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 Video Games 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.
Dan Houser
Co-Founder and Vice President of Rockstar Games
Co-Founder and Vice President at Rockstar Games.
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About Rockstar Games: Rockstar Games is a multinational video game development and publishing company.
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.
Wil Stephens
Founder, CEO of Fusebox Games
Wil is a Welsh entrepreneur with extensive experience of building transformational businesses in media and interactive entertainment. Wil is currently CEO of Fusebox Games, an interactive entertainment company he co-founded in 2016 that develops and publishes mobile games based on hit TV shows. Wil founded his first business aged 23 and as CEO of Cube TV, led the company to win BAFTAs and Broadcast Digital Awards for their ground-breaking interactive and TV formats. After growing Cube TV to offices in Cardiff and London, he joined the leadership team at New York based video streaming company Boxee to build out their international business, later acquired by Samsung. Wil is an investor in the media and interactive entertainment industry through his holding company, Closs Holdings.
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About Cube Interactive, Fusebox Games: Live the stories you love with Fusebox Games.
Sam Mathews
Founder & CEO of Fnatic
Sam Mathews is an entrepreneur most known for his exploits in the gaming community. Best known for founding Fnatic, the worlds number 1 professional gaming team, managing over 25 professional video gamers with big name sponsors such as title sponsor MSI. He founded UGAME in 2008, a focused social network providing a complete gamer profile, as well as linking niche gaming content sites together through one user base and offering a platform to share user content around gaming.
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About Fnatic: Leading esports performance.
James Draper
Founder and CEO of Bidstack
From Bidstack.com: James founded Bidstack in 2015 utilising more than 15 years of commercial experience to launch his own business. Since the initial launch he has seen the company grow from a one man operation to an international business which trades on the London Stock Exchange. Under his stewardship, Bidstack became the first ever Crowdcube funded company to go public and he pivoted the business into gaming in 2017. James leads the business as a whole and is responsible for the company’s direction, growth, development, and vision.
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About Bidstack: Bidstack empowers brands to place advertising into spaces that sit naturally within video games.
Thomas Fairey
Founder & CEO of Stakester
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About Stakester: Stakester is a mobile first skill-based competition platform that enables competitors to compete with each other for prizes.
Ross Nicol
Co-Founder & Chief of Staff of Stakester
Ross Nicol is the Co-Founder and Chief of Staff at Stakester.
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About Stakester: Stakester is a mobile first skill-based competition platform that enables competitors to compete with each other for prizes.
Imre Jele
Co-Founder, Creator-In-Chief of Bossa Studios
Lifetime gamer and game-maker. Throughout his colorful career, Imre has covered a wide range of genres and platforms and is most known for his work on RuneScape and at Blitz Games Studios.He is co-founder of Bossa Studios, winner of Best New Studio Develop Award, creator of Surgeon Simulator 2013, BAFTA winner MonsterMind and BAFTA nominee for Merlin.
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About Bossa Studios, British Academy of Film and Television Arts: Bossa Studios is a games developer and publisher, creators of BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and Worlds Adrift.
Roberta Lucca
Co-Founder, Chief Marketing Officer / Brand Chief, Board Director of Bossa Studios
Unconventional Entrepreneur. BAFTA winner.Obsessive Learner. Founder and Chief Brand Officer at Bossa Studios.Previously founded WonderLuk and BOLDR. Created and launched over 20 products and brands in the last 15 years across multiple industries — Tech, Games, TV Broadcasting, Luxury and Mobile. I love challenging myself and others to be bolder every day and do things differently. BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, Evening Standard, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Management Today, Financial Times, Disney Channel, Venture Beat, Telegraph and Wired are some of the publications my companies, products and I have been featured. Top 35 women under 35 by Management Today. Top 30 Women in Games. Everywoman’s Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.
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About BOLDR Effect, Bossa Studios: Bossa Studios is a games developer and publisher, creators of BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and Worlds Adrift.
Henrique Olifiers
Co-Founder, Gamer-In-Chief (CEO) of Bossa Studios
Henrique Olifiers Co-founded and leads Bossa Studios, a multiple award-winning games company in London, makers of the BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, amongst several other titles across all digital platforms. Bossa is also a leading Virtual Reality studio in Europe, hosting VR Meetups for the past three years. As a hobbyist, Henrique is a Maker passionate about 3D printing materials, robotics and human-machine interfaces.
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About Bossa Studios: Bossa Studios is a games developer and publisher, creators of BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and Worlds Adrift.
Justin Wong
Founder & CTO of Battlefy
Justin has been fiddling around with computers since the age of 7 – dialling up to the Internet to adventure in his favourite MUD or to hack away on his websites with PHP 2.0. Justin graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Cognitive Systems degree. Because he’s a big gamer and sports fan, he worked at Electronic Arts helping to create the sports video games that he loves to play himself. Now, combining his passion for gaming and web development, he’s looking forward to revolutionizing the eSports competitive gaming genre as the founder and CTO of Battlefy.
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About Battlefy: Battlefy is the simplest way to find and manage esports competitions.
David Spindler
Co-Founder of Electric Gamebox
David Spindler is a Co-Founder and CFO at Electric Gamebox. Previously, David founded Tough Mudder Bootcamp- the studio fitness concept of Tough Mudder Inc. David joined Tough Mudder in 2012, leading Strategy and Marketing teams. He built growth projects and new business initiatives from after-parties to Global Mudder marketing events. Prior to Tough Mudder, David was a Consultant at Bain and Company in London, Zurich and Johannesburg. David graduated from the London School of Economics with a degree in Philosophy and Economics.
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About Electric Gamebox: Electric Gamebox delivers immersive team adventures in the world’s smartest room
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.
Paul Sulyok
Founder & CEO of Green Man Gaming
Paul is the Founder and CEO of Green Man Gaming, an award-winning global eCommerce technology company in the video games industry. His disruptive innovation and entrepreneurship has driven the company’s fast growth success from a team of three working with just 26 publishers in 2010 to a multi-million pound company today with over 100 staff and over 700 publisher partners. From its headquarters in Kings Cross, London, the company offers gamers in 195 countries a wide catalogue of digital games on its store, a social platform for the community and a games publishing business. Through Paul’s leadership, Green Man Gaming has also been able to leverage its technology and build strong partnerships with leading hardware manufacturers such as Intel®, Lenovo and HP. As an already distinguished business leader, Paul is passionate about raising the profile of British businesses and technology internationally. He believes in the truly immersive and engaging power of video games as an unrivalled form of entertainment and strives to promote the benefits of the industry at every opportunity. Before Green Man Gaming, Paul founded Prizefight, a video games and betting hybrid, and built customised algorithmic trading engines for the cash equity markets. He was also a management consultant, a banker and an Officer in HM Forces.
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About Green Man Gaming: Green Man Gaming is a global pure play e-commerce and technology business in the video games industry.
Simon Hade
Founder & COO of Space Ape
Simon is Co-founder & COO of mobile game developer Space Ape Games in London ($11m VC funding over 3 rounds, $55.8m investment by Supercell in 2017). Angel investments include game developers Gumbug Games, and music content creator platform Voisey. Past jobs include early product roles at Skype and Playfish (acquired by EA).
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About Space Ape: Space Ape is a mobile gaming company dedicated to creating the highest quality games for players.
John Earner
Co-Founder & CEO of Space Ape
John Earner brings extensive expertise in online gaming to his role as vice president of product management at Playfish, where he oversees the daily service operation of the company’s growing portfolio of live popular social games. Prior to Playfish, John was with Sony Computer Entertainment America where he designed the micro-transaction business model for PlayStation Home, Sony’s free-to-play virtual community, which he also helped launch. John also was a project leader at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading strategy consulting firm, where his role focused on online gaming. Before BCG, John was an officer in the United States Navy. John earned a MBA from University of California at Berkeley and holds a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University.
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About Playfish, Space Ape: Space Ape is a mobile gaming company dedicated to creating the highest quality games for players.
David Bailey
Co-Founder of Tonic Games Group
David Bailey is a Co-Founder & CEO at Mediatonic Games.
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About Mediatonic Games, Tonic Games Group: Tonic Games Group is a developer of video games that offer immersive entertainment alternatives.
Mitchell Smallman
Co-Founder & CEO of Pocket Burger Games
Mitchell Smallman is the Co-Founder and CEO at Pocket Burger Games.
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About Pocket Burger Games: Pocket Burger is dedicated to discovering, creating and building new genres in the mobile games space.
Adam Sullivan
Co-Founder of Pocket Burger Games
Adam Sullivan is a Co-Founder at Pocket Burger Games.
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About Pocket Burger Games: Pocket Burger is dedicated to discovering, creating and building new genres in the mobile games space.
Matt Down
Technical Director & Co-Founder of Pocket Burger Games
Matt Down is a Technical Director and Co-Founder at Pocket Burger Games.
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About Pocket Burger Games: Pocket Burger is dedicated to discovering, creating and building new genres in the mobile games space.
Barbara Lippe
Founder, Creative Director of entreZ VR
Barbara Lippe PhD is a unique combination of video-game-art-director-turned actor. Having designed characters for games companies in Tokyo including Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Namco Bandai and creating art for social games years before the rise of the genre and researching what works for a female target audience she has reached a turning point: it’s not enough to DRAW characters, one must BECOME characters. To that end, she has recently graduated from a renowned London acting school. With that new toolkit onboard she’s moving on from designing virtual worlds to creating drama-enriched content for the virtual reality. Bridging the two worlds, she marries the lessons learned on stage & screen with her knowledge of video games and innovates the principles of character development, status and staging for VR.
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About entreZ VR, Snafflz, Spree Interactive: entreZ VR is an experienced team of industry players passionate about storytelling on real and virtual stages.
Sophia Hayes
Founder & CEO of Gamer Guides
Sophia Hayes is Founder & CEO at Gamer Guides.
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About Gamer Guides: Gamer Guides is a comprehensive game database and publisher of interactive digital strategy guides for video games.
Harvey Elliott
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of PlayStack
Harvey is an industry leader whose 20 year career spans EA, Acclaim Entertainment and Marmalade, where he led two successful capital raises. He recently finished his 4 year tenure as Chair of the BAFTA games committee. Now CEO and Founder at PlayStack, a new and exciting games publisher. Leveraging the team’s experience in games, entertainment and finance to redefine the way in which games are funded, developed, enjoyed and shared. The objective is to actively work with the team to select the games that can be published; tailoring the funding model to support each game and identifying the creative and technical innovations that will drive game adoption, build community and deliver success.
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About PlayStack: PlayStack is a company that helps developers in end-to-end funding, publishing expertise, and technology to develop the next big game.
Caroline Marchal
Founder and Creative Director of Interior Night
Caroline is a narrative game designer with over 15 years of experience in the industry. She was lead Game Designer on Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls and has founded a narrative game studio called Interior Night, working on an unannounced new IP.
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About Interior Night: Interior Night is an independent game studio of Quantic Dream and Sony veterans based in London.
Sefton Hill
Game Director, Co-Owner & Co-Founder of Rocksteady Studios
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About Rocksteady Studios: Rocksteady Studios is a multi-award winning videogame developer based in London, England. Located in a spacious, purpose built converted.
Douglas Lloyd
CEO & Co-Founder of Macademia
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About Macademia: Macademia is an award-winning global EdTech company providing educational programming and games for children.
Estelle Lloyd
COO & Co-Founder of Macademia
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About Macademia: Macademia is an award-winning global EdTech company providing educational programming and games for children.
Shivani Lamba
Founder of Brightlobe
Shivani leads a team of young scientists who specialize in creating innovative learning experiences in STEM — including forensic and crime science — for hundreds of schools, charities, and Museums. She has consulted on these subjects for the press including The Guardian, and recently NPR’s Serial.
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About Brightlobe: Brightlobe builds games to improve preschoolers’ long-term educational outcomes.
Albert Marshall
Co-Founder & Commercial Director of QuizTix Limited
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About QuizTix Limited: QuizTix is a knowledge entertainment company. In May 2014 it launched QuizTix, a fun and original series of social quiz games.
Ian Masters
Co-Founder & Creative Director of QuizTix Limited
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About QuizTix Limited: QuizTix is a knowledge entertainment company. In May 2014 it launched QuizTix, a fun and original series of social quiz games.
Chris Lawrence
Co-Founder & COO of CGHero
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About CGHero: Outsource 3D Modelling, Concept Art, Textures, VFX & More
Cesar Ortega
Co-Founder & CFO of SKARA The Blade Remins
Cesar Ortega is Co-Founder & CFO at SKARA The Blade Remins.
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About SKARA The Blade Remins: SKARA is the next generation of eSports with versus fighting mechanics and RPG elements.
Alex Deacon
Founder of Boxing Manager
Developer and publisher of World Title Boxing Manager. Formerly, various Director level roles at Betfair 2005-16 Launch editor of Racing Post online betting Part of Sports Interactive/Championship Manager team 1996-99
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About Boxing Manager: Publisher and developers of the highly acclaimed and top-ranked Boxing Manager game series.
Jonathan Burroughs
Director & Co-Founder of Variable State
Game developer and co-director of Variable State, an independent video game studio based in London and Dublin.
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About Variable State: Variable State is an independent video game studio based in London and Dublin
Daniel Rocha
Co-Founder and Studio Head of Jaw Drop Games
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About Jaw Drop Games: Jaw Drop Games is a game development studio working on GUN JAM, a rhythm FPS.
A D
Founder of LVLFi
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About LVLFi: LVLFI is a game development company that is developing an RPG game ‘Fist of Arkan’.
A D
Founder of LVLFi
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About LVLFi: LVLFI is a game development company that is developing an RPG game ‘Fist of Arkan’.
Katherine Bidwell
Co-Founder of State of Play Games
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About State of Play Games: State of Play make creative and innovative games and animations which have won a number of international awards.
