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 Virtual Reality 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.
Martin Higginson
Co-founder & CEO of Immotion Group plc
Martin is recognised as a seasoned Technology, Media and Telecoms (TMT) entrepreneur, and was awarded North West Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002. He has started, sold, and listed numerous businesses. His first business was sold to IPC Magazines in 1982. Following three years with IPC he left to set up his own publishing and telecoms business, this was subsequently sold to Scottish Power plc. During his time with Scottish Power he joined their subsidiary Scottish Telecom, as Managing Director of their Internet and Interactive division, including Internet ISP Demon Internet. Following the flotation of Thus plc (formerly Scottish Telecom) he left to start Monstermob, a company he went on to list on AIM in 2003; growing it to a Top 50 AIM listed business. Monstermob Group plc was sold to Zed Worldwide in 2006. Martin has subsequently founded Cityblock plc, a luxury student accommodation business, and NetPlayTV plc, an interactive TV gaming business where he formed exclusive partnerships with Virgin Media, Channel Five, and ITV. Martin has held Non-Executive Director positions with Legend plc, Cupid plc and CMG Media. Martin is the Founding Partner at M Capital Investment Partners. Formed in 2010, M Capital Investment Partners manages multiple real estate investments across the UK, with a focus on delivering above average returns for investment cash with minimal risk. He also holds the position of Non Executive Director at Digitalbox Group – which was listed in The Sunday Times HISCOX Tech Track 100 in 2015 and 2016, placing it amongst Britain’s top 100 fastest growing private tech companies, and is Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer at Immotion Group Plc – an award-winning animation and multi-directional motion platforms to deliver mind-blowing immersive VR experiences.
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About Crash Media Group, Digitalbox: Immotion combine award-winning content & multi-directional motion platforms to deliver immersive VR solutions for high-traffic destinations.
Graeme Cox
CEO/CTO of Emteq
Graeme Cox has a degree in artificial intelligence, over 20 years experience in scaling product development teams, and has a track record of building profitable, high-growth technology businesses. He has founded and managed four technology businesses and has served as board member and advisor on several more across the range of software, hardware and services. A project and person manager with 20 years of continuous experience in the management of teams and individuals with project ownership, management and delivery of individual budgets up to $100 million.
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About Emteq: The world’s first emotion recognition and analysis platform in smart glasses
Sergei Nossoff
CEO & Co-founder of Teslasuit
An international hands-on senior executive, private equity and investment banking professional with over 20 years of experience. Creative, with clear strategic vision, excellent interpersonal, negotiation and problem-solving skills, with a proven ability to manage and build winning teams. Committed to the highest levels of professional and personal excellence and credibility. Currently focused on New Technologies (VR/AR/MR) and MedTech sectors.
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About Teslasuit: Teslasuit is a team of talented developers and designers, creating innovative products for XR and MedTech.
Samuel Huber
Founder & CEO of Admix
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About Admix, VR Focus: Admix is the first programmatic monetisation platform for in-game advertising
Sam Cole
Co-Founder and CEO of FitXR
Sam draws on his experience from consulting and private equity to drive FitXR forward into the uncharted lands of fit tech. Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, Sam was always enchanted by the prospect of building a company. Meeting Sameer at business school kick-started that dream. A lover of all things fitness, Sam is excited to develop a product that will help people access professional workouts, and build healthier communities around the world.
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About FitXR: FitXR, the leading developer of VR/AR fitness apps, is passionately dedicated to making fitness more fun and accessible for everyone.
Chris Adams
Chief Executive Officer of OTHERWORLD
Chris Adams is the Chief Executive Officer at The Dream Corporation.
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About OTHERWORLD: The brick-and-mortar metaverse. An island paradise in the cloud reached through a growing network of multi-sensory immersion pods.
Sam Speaight
CEO of VRJAM
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About Invisceral, VRJAM: VRJAM is a content platform that empowers rightsholders to create and share digital content and virtual events with global audiences
Richard Vincent
CEO & Co-Founder of FundamentalVR
Richard has 20+ years’ experience of building international businesses and has throughout his career sought opportunities for positive market disruption through technological application. It was this desire that led him to co-found FundamentalVR to help address an age-old problem for the medical market; how to create safe, realistic, measurable spaces to learn and develop skills. In his role as CEO Richard is responsible for building a world class team of medical, learning and technologist who together can realise the company’s ambition of creating the world’s first global, haptically enabled, low cost ‘flight simulator for surgeons’.
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About Fundamental Surgery, FundamentalVR: FundamentalVR delivers VR haptic ‘flight simulators’ for surgery creating a safe, measurable & repeatable space to refine to refine skills.
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.
Oluwaseyi Sosanya
Co Founder and CEO of Gravity Sketch
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About Gravity Sketch: Gravity Sketch is a VR-based design and collaboration platform that allows distributed teams to create, share, and build in 3D.
Adetunji Adegbesan
Founder/CEO of Gidi Mobile
Dr Adetunji Adegbesan is the Founder & CEO of Gidi Mobile, creators of gidimo, Africa’s leading curriculum mastery & learning-as-a-service platform. Tunji has a First Class Honours degree in Electronic Engineering, and a PhD in Strategic Management from the IESE Business School. He is globally respected as one of Africa’s top scholars of competitive strategy, as well as one of her leading experts on the mobile telecommunications industry. A recipient of multiple awards, he has been invited to speak at knowledge events in more than 20 countries across four continents. Immediately prior to founding Gidi Mobile, he was Director of the Centre for Competitiveness & Strategy at the Lagos Business School (LBS), where he led sessions on Competitive Strategy, as well as on issues arising out of the intersection of Strategy, Technology, and Innovation. During his 14 years at LBS, his consulting experience spanned the software, telecommunications, banking, oil and gas, publishing, logistics, identity management and electronic payments sectors; while prior to LBS, his work experience spanned software development, consulting, information systems management, and electrical engineering, in both manufacturing and service sectors. Tunji is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Academy of Management Review, the world’s leading conceptual journal in the field of strategic management. He is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Businessday Newspapers (West Africa’s premier business periodical), and a peer reviewer for several of the world’s top strategy research journals. He is a past member of the Executive Committee of the Strategy Division of the global Academy of Management, as well as a past Global Representative for Africa of the Division. He has also been a Representative-at-Large for the Competitive Strategy Interest Group of the Strategic Management Society, and a member of the Research and Strategic Planning Committee of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria. He is a past Visiting Scholar & Associate Researcher at the Center for Globalisation and Strategy at the IESE Business School in Barcelona. An amateur historian, philosopher, and student of culture and geo-political affairs, Tunji has native fluency in English and Spanish, and basic literacy in French, Yoruba and Catalan.
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About Gidi Mobile: Gidi Mobile is the creator of gidimo, the developing world’s leading personal mastery & learning-for-opportunity platform
Shashank Sripada
Founder and CEO of Bubblo (BubbleScene Ltd.)
Shashank Sripada is the Founder and CEO of Bubblo and is currently associated with Marcena Capital Ltd as the company’s Vice President. He is also a former Associate at Oak Investment Management Group. He earned hos Bachelor’s Degree in Science (BSc), Economic History at London School of Economics and Political Science and had his Master’s Degree in Science, Management at the same school.
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About Bubblo (BubbleScene Ltd.), Marcena Capital Ltd: Bubblo is an artificial Intelligence based virtual reality discovery app and marketing platform.
Damian Collier
Founder & CEO of Blend Media
Damian Collier is a British producer, entrepreneur and business consultant for music, film, TV and stage. Collier has produced both independently (through Damian Collier Entertainment) and has collaborated with major record labels including Sony BMG, EMI, Universal Music, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony/ATV Music Publishing and major film and TV studios such as Paramount Pictures, Fox, Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation. He has experience in film, television, music recording, music publishing, licensing, merchandising, theatre, novels and comics. He also holds the position of managing director of the Jeff Wayne Music Group.
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About Blend Media: Blend is the world’s leading 360˚ VR video solution for Brands, Agencies and Publishers.
Michael Truong
Co-founder and CEO of Memento
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About Memento: Virtual Reality Event Reconstruction
Alexandra Hussenot
Founder & CEO of Immersionn
Alexandra is the founder of Immersionn, the world’s first VR Discovery Engine and she is also the UK lead for ‘Women in Immersive Technologies’, a community of 1000 members that aims to empower European women working in XR. She is also 1 in 10 members of the UK5G Creative Industries working group reporting the department in charge of Digital, Medias, Culture and Sport (DCMS). Prior to this, Alexandra pursued an international business career at insurance firm, Allianz, managing an £80M global business. She has also worked all over Europe during her 11 years at Sony Ericsson (now Sony Mobile) and has solid experience designing and launching software and service products, particularly covering user experience design and continuous improvements. She also lead large scale operations for mobile phone repairs and remanufacturing.
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About Immersionn: Immersionn is a content discovery company. We allow people to discover VR content they would never find
Andrew Hawken
Co-Founder and CEO of Mesmerise
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About Mesmerise: Virtual Reality content, gaming and technology
Anna Stoilova
Co-founder & CEO of Dual Good Health
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About Dual Good Health, TIKI: Using virtual reality to train more people how to save lives
Caspar Thykier
Co-Founder, CEO of Zappar
Caspar Thykier is Co-Founder & CEO at Zappar.
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About Veemee, Zappar: Zappar is a clever little app that can see and recognise images and objects in the world around us.
Agnis Stelingis
CEO and Founder of EF EVE
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About EF EVE: EF EVE™ is the World’s most loved volumetric capture software, editing and distribution tools for volumetric video.
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.
Alfredo Belfiori
Founder & CEO of Flicktek Ltd
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About BetterSpace, Flicktek Ltd: Gesture control for smartwatches, IoT and VR
Nicholas Minter-Green
CEO & Founder of Parable Works
An expert in content creation, public relations and integrated marketing, Nicholas was president of Economist Films, steering the team responsible for creating content that reflected the newspaper’s heritage as a world leader in reporting, analysis and investigation. Before that he was managing director at TVC group, building the agency into a leading brand content-communications business and top-10 UK PR agency.
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About Parable Works: A Virtual Reality and Television Studio & Agency.
Christophe Mallet
CEO & Co-Founder of Bodyswaps
Innovation Strategist with 10 years experience across social media, digital and immersive technologies (VR/AR). Chris got his Masters from HEC and started his career as Employee #1 (Head of Strategy) of social consultancy Carve that later got sold to a large advertising group. After co-founding Immersive Tech agency Somewhere Else with Julien and running it for over 3 years, Christophe co-founded BODYSWAPS with one mission: unlock human potential in the workplace with the help of immersive technologies. Christophe is an industry thought leader, international speaker and regular podcaster on VR and learning. He has recently delivered talks for the International Labor Organisation, the European Training Foundation and the European Immersive Computing Summit.
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About Bodyswaps: Bodyswaps is a B2B immersive learning platform (VR SaaS) designed to deliver effective and scalable soft skills training.
Bilal Itani
CEO of Modular Customer Engagement Technologies
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About Modular Customer Engagement Technologies: Modular Customer Engagement Technologies is a 3D Customer Experience Platform, Create your 3D Online Shop & 3D Product Configurator
Christian Rouffaert
Founder & CEO of Teragence
Christian is the founder of Teragence, a competitive network analytics vendor. Christian has 20 years of telco industry experience acorss Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has worked across fixed and mobile operators such as Vodafone, Virgin Media and Etisalat, as well as equipment vendors such as Ericsson and Huawei. Christian founded Teragence with the objective of elevating carriers’ insight into their own and their competitors’ end-to-end network performance.
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About Teragence: Teragence delivers competitive network analytics as a service. We benchmark any mobile network, anywhere, any time – in real time
Rob Eastham
Founder and CEO of Reality Zero One
Rob Eastham serves as Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Reality Zero One.
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About Reality Zero One: Reality Zero One’s mission is to design and create a world class end-to-end reality capture and digital reality delivery platform.
Yasmine Boudiaf
Founder / CEO of Serious DAtum
Yasmine Boudiaf makes virtual reality experiences that change people’s behaviour. She uses VR as a tool to address subtle forms of behaviour and biases which can effect the way another person feels. Her main topics of interest are implicit biases, cross- cultural understanding and innovation. With a background in biomedical science and documentary film, she enjoys inter-disciplinary collaboration as a way to solve problems. She produces experiences and consults via her company Serious Datum Ltd.
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About Serious DAtum: Serious DAtum makes behaviour changing virtual reality experiences.
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
Nick Walter
CEO of Vortic
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About Vortic: Vortic develops digital solutions to showcase art pieces through virtual and augmented reality.
Scott Marshall
Founder & CEO of Bamsound VR
Scott Marshall is CEO / Founder and Sound Lead at Bamsound, an immersive audio agency specialising in sound for virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and 360 productions. With over 12 years experience, their clients include Universal, Nikon, NME, BBC, Channel 4, Sky, UKTV, Saatchi & Saatchi and many others. Having worked for various facilities and freelanced in many post houses and production companies, Scott spent his career working across many genres including broadcast, factual, comedy, drama, and commercials, but has now found himself pushing audio boundaries in these new and exciting mediums. To quote Scott “With the rise in ‘new’ immersive formats, such as VR and AR, we are seeing (and hearing) how much more important it is to create a truly ‘3D’ audio landscape for productions and how critical this is in making these experiences feel real and believable.
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About Bamsound VR: Bamsound VR Immersive Audio Agency for Virtual Reality Audio 360 ExP.
Ed Mason
Founder, CEO of GameFace Labs
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About GameFace Labs: Worlds First ‘All In One’ standalone virtual reality headset and DARPA software platform for the next generation of VR gaming.
Jonathan Barrowman
Founder & CEO of Gorilla In The Room
Jonathan runs two companies which specialise in virtual, mixed and augmented reality. Gorilla In The Room applies cognitive science to transform consumer research and healthcare, whilst Bigman applies its heritage in CGI and 3D technology to brands in advertising and entertainment. 18 years ago, Jonathan was curious about the dark art of marketing and began his career as a media planner buyer in London. He was Campaign magazine’s Top 10 Media Buyer three years in a row and subsequently held roles on both the agency and tech side as Head of Mobile, Global Head of Digital Strategy, Head of Client Services and Commercial Director. Jonathan has worked at a UK and international level with Nestlé, P&G, Telefonica, PepsiCo, Department of Health, General Motors, Unilever and France Telecom as well as spoken at events including Ad:Tech, Wearable Technology Show and World Federation of Advertisers.
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About Gorilla In The Room: Unlock Knowledge with Visual Technology.
Ryan Genz
CEO of CuteCircuit
Ryan Genz is a CEO at CuteCircuit.
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About CuteCircuit: A pioneer in the field of wearable technology, design and manufacture of 3D audio products, sensor enhanced apparel, illumination, haptics.
Corrina McCann
Co-Founder / Chief Executive Officer of Infinite Mixed Reality
Corrina McCann is the creative director of Infinite Mixed Reality.
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About Infinite Mixed Reality, Infinite Mixed Reality: Infinite Mixed Reality is a full-service virtual reality and augmented reality agency.
Seth Jackson
CEO of Landmrk
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About Landmrk, Strange Thoughts: Landmrk is a flexible white-label platform that enables you to deliver digital content to your audience at specific physical locations.
Bartek Wlodarczyk
Chief Executive Officer & President of SKY ENGINE
Bartek Włodarczyk is the Chief Executive Officer & President at Sky Engine.
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About SKY ENGINE: Evolutionary AI Platform for the Deep Learning in Virtual Reality with Synthetic Data for any Computer Vision applications
Henry Stuart
Co-Founder & CEO of Visualise
Henry Stuart is the co-founder and CEO of Visualise, an award-winning virtual reality production studio founded in 2012. A pioneer in the VR industry since 2006, Henry is regularly invited to speak at international events and is a regular contributor for national newspapers, TV, advertising, marketing and trade journals. Over the past 4 years Visualise has produced over 60 VR experiences for clients including Thomas Cook, BBC, Financial Times, Audi, Oakley, Samsung, Wimbledon, Doctors without Borders, The Economist, O2 and many more.
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About Visualise: VISUALISE are a full service Virtual Reality production agency, creating world class VR experiences and films.
Ashley Cowan
Co Founder & CEO of VR City
VR City is a London based VR production company, creating emotionally transformative experiences in virtual reality. Their first film, the award winning ‘Witness 360: 7/7’ directed by Darren Emerson, tells of one woman’s experience of the 7/7 bombings in London. It moved straight to the vanguard of VR documentary, playing at international film festivals including IDFA, Docville and Cannes Marche du Film. Their most recent film ‘Invisible’, a powerful documentary about the uncertainty and despair of the UK’s indefinite detention system, won the UK Arts Council’s first ever VR commission and premiered at Sheffield International Documentary Festival. It is currently touring film festivals around the world and has been licensed by the New York Times to play on their VR app as ‘Indefinite’.
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About VR City: VR City is a London based VR production company, creating emotionally transformative experiences in virtual reality.
Ashley Cowan
Co Founder & CEO of VR City
VR City is a London based VR production company, creating emotionally transformative experiences in virtual reality. Their first film, the award winning ‘Witness 360: 7/7’ directed by Darren Emerson, tells of one woman’s experience of the 7/7 bombings in London. It moved straight to the vanguard of VR documentary, playing at international film festivals including IDFA, Docville and Cannes Marche du Film. Their most recent film ‘Invisible’, a powerful documentary about the uncertainty and despair of the UK’s indefinite detention system, won the UK Arts Council’s first ever VR commission and premiered at Sheffield International Documentary Festival. It is currently touring film festivals around the world and has been licensed by the New York Times to play on their VR app as ‘Indefinite’.
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About VR City: VR City is a London based VR production company, creating emotionally transformative experiences in virtual reality.
Riley Riley
Chief Executive Officer of Glorious Labs
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About Glorious Labs: Glorious Labs increases consumer access to 360° media through the world’s first SocialVR cameras.
