot 100 – 2015. Credited No1 paid app UK app store Oct 2014. Founder / Owner of Rice Media with global retail clients including Superdry and ATS Euromaster. User-focused and creative.
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About Taggr: Taggr is a shopping social network with a retargeting platform that links cross-device and browser activity with retailers.
Marlon Gruss
CEO of Showzee
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About Showzee: Showzee allows people to create & share mini stories around their interests & experiences
James Robins
Founder, CEO of XbyMe
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About XbyMe: Next generation digital marketing platform – Social Capital Exchange
James Robins
Founder, CEO of XbyMe
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About XbyMe: Next generation digital marketing platform – Social Capital Exchange
