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 Cloud Computing 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.
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.
Follow Matthew O’Riordan:
About Ably Realtime, easyBacklog, Open API Initiative: Ably is the platform to power synchronized digital experiences in realtime.
_______
Melissa Di Donato
Chief Executive Officer of SUSE
Prior to SAP, Melissa was the Area Vice President of Analytics for EMEA at salesforce.com and has spent more than 20 years in technology as a leader in the digital space delivering innovative and transformative enterprise cloud solutions for customers around the globe. She is dedicated to building high performing sales teams, ensuring diversity across the business and developing multi-channel go to market strategies. ComputerWeekly’s 2015 Personality of the Year UK for Cloud Computing, one of 2016’s Top 10 most influential women in UK technology, awarded the Technology Woman of Achievement award by Women in the City and as head of the technology group of the 30% Club, she endeavours to ensure that more women are represented at the top of leading technology companies across the UK and globally.
Follow Melissa Di Donato:
About SAP, SUSE: SUSE provides reliable and interoperable Linux and cloud infrastructure solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility.
Max Williams
Co-Founder & CEO of Pusher
Max has spent the past 5 years running the London-based Ruby on Rails development shop New Bamboo, with his co-founder [Damien Tanner](http://crunchbase.com/person/damien-tanner). Their latest company is a realtime messaging service called Pusher (http://pusherapp.com), which was incubated inside New Bamboo. Max is passionate about realtime technology, and has the goal of making it more readily available for everyone.
Follow Max Williams:
About Pusher: Pusher Ltd. provides a hosted API service for adding real-time bi-directional.
Nigel Vaz
Chief Executive Officer of Publicis Sapient
Nigel is CEO of Publicis Sapient (SapientRazorfish, Sapient Consulting), he is also a member of the Publicis Groupe Executive Committee and leads Global Business Transformation for the Groupe. He is responsible for developing and executing business strategy and identifying market opportunities to drive the growth of the business. A driving force behind the company’s vision to partner with clients to help them realize a better future for their businesses and improve their customers’ lives, Nigel works closely with clients and teams to deliver transformative experiences and business models that make a significant impact on the success of leading global brands including Carrefour, Lloyds, Nationwide,McDonalds RBS/NatWest, Unilever, BNP Paribas and Fiat Chrysler. Nigel has held a variety of leadership positions with Sapient prior to its acquisition by Publicis Groupe, where he is now part of the Groupe Executive Committee Nigel drove the evolution of Sapient’s EMEA business, helping build Sapient Consulting into one of the premier digital consulting firms, and growing SapientNitro to be one of the largest agencies in the UK from a startup a decade ago. He led Sapient’s expansion beyond the UK to be a significant presence across Europe and in Asia. With roots in business strategy, Nigel has consistently helped clients to build businesses and create sustainable value propositions for their brands by operating at the intersection of strategic thinking, creativity and technology. Prior to Sapient, he was a successful entrepreneur – co-founding a public company with interests in consulting and connectivity solutions. Nigel is an inductee of BIMA’s Digital Hall of Fame (British Interactive Marketing Association), was named Individual of the Year at the DADIs, is a Fellow of The Marketing Society and is President Elect of the IPA, and provides mentoring to startups through the Publicis90 program.
Follow Nigel Vaz:
About Publicis Sapient: Publicis Sapient is a digital transformation platform.
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.
Follow Ditlev Bredahl:
About Kickass Capital, OnApp, PlatoScience: OnApp is a company that develops cloud management, CDN and storage software for service providers and enterprises.
Nate Macleitch
CEO of QuickBlox
Follow Nate Macleitch:
About QuickBlox, Techstars: QuickBlox is a cloud communication backend that allows to add Chat, Video calling, Push Notifications, Cloud Sync into mobile and web apps.
Alexis Richardson
CEO & Co-Founder of Weaveworks
Alexis is the co-founder and CEO of Weaveworks. He is also the chairman of the TOC for CNCF, and the co-founder of the Coed:Code meetups. Previously he was at Pivotal, as head of products for Spring, RabbitMQ, Redis, Apache Tomcat and vFabric. Alexis was responsible for resetting the product direction of Spring and transitioning the vFabric business from VMware. Alexis co-founded RabbitMQ, and was CEO of the Rabbit company acquired by VMware in 2010, where he worked on numerous cloud platforms. Rumours persist that he co-founded several other software companies including Cohesive Networks, after a career as a prop trader in fixed income derivatives, and a misspent youth studying and teaching mathematical logic.
Follow Alexis Richardson:
About Metalogic, Rabbit Technologies, Weaveworks: Weaveworks simplifies operating Kubernetes workloads and provides a developer-centric operating model for cloud-native applications.
Manoj Ganapathy
Founder & CEO of SalesTrip
Proven entrepreneur solving real world business problems using technology. Previously built and sold Invoice IT to Salesforce.
Follow Manoj Ganapathy:
About SalesTrip: Expense management and travel booking system on Salesforce. Better track and justify expense spend with SalesTrip.
Mark McDermott
CEO of ScreenCloud
CEO at ScreenCloud. Co-Founder of Digital Product Studio Codegent. Out of Codegent we Co-Founded startups Tepilo and ScreenCloud. We also own Digital Agency Thin Martian.
Follow Mark McDermott:
About Codegent, GetMeFit, ScreenCloud, Tepilo: We’re helping companies to realize the potential of the screens around them.
Craig Beddis
CEO of Hadean
Follow Craig Beddis:
About Hadean: Deploy Cloud Native Applications Simply and Securely
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.
Follow Nick Smith:
About Cloud Maker: Cloud Maker is a Visual DevOps platform that enables organisations to easily design and build scalable cloud solutions.
Charles Nasser
Chief Executive Officer of Claranet
Charles Nasser founded Claranet in 1996 and has grown it into an international managed service provider operating in 6 countries. Charles has led the company through a strong period of organic growth as well as several acquisitions from public and private companies. Charles holds a Masters degrees in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Imperial College (University of London), a Certified Diploma in Accounting and Finance (ACCA) and a Masters in Finance from the London Business School. A keen traveller, Charles has visited over 85 countries and participated in several expeditions, including a trek to the geographic North Pole in 2004.
Follow Charles Nasser:
About Claranet: Claranet is an expert in modernising and running critical applications and infrastructure.
Maggie Sanchez
CEO & Co-Founder of myCircle
Follow Maggie Sanchez:
About myCircle: myCircle is a U.K.-based SaaS and data company that provides merchants with analytics and mobile financial app services.
Bruce Beckloff
co-founder and CEO of Bloc Ventures
Bruce is the CEO and co-founder of Bloc Ventures, targeting investment in early life-cycle companies focused on the emerging Industrial Internet market. Before this Bruce was with ARM Holdings for 12 years serving as head of Corporate Development responsible for corporate strategy development, M&A, and investments. Bloc Ventures Recently, Bruce has been assisting the UK government as a venture capital Strategic Adviser helping the UK’s high growth early stage companies access financing from venture providers.He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Bachelor and a Masters in materials science and holds a Masters in Business administration from the Southern Methodist University.
Follow Bruce Beckloff:
About Bloc Ventures: Bloc Ventures is an early-stage Deep Tech investment company. Pitch to Bloc here: https://blocventures.com/pitching/
Nathan Doughty
CEO of Asite
Nathan joined Asite as CTO in 2002 and led the initial development of the Asite platform before taking the Group COO role in 2006, and the Group CEO role in 2020. Prior to Asite, Nathan was Product Development Director at Bidcom and CTO for Spill Industries. Nathan’s early career included time with KPMG Consulting and software start-ups in Boston and New York City. He has over 25 years of experience in IT services with extensive knowledge of software as a service platforms and the global AEC space. Nathan is a father of two and a life-long sailor.
Follow Nathan Doughty:
About Asite: Asite’s vision is to connect people and help the world build better.
Alex Chircop
Founder, CEO and CTO of Ondat
Follow Alex Chircop:
About : Ondat supports your freedom with industry-leading levels of data performance, resilience, security, and scale.
Igor Krol
CEO of Veset
Follow Igor Krol:
About Veset: Pioneering software-as-a-service platform for broadcasters, media-content owners and service providers looking to create linear TV channels
Julia Salasky
CEO and Founder of Legl
Julia Salasky is the Founder and CEO of Legl and CrowdJustice , is a non-practising solicitor who was an associate at Linklaters in London, before working as a lawyer for the United Nations in Vienna and the Hague. She has also worked at a legal aid clinic in London
Follow Julia Salasky:
About CrowdJustice, Legl: Legl provides cloud-based solutions bringing law firms into the digital-first world.
Mark Williams
Founder & CEO of CloudSaver
Mark has extensive experience in taking blue chip companies in the IT and telecommunications industry to the next level in their growth phase. At OrderDynamics, Mark creates the business development strategy for the European market with a focus on developing and managing the Business Development Team.
Follow Mark Williams:
About CloudSaver, FishNet Security: CloudSaver is a cost optimization firm that offers outsourcing, cloud computing and technical support to IT organizations.
Tristan Rogers
CEO of Concrete
Tristan Rogers is CEO & Board Member at Concrete
Follow Tristan Rogers:
About Concrete: Concrete provides retail brands a platform to train and retain store staff.
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.
Follow Olga Kubassova:
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.
Denis Ignatovich
Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Imandra
Denis Ignatovich has over a decade of experience in trading, risk management, quantitative modeling and complex trading system design. Prior to joining AI, he was head of the central risk trading desk at Deutsche Bank London. He holds an MSc in Finance from the London School of Economics and degrees in CS and Finance from UT Austin.
Follow Denis Ignatovich:
About Imandra: Imandra specializes in cloud-scale automated reasoning.
Boris Raicheff
CEO of Cloudpipes
Follow Boris Raicheff:
About Cloudpipes: Cloudpipes is an provider of integration platform as a service deployed on Google Cloud.
Bruce Grove
Co-Founder & CEO of Polystream
Bruce has 25 years experience across video game platforms, enterprise, telecoms, and avionics. Bruce came to Polystream following senior leadership roles at OnLive including engineering, business and corporate development, and overseeing the company’s launch and growth in Europe. Having spent more than ten years in the US in roles including engineering leadership at Sun Microsystems, Tellme Networks, and Dell XPS, Bruce then joined the first wave of the cloud gaming revolution as head of engineering at OnLive. Instrumental in delivering the world’s first direct-to-consumer cloud gaming solution, he moved back to the UK in 2011 to build OnLive’s European business; apparently he missed the pubs and curries, and rain. Having started his career building Harrier Jump Jets, Bruce figured that video games just seemed like a natural progression, and a little less expensive when you get it wrong.
Follow Bruce Grove:
About Polystream: Building the 3D internet // Powering a new era of instantly scalable, cloud native, metaverse experiences
Harry Hatzakis
CEO of Biotronics3D
Harry Hatzakis is a Founder & CEO at Biotronics3D.
Follow Harry Hatzakis:
About Biotronics3D: Biotronics3D develops and markets innovative software applications for the diagnostic imaging industry.
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.
Follow James Mitchell:
About Strategic Blue: A tech-enabled Financial Services company optimising procurement of cloud services like AWS using commodity trading techniques.
Gareth Williams
CEO of Interoute Communications
Gareth Williams became CEO of Interoute in August 2007. Prior to that he served as President, Global Markets building the sales and marketing unit of Interoute across the 30 countries in which Interoute now operates. He joined Interoute to aid James Kinsella with the restructuring of the company in 2002 and has helped drive the growth of Interoute from zero revenues at relaunch in 2003 to €416 million in 2013. He helped manage the transition of the Company from loss making start-up to profitable communications technology leader. He has reinvested the cash the Company has generated to strengthen Interoute’s position as a major Cloud services provider, including a pan-European Virtual Data Centre product suite, called CloudStore.
Follow Gareth Williams:
About Gigaclear, Interoute Communications: Interoute is an international telecommunications service provider and the owner operator of Europe’s largest cloud services platform
Imogen Wethered
CEO & Co-Founder of Qudini – Retail Choreography
Imogen Wethered is Founder & CEO at Qudini.
Follow Imogen Wethered:
About Qudini – Retail Choreography: Retail Choreography solutions to transforming customer experience, operations and data for retailers and banks.
Mark Richards
CEO & Founder of makepositive
As Chief Evangelist, Mark cares passionately about creating enterprises that redefine what “work” means. With the goal of releasing everyone from tedious admin and letting all loose to create their own art in the workplace. Inspirational Leader: Seth Godin translates our toughest challenges and fears into meaningful insight, advice and actions. Mark Richards is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Makepositive.
Follow Mark Richards:
About makepositive: Makepositive is a business and technology consultancy that delivers innovation cloud engagement and platform.
Matthew Cheung
CEO of ipushpull
Follow Matthew Cheung:
About ipushpull: Live data sharing and workflow automation platform providing real-time interoperability of data across any application
Jim Liddle
CEO of Storage Made Easy
Prior to Storage Made Easy, Jim Liddle was responsible for sales and operations for GigaSpaces in the UK Europe after joining the company in 2006 to help expand European operations. Jim was previously the General Manager for Europe and New York Finance for Versata, a business process and rules management company. During his 6 years at Versata, Jim filled in technical, product management, and product marketing roles. Jim has extensive experience in Big Data, Middleware and Cloud technologies and has successfully built teams and grown sales for high growth technology companies for the last 20 years. Jim holds a BA (honors) from Brunel University in History and Computer Science and studied for an MSc. in Data Communications at Kingston University.
Follow Jim Liddle:
About Storage Made Easy: SME provides software, the Enterprise File Fabric, which unifies a company’s File & Object Storage accessible through a global file system.
Adrian Harvey
Founder and CEO of Elephants don’t forget
Adrian Harvey is the founder and CEO of Elephants don’t forget. Prior to this, he worked as the managing director – Property Services of E.ON.
Follow Adrian Harvey:
About Elephants don’t forget: A low cost, cloud-based online application that continually measures individual employee knowledge gaps and automatic retrains as needed.
Paul German
CEO of Certes Networks
Follow Paul German:
About Certes Networks: Certes Networks, Inc. provides security solutions for high performance networks for government agencies and federal organizations.
Nicholas Hopper
Founder & CEO of Crozdesk
Follow Nicholas Hopper:
About Crozdesk: Crozdesk is a discovery platform which connects software buyers with B2B SaaS products
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.
Follow Syd Lawrence:
About : Empowering people to build a better employee experience using bots, digital assistants and automation tools.
Andreas Constantinou
CEO & Founder of VisionMobile
Follow Andreas Constantinou:
About VisionMobile: VisionMobile is the leading analyst firm in the developer economy.
Jon Topper
CTO/CEO of The Scale Factory
DevOps, Linux, cloud infrastructure and automation specialist.
Follow Jon Topper:
About The Scale Factory: DevOps & Cloud Infrastructure Consultancy
Nikos Volakis
CEO, Co-founder of Synasource
Follow Nikos Volakis:
About Synasource: Synasource is a tech startup specialised in Machine Learning Predictive Algorithms for the Sports and Sports Betting industry.
Mandeep Obhrai
CEO of Securestorm
Follow Mandeep Obhrai:
About : Securestorm – The Expert Advisers on Cloud and Cyber Security
