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 Infrastructure 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.
Joanna Hubbard
Co-Founder and CEO of Electron
Jo-Jo Hubbard is the co-founder and COO of Electron, one of the original energy tech firms to harness blockchain technology for transactive grid systems. She is a thought leader on the topic of digital energy and a frequent keynote speaker at energy and technology events. Her previous experience includes renewable energy investment banking, cleantech VC, and strategy consulting at McKinsey & Co. Jo-Jo sits on advisory boards for several UK utilities on digital transformation and community trading models and writes for international publications on these topics.
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About Electron: Electron is accelerating the energy industry’s transition to Net Zero by making granular, market-based interactions possible.
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Frans van den Heuvel
CEO of Solarcentury
Frans van den Heuvel is the CEO at Solarcentury.
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About Solarcentury: Solarcentury develops, constructs, owns and operates utility-scale solar and smart technology across Europe, Latin America and Africa.
Joe Root
Co-Founder & CEO of Permutive
Joe is co-founder and CEO of Permutive, the only publisher-first Data Management Platform (DMP) that allows publishers to see 100% of their audience and target them in real-time. Y Combinator and EQT backed, Permutive counts Conde Nast, Immediate Media, Hubert Burda, IDG, Dennis and ESI Media among its growing list of clients. Following a BEng Computing at Imperial College and MSc Computer Sciences at Oxford, Joe chose to drop out of a PhD in Mathematical Genomics at Cambridge to start Permutive.
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About Permutive: Permutive is an audience platform for advertisers and publishers to plan, build, and activate cohorts while keeping everyone’s data safe.
Matthew O’Riordan
CEO & Co-founder of Ably Realtime
A serial entrepreneur and seasoned developer with over 15 years of hands-on development experience. Matthew co-founded Econsultancy (http://econsultancy.com), a global digital marketing publishing, training and research business, with Ashley Friedlein and exited via a £25m trade sale to Centaur Media plc in 2012. Matthew was Co-founder and Technical Director of Aqueduct (http://aqueduct.co.uk), a leading digital agency in London and Founder of easyBacklog (http://easybacklog.com), a SaaS agile backlog management tool. Matthew was also founder of Lemon Studios http://lemonstudioslondon.com/ in 2016, a serviced office for digital marketing and technology companies in London.
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About Ably Realtime, easyBacklog, Open API Initiative: Ably is the platform to power synchronized digital experiences in realtime.
Greg Mesch
Founder & CEO of CityFibre
With over 25 years of telecom, internet and technology-based experience behind him and five companies successfully built from start-up phase, Greg is an expert when it comes to business plan development, management team building and the capital formation of high growth, fibre optic based telecom companies. Greg had extensive involvement in the founding of Esat Telecom, assisting them in raising all their early stage capital, their core product positioning and network implementation. Esat was later sold to BT for over €1 billion. He went on to make the founding investment in Versatel Telecom NV. Versatel operated in Holland, Belgium and Germany building one of the largest fibre based infrastructures in those markets. He was instrumental in the development of its business plan, recruiting the core management teams and raising over €1.5 billion in capital. Versatel was sold for over €2 billion to Tele2.
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About CityFibre: CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings plc is the UK’s largest independent provider of fibre infrastructure in secondary cities
Paul Taylor
Founder and CEO of Thought Machine
Paul is a serial entrepreneur specialising in speech, language and artificial intelligence. In 2006, he co-founded Phonetic Arts, which developed speech software for the games industry. Phonetic Arts was acquired by Google in 2010, and Paul worked at Google as head of the text-to-speech group and as a research scientist until leaving in 2013. 2004-2006 Paul was a visiting lecturer at Cambridge University, working and teaching in the Engineering department. During this time, he wrote Text-to-Speech synthesis, widely regarded as the definitive book in the field. In 2000, Paul co-founded Rhetorical Systems which was the world leader in text-to-speech. Rhetorical was acquired by Nuance in 2004. From 1989-2000, Paul was at Edinburgh University, where he gained his PhD, worked as a post-doc, tenured lecturer and eventually director of the Centre for Speech Technology Research. He is author of more than 80 academic papers.
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About Thought Machine: Thought Machine is a Fintech company that builds cloud-native technology to revolutionize core banking.
David Mills
Chief Executive Officer, Ricoh Europe of Ricoh Company
David Mills is Chief Executive Officer, Ricoh Europe. David is responsible for the strategic direction of the company as well as the operations of Ricoh’s 20 operating companies across EMEA, marketing operations and the supply chain. He joined the Ricoh Group in 2008, having already held several senior roles in our industry including President of European operations at IKON. He then became the Managing Director of Ricoh UK, before joining the Ricoh Europe Board as Executive Vice President, and then COO. He became CEO of Ricoh Europe in April 2014.
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About Ricoh Company: Ricoh is a global technology company provide office imaging equipment, document management systems and IT services.
Ditlev Bredahl
Co-Founder & CEO of OnApp
Ditlev has over a decade’s experience in the web hosting industry and has led the development of many acclaimed web hosting brands. As CEO of OnApp, Ditlev’s commercial and technical leadership saw the company expand from its July 2010 launch to 500+ clients and 80+ people in just 12 months. Ditlev moved into the rapidly-growing Internet sector in the mid-1990s, after a number of roles working for the European Parliament. He quickly developed a reputation as an entrepreneur and a specialist in start-up and turnaround scenarios. He has led UK2Group’s hosting companies as MD and CEO since February 2006, and played a key role in the group’s transformation. Ditlev is a Danish national and an incurable technophile. He lives in the UK but travels frequently to see clients and speak at events across the globe.
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About Kickass Capital, OnApp, PlatoScience: OnApp is a company that develops cloud management, CDN and storage software for service providers and enterprises.
Igor Chugunov
CEO & Founder of Credits
12 years in business, including IT fintech projects, bank and credit e-services, affiliate marketing company for banks and PDL companies. Four years of experience in the blockchain business. Working with CREDITS platform since 2016.
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About Credits, Credits: Credits App makes your money, crypto and investing experience easier
Tariq Rauf
Founder & CEO of Qatalog
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About Qatalog: The work hub for modern teams and knowledge workers.
Jens Munch
Co-Founder & CEO of Pace Revenue
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About Pace Revenue: Pace is revolutionising revenue management with a suite of tools to deliver science, real-time and automation.
Antonios Chalkiopoulos
Founder & CEO of Lenses.io
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About Lenses.io: DataOps – A real-time applications and data operation portal
Peter Sweetbaum
CEO & Founder of Content+Cloud
Peter Sweetbaum is the CEO & Founder of Content+Cloud & he attended London Business School in 1995.
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About Content+Cloud: Content+Cloud provides secure technology solutions, services, and support with a focus on Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365.
Rod Flavell
Chief Executive Officer of FDM Group
Rod is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of FDM Group. He has been instrumental in developing the Group into an international, award-winning employer with a prestigious client base operating in multiple industries. Rod is a firm supporter of improving diversity in technology, with clear results achieved by the Group through its FDM Women in Tech, Getting Back to Business, Ex-Forces and veteran career transition initiatives. Rod was featured in the Management Today Agents of Change Power List 2018 for his work promoting gender parity in the workplace. Rod has no external appointments.
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About FDM Group: FDM Group is a professional services provider with a focus on IT and business recruitment for graduates and veterans.
Tom O’Hagan
CEO of Virtual1
Tom O’Hagan is the Founder of Virtual1 Ltd. and serves as its Managing Director and Director. Tom O’Hagan is a leading figure within the telecommunications industry and has worked in the sector, both in the UK and internationally, for more than 14 years. In 2012, Tom O’Hagan was named a ‘Young Gun’ by Growing Business in its annual list of the top 30 young entrepreneurs in the UK and in June 2013, Tom O’Hagan was awarded ‘Channel Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the Comms Business Awards.
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About Virtual1: UK-based cloud and connectivity service provider
Nick Smith
Co-Founder & CEO of Cloud Maker
Co-Founder and CEO of Cloud Maker. Striving to make technology work for the many, not just the few.
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About Cloud Maker: Cloud Maker is a Visual DevOps platform that enables organisations to easily design and build scalable cloud solutions.
William B.
Co-founder & CEO of Doordeck
Co-Founder & CEO at Doordeck
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About Doordeck: Doordeck replaces traditional proximity cards with your smartphone.
Kash Pandya
Group CEO of Helios Towers Africa
Kash has been Chief Executive Officer of Helios Towers since July 2015. Previously, he spent eight years with Aggreko plc, where he sat on the Board, running the European Business for three years. He was also Managing Director of Aggreko International for five years, with responsibility for Africa, South America, Central America, India, Asia, Australasia and the Middle East. In this role, Kash oversaw a doubling in size of Aggreko’s international business, heading up launches in over 10 African countries. Kash began his career at the age of 16 through an engineering apprenticeship. He then went on to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Technology Engineering and a Master’s in Manufacturing. In 1989, he began his progression through leading engineering and manufacturing companies, starting at Jaguar before moving to roles within General Electric and Caradon. In 1999, Kash joined APW to lead all operations outside the United States, taking the business through a process of re-engineering and consolidation across 23 factories. In 2004, he became the CEO of Johnston Group, a publicly quoted company, leaving the business on its sale to Ennstone plc.
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About Helios Towers Africa: Helios Towers Africa has operations in Ghana, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and a sister company in Nigeria.
Tom Greenwood
Group COO / CEO-Designate of Helios Towers Africa
Tom Greenwood is the CFO & Group Chief Operating Officer at Helios Towers Africa.
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About Helios Towers Africa: Helios Towers Africa has operations in Ghana, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and a sister company in Nigeria.
Simon Beresford-Wylie
Chief Executive Officer of Imagination Technologies
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About Imagination Technologies: Imagination Technologies develops and licenses semiconductor system-on-chip intellectual property (SoC IP).
Daniel Berg
CEO & Co-Founder of NextUp
Daniel Berg joined NextUp Comedy as CEO & Co-Founder in 2016.
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About ComComedy, NextUp: The home of stand-up, showcasing all the wonders of live comedy worldwide.
Gillian Leng
CEO of NICE
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About King’s College London, NICE: NICE delivers comprehensive Grid & Cloud Solutions for companies and institutions
Dobromir Todorov
CEO | Chief Cloud Officer & Co-founder of HeleCloud
Dob Todorov, CEO & Chief Cloud Officer, has co-founded and led many start-ups in the technology and financial services industries. With solutions architecture, security and systems engineering experience at organisations including HP, Accenture, Visa, BT Global Services and International Network Services (INS), he was subsequently employed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as CTO for Public Sector in EMEA, and Principal Architect for Security & Compliance in EMEA. He has supported clients as diverse as central and local government, large internationals and emerging start-ups in their design and implementation of cloud solutions following AWS best practice. Dob is passionate about the opportunities for business advantage coming from technology innovation and strategic digital disruption.
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About HeleCloud: HeleCloud provides strategic technology consultancy, engineering and managed cloud services on the AWS Platform
Olga Kubassova
Chief Executive Officer of IAG, Image Analysis Group
Olga Kubassova is the Founder and CEO at IAG, mage Analysis Group. Mathematician with 10+ years expertise in actively managing innovation in life science companies, asset positioning, strategy and capital rising. Extensive expertise and domain knowledge in identifying innovative approaches to clinical research, disruptive technology platforms and novel therapeutics. Olga is a renowned healthcare innovator and biotech investor, with passion for improving people’s health.
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About Analytics Ventures, Bio Capital Impact Fund, European Commission, IAG, Image Analysis Group: IAG, imaging expert company helps to accelerate novel drug development by using the right analytical tools and modern trial infrastructure.
Nithin Thomas
CEO of Ceerus
I have over 10 years track record in developing and commercializing cutting edge cyber security technologies from early stage research. I am currently the CEO of SQR Systems, a company that I founded in 2010 to bring to market the technology I developed during my PhD. In this role, I have set up multiple R&D and commercial programmes and partnerships with the UK Ministry of Defence, the US Department of Defence and other intelligence and government agencies in the UK. In my role at SQR, I have also been working closely with global defence primes, telcos, mobile device manufacturers and some of the leading financial and professional services organisations and critical infrastructure protection. In my spare time, I like getting involved with the London startup ecosystem through various meet-ups, hackathons and I am a startup mentor at Shell LiveWire and IncuBus London.
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About Ceerus: Security to communicate freely
James Mitchell
Co-Founder & CEO of Strategic Blue
James Mitchell is the CEO of Strategic Blue, a financial cloud brokerage firm offering for cloud computing, financial and analytical services more commonly seen in the commoditized utilities markets. For the past six years, Dr. Mitchell has been pioneering various financial cloud brokerage concepts that are now gaining widespread acceptance and adoption based on his background as an originator of structured physical commodity transactions at Morgan Stanley. Featured in books and reports as the leading authority on how the IT market will change because of the move to a utility (or “cloud”) delivery model, he is a frequent speaker at events and has made successful predictions about how the cloud market will develop over the next five years. Dr. Mitchell correctly predicted the price coupling currently observed in the cloud IaaS market. His expertise in the pricing of pseudo-commodities is highly relevant for any organization looking to buy, sell, resell, or trade cloud services at scale. He has a doctorate in DNA Nanostructures from Oxford University and a first-class master’s degree in experimental and theoretical physics from Cambridge University.
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About Strategic Blue: A tech-enabled Financial Services company optimising procurement of cloud services like AWS using commodity trading techniques.
Darius Khan
Chief Executive Officer of infini Group
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About infini Group: Infini delivers infrastructure services to governments, businesses, and intermediaries via its cloud-based grid architecture.
Abdullah Hiyatt
Founder and CEO of THETA Trading Systems
20 years of experience in capital markets working with sell and buy-side firms on e-strategy, design and building e-trading solutions. In 2013, Abdullah’s focus shifted to the buy-side and more recently worked with Deutsche Wealth Management leading the design and delivery of SPARTA, its new global multi-asset trading platform.
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About Deutsche Bank, THETA Trading Systems: Capital Markets London based FinTech
Silvio Di Crosta
CEO of Domotz
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About Domotz: Remote Monitoring & Management in an IoT World.
Brady Rafuse
CEO of euNetworks Group
Brady Rafuse is the chief executive officer of [euNetworks Group Limited](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/eunetworks-group-limited#/entity), a bandwidth infrastructure provider. He was previously the managing director of COLT Telecom. Rafuse is the former president and chief executive officer of Level 3 Europe before which he was the head of operations for Concert. Rafuse holds a master’s degree from McGill University.
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About euNetworks Group: euNetworks is a Western European provider of bandwidth infrastructure services.
Oliver Jones
CEO of Chayora
Oliver is an international leader in complex property developments and long-term operating projects. He has 25 years experience in corporate real estate, critical systems and data centres and has led projects throughout Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America. He is a qualified property professional with strong corporate finance credentials through his London Business School MBA. Oliver works closely with major corporations and governments worldwide in delivering sustainable, innovative business and community solutions. Oliver was previously a Group Board Director and senior equity partner with EC Harris heading all global Corporate Real Estate and Critical Systems portfolios. He is also a Non-executive Director for Keysource Ltd. As a co-founder of Chayora, the principal areas of focus for Oliver are overall team leadership and co-ordination linked to investor management, securing tenants and raising the external profile of the company with key stakeholders.
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About Chayora, KrySource: Chayora is an infrastructure developer based in Hong Kong with a focus on building Data Centre platforms in China.
Ian Smith
CEO of Castleton Technology plc
Ian has an extensive track record of investing in and managing tech companies. He co-founded the advisory subgroup of MXC Capital. Ian has sat on numerous boards and either led or been involved in a large number of transactions in the TMT sector. Ian has recently led strategic change and value accretion at Redstone plc and Accumuli plc. Ian is currently CEO of Castleton Technology plc.
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About Castleton Technology plc, MXC Capital: Castleton Technology plc provides software support and consultancy services.
Syd Lawrence
CEO of The Bot Platform
CEO of The Bot Platform. Co-founded and sold various businesses. Serial Entrepreneur. First company at the age of 12.
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About : Empowering people to build a better employee experience using bots, digital assistants and automation tools.
Oner Avara
CEO & Founder of My Next Match
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About My Next Match: The ultimate tool for the sports federations to govern, including Medical Passports for the athletes, an MMS and online progression/grading
Richard Hancock
Chief Executive Officer of Blue Maestro
Richard Hancock joined Blue Maestro as Chief Executive Officer in 2012.
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About Blue Maestro: Environment and health monitoring solutions from developing innovative Bluetooth devices to hosting a cloud platform for sensor telemetrics.
Jon Topper
CTO/CEO of The Scale Factory
DevOps, Linux, cloud infrastructure and automation specialist.
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About The Scale Factory: DevOps & Cloud Infrastructure Consultancy
Andrew Tarver
Founder / CEO of BOLD ROCKET
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About BOLD ROCKET: A new ‘people technology’ company on a mission to make people’s lives a little more wonderful in any way we can.
James Hunter
CEO of Scafld
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About Scafld: Helping acquire and convert customers with clever ways to create and deliver engaging customer journeys.
Benjamin Perry
CEO of SA Systems
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About SA Systems: Advanced supply chain and distributed manufacturing technology company – initial focus on financial services.
