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 Training 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.
Dave Bailey
CEO of The Founder Coach
Dave Bailey is CEO of The Founder Coach, an organisation that supports venture-backed founders around the world. Dave runs several programs for startup and scale-up CEOs, and works one-on-one with a limited number of CEOs as executive coach and mentor. Dave is editor-in-chief of The Founder Coach blog, and hosts The Founder Coach Podcast, mentors at Techstars in London, and angel invests in areas of his domain knowledge. Previously, Dave co-founded three VC-backed businesses including Delivery Hero, Ezlearn and Spotnight. Dave studied Mathematical Sciences at Oxford University, before going on to Stanford Graduate School of Business and Singularity University.
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About The Founder Coach, The Fund: CEO coaching for venture-backed founders
Gerard Grech
CEO of Tech Nation
Gerard is CEO of TechCity UK in London.Prior, he headed up global marketing for Blackberry World (e-commerce store for apps music & film), in New York. Before that, he was with Nokia, where, in New York and London, he led the app store’s marketing operations, ran the app strategy and portfolio development team and, most recently, identified and assessed equity investment opportunities for Nokia Growth Partners, Nokia’s venture arm, with $600M under management in the mobile space. At Orange in Paris and London, Gerard was the content division’s group director of strategy and business development, and group head of music and video, launching multiple pioneering content services with Facebook, Universal Music and Sony Pictures, among others. He was EMEA chapter founder and chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and board director of DDEX, the Digital Data Exchange consortium. Before his MBA, Gerard’s career began as a new-media correspondent, covering the digital revolution in the music industry for Music Week and New Media Age, among others. He also co-founded a music label. He read Acoustics Engineering as his first degree.
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About Tech Nation: Tech Nation is focused on accelerating the growth of digital businesses across the UK.
Euan Blair
Founder & CEO of Multiverse
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About Multiverse: Multiverse is a tech startup that matches talent who have not graduated from college with apprenticeship opportunities.
James Manktelow
Founder and CEO of Mind Tools
James founded Mind Tools in 1996. Today he leads a global team of experts who, together, help more than 21,000,000 people each year learn “the essential skills for an excellent career.” James has written seven books on leadership, team management, and personal productivity: “WorkLife: Manage Your Time”; “WorkLife: Manage Stress”; “Mind Tools”; “Stress Tools”; “Make Time for Success!” (written with Namita Anand); “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You”; and “Team Tools: Build and Lead an Excellent Team” (written with Felix Brodbeck and Namita Anand).
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About Mind Tools: Online, instantly available management and leadership training.
Nick Taylor
Co-Founder and CEO of Unmind
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About Unmind: Unmind is a B2B mental health platform providing clinically-backed tools and training.
Rajeeb Dey
Founder & CEO of Learnerbly
Rajeeb Dey joined Learnerbly as Founder & CEO in 2016.
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About Learnerbly: Learnerbly is a Learning Development Platform.
Fadl Al Tarzi
Founder & CEO of Nexford University
+15 years of experience in media & technology-related businesses. Hands-on experience building successful strategies, growing companies, raising VC funds, building & managing teams. Founded and played pivotal role in growing several successful businesses,
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About Nexford University: A next generation online university providing students with access to quality, affordable, dynamic education.
Ankur Modi
Founder and CEO of StatusToday
Ankur Modi is the former CEO and Co-Founder of StatusToday, one of the UK’s top AI Startups. He is an expert in big data with a unique specialization in Psychology. Prior to StatusToday, Ankur worked at Microsoft, driving international efforts behind MS Office, Office 365 and Dynamics. In 2017 he was featured by Forbes’ as 30 Under 30 in Technology and Immigration while also being invited as a guest advisor to Westminster Parliament to present evidence on AI.
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About StatusToday: StatusToday is an AI that gives people analytics to drive organizational change.
William Macpherson
CEO of QA Ltd
William has been leading education and business services groups for over 20 years. He has been the CEO of QA since 2008. He led the development of QA from a value of £25m in 2008 to £700m in 2017 (when a majority stake was acquired by CVC, the leading private equity group). QA now employs over 2,000 staff including more than 700 education professionals. Prior to this, he served as the CEO of Kaplan Professional, Inc. from 2006-2008. He led the management buyout of The Financial Training Company (which became FTC Kaplan) from Wolters Kluwer in 2001 and sold the business to Kaplan in 2003 doubling the value of the business in two years. Between 2004-2008, he led Kaplan’s businesses outside the US, which included operations in six countries. Prior to Kaplan he worked at Bain & Company management consultants and at a corporate finance boutique. William holds an MA in Law from Cambridge University and an MBA from INSEAD.
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About QA Ltd: QA is the UK’s leading training company, providing the complete range of training, talent development and learning services.
Jeremy Basset
CEO of CO:CUBED
Jeremy has built his career by helping large corporates define and build their future organisation. Through CO:CUBED, he works with some of the worlds largest businesses to re-think their organisational approach to innovation and helping them build and execute their collaborative innovation capabilieis. Prior to launching CO:CUBED, Jeremy spent 13 years at Unilever where he was responsible for launching and then leading the Unilever Foundry, Unilever’s platform to engage with startups and innovative companies who can help Unilever pioneer the future. Through the Foundry, over 1500 of Unilever marketers have worked with over 150 startups, brining innovative technology and an entrepreneurial culture to Unilever. Originally Australian, Jeremy’s career has taken him from Australia to New Zealand, Singapore he now resides in the UK. Jeremy has a marketing and commercial background, with a degree in Accounting & Marketing, he’s CPA qualified and has an MBA from London Business School.
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About CO:CUBED: CO:CUBED helps FTSE100 companies to embrace the startup revolution, by defining and executing their collaborative innovation capabilities.
Matt Lerner
Founder & CEO of Startup Core Strengths
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About Startup Core Strengths: Startup Core Strengths offers marketing strategy and executive coaching to startups.
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
Steve Dineen
Founder, Chief Storyteller & CEO of Fuse Universal
Founder and President of Fuse Universal.
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About Fuse Universal: The Fuse learning platform connects people with the knowledge and expertise they need to improve their skills and perform.
Kathryn Parsons
Co-Founder and CEO of Decoded
Kathryn Parsons is co-founder and CEO of Decoded, a technology education company founded in East London in 2011, which launched with the promise to teach anyone Code in a Day. The firm’s accelerated learning experiences have since expanded to include the worlds of code, data, innovation, cyber security and artificial intelligence. In addition to growing and scaling the business, Kathryn is a regular keynote speaker and campaigns globally for code on curriculums and gender diversity in technology. Described by the Evening Standard as “a woman on a mission to teach us all to code”, Kathryn was part of the successful campaign to have code introduced as a mandatory subject to the UK national curriculum in September 2014. In 2016 she was appointed Chairwoman of the UK Government Institute of Coding and received an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list. In 2017 Kathryn joined the London Mayor’s Business Advisory Board, the UK Government Cyber Security Skills Advisory Board and the non-executive board of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. She’s a self-confessed language lover, having studied Japanese and Mandarin in her spare time and Latin and Ancient Greek at Cambridge University.For her code is just another language, one used by billions.
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About Decoded: Decoded is the world’s leading Tech Educator, teaching digital skills to whole organisations and business leaders from across all sectors.
Naimish Gohil
CEO & Founder of Team Satchel
Naimish Gohil is Founder & CEO at Show my Homework.
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About Team Satchel: Team Satchel develops a range of school software focusing on homework, behavior, classroom management, and teaching resources.
Nick Lukic
CEO & Co-Founder of Digital Vega
Nick has 20+ years in FX, derivatives, ecommerce, technology and consulting. Nick was a founding member of Atriax, the first FX ECN where he was responsible for product development and bank relationships. He went on to form worldflow, an e-commerce specialist software and consulting firm where he worked on setting up new ecommerce businesses for banks including several FX and retail CFD businesses. Nick was global head of FX and Interest Rate Derivatives technology at Chemical/Chase Manhattan Bank where he ran the quant analytics and risk management teams. He was also global head of FX and FX options IT at Citibank where he helped start the Citi FX e-commerce business.
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About Digital Vega: Digital Vega is a privately held company operating the Medusa FX Option trading platform.
Kaan Akın
Founder, CEO of Hackquarters
Tech investor, startup mentor and founder of Hackquarters Startup Accelerator. He is involved with corporate accelerator programs.
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About Hackquarters: Hackquarters accelerated 150+ startups and helped 40+ corporates to innovate with startup collaboration
Mark O’donoghue
CEO of AVADO
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About AVADO: AVADO delivers transformative learning that helps businesses gain critical digital skills.
Jodie Ginsberg
Chief Executive Officer of Internews Network
Jodie Ginsberg is CEO @ Index on Censorship.
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About Internews Network: Internews Network is a non-profit news providing organization.
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
Geraint Barton
Founder and CEO of Kinderly
As a father of two young boys, Geraint founded NurseryBook based on his first-hand experience and his personal desire to be fully engaged in his child’s early years learning and development journey. Prior to NurseryBook, Geraint spent 11 years as big biological data analyst & software developer at Imperial College and established LabBook the world’s first e-labBook on Android.
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About Kinderly: Kinderly develops software for early years’ education to help childcare professionals comply with government regulation and more.
Andrew Ground
Co-Founder & CEO of Tutorfair
Andrew is driven by a desire to find good tutors for his own children, Adam and Sophia, our strongest critics – woe betide a tutor who produces a boring video. Andrew loves good user experience and is totally dedicated to using the Internet to provide choice and transparency to both parents and tutors. He was also UK MD of LOVEFILM, and a school governor.
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About Tutorfair: Tutorfair is a marketplace for tutors that makes great tutors available to all
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.
Igor Cenar
CEO of JollyDeck
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About JollyDeck: Great e-learning for your people. Better analytics for your business.
Marc Hammoud
CEO of The Swiss Quality
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About The Swiss Quality: The Swiss Quality provides business consulting, coaching, training, branding, planning, delivering, and writing services.
Nadeem Azam
CEO of Azam Marketing
Nadeem Azam has been at the cutting-edge of entrepreneurship for nearly forty years and generated over £1 billion in sales for clients during his illustrious career. He is also an experienced writer, journalist and sub-Editor, having had his work published in local and national press in the UK as well as several magazines and academic journals. His fiction and non-fiction is studied in schools and universities in the United States, Germany and other countries. Nadeem Azam founded Azam Marketing, an international, full-service digital marketing and design agency in 1997. The company is headquartered in Covent Garden, central London and its corporate website is at https://www.azam.net . Nadeem had been a successful computer programmer as far back as the 1980s in his childhood, and had also enjoyed an acclaimed career as a writer and sub-editor at various British newspapers, magazines and journals in the 1990s. Nadeem foresaw the decline of ‘old media’ and decided to pioneer an internet business. Azam Marketing specialise in search, email, social media and performance marketing, as well as web design, business consulting and corporate training. The multi-award-winning agency’s clients range from the world’s largest corporations such as Disney, Coca-Cola, Hilton, Warner Bros., Nike, Fitness First and BT, to small and medium size companies. Nadeem is often invited to be interviewed on television and radio stations around the world to share his expertise and is highly-rated public speaker.
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About Azam Marketing, Azam Marketing, Azam Marketing: Azam Marketing is a full-service digital marketing and design agency which focuses on results.
Ben Muzzell
Co-founder and CEO of Looop Online Limited
Ben Muzzell is the Co-Founder and CEO at Looop Online Limited.
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About Looop Online Limited: Looop LMS — guaranteed performance at the speed, scale, and quality your business needs.
Ben Roberts
Chief Executive Officer of British Film Institute
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About British Film Institute: British Film Institute is a charity governed by a Royal Charter combining cultural, creative, and industrial roles.
Amanda Nevill
Chief Executive Officer of British Film Institute
In 2011 the BFI became the lead organisation for film in the UK. It is now a government arm’s-length body and distributor of Lottery funds for film. Its new strategy, ‘Film Forever’, covers the cultural, creative and economic aspects of film in the UK, with a particular emphasis on education and nurturing the next generation of filmmakers and audiences, and with the aim of underpinning a flourishing film culture and a prosperous film industry. Under Amanda’s leadership, and drawing on her regional-based background, the BFI has pioneered the development of the BFI Player – a new video-on-demand platform for British, archive and international film. The BFI has also recently given much prominence to its international partnerships, including a tour of an Alfred Hitchcock silent film season to Shanghai in 2013, as a precursor to a major celebration of Chinese Cinema in the UK in 2014. Before joining the BFI, Amanda was Head of the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (NMPFT) in Bradford for nine years, during which time she had become a Government expert advisor to ensure that important photographic collections were retained in the UK. Under Amanda’s tenure the museum underwent a £16 million redevelopment and became the most visited museum outside London, attracting as many as one million visitors a year. The museum also won a raft of national and international awards for design, content, innovation and excellence. It has since rebranded as the National Media Museum. Prior to the NMPFT, Amanda was at the Royal Photographic Society, which she joined in 1985. Here she was responsible for the public face of the Society, its archives and the Commercial Centre in Bath, before going on to become its Chief Executive Officer in 1990. Amanda’s first job was at the Rowan Gallery in London, which she joined in 1976. She went on to set up the first ever British contemporary art fair in Bath in 1980. Amanda was educated in England and France. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Bradford University in 2000 and an Honorary Fellowship from Bradford College. She has two daughters, and two grandchildren (and one more expected in April 2014).
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About British Film Institute: British Film Institute is a charity governed by a Royal Charter combining cultural, creative, and industrial roles.
Albert Ellis
Chief Executive Officer of Staffline
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About Staffline: Staffline is a national recruitment organization with more than 350 locations across the UK along with specialist welfare to work division.
Shiv Rajendran
CEO of Affectively
Founder Affectively Learning
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About Affective Learning, Affectively: Immersive English Language Training
Nikki Cochrane
CO-CEO & Co- Founder of DigitalMums
Nikki set up the business with Kathryn so the weight of our flexible mission falls on her shoulders. She comes out in hives if she has to leave E8 and is the only person under 90 with an addiction to wine gums.
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About DigitalMums: Digital Mums is a social media skills training.
Andrew Kidd
CEO of Arvon
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About Arvon: Arvon offers creative writing classes and retreats led by great writers that are designed to push, inspire, and alter people’s writing.
Ameen Jan
CEO, Founder of EDeQUAL
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About EDeQUAL: Focused on providing students and schools with international standard education in a blended learning classroom.
Adrien Nhem
CEO of Workshopr
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About Workshopr: Workshopr is a practical online education platform aimed at bridging the gap between education and the job market
Kate Lander
CEO of Ivy House London
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About Ivy House London: Ivy House London is a personal and professional development company that offers leadership and life skills training and coaching programs.
Helen Tupper
Co-founder & CEO of Amazing If
Helen Tupper is the co-founder of Amazing If, an award-winning career development and training business, that helps organisations to engage their employees and individuals develop the skills to succeed in a Squiggly Career. Alongside Amazing If, Helen is the Director of Hoxby Collective’s Futureproofing Consultancy, helping organisations ensure their purpose, culture and structure are future fit, and a founding member of The New Work Network, an initiative designed to accelerate the adoption of flexible working. Her career in marketing has included roles as Marketing Director for Microsoft, Marketing Director for Virgin Red and Global Head of Customer Experience and Thought Leadership for BP Castrol. Helen shares her thoughts on the future of work and careers in her monthly column for Marketing Week and on her weekly Squiggly Careers podcast.
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About Amazing If, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA): Amazing If is a consultancy that provides professional training and courses for the better career development of the people.
Emma Rush
CEO and Co-founder of Think And Do
Emma Rush is the CEO and co-founder of Think And Do.
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About Think And Do: Think And Do provides Atlassian training and services to teams of all sizes.
Kerri Smith
CEO and Co-founder of Think And Do
Kerri Smith is the CEO and co-founder of Think And Do.
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About Think And Do: Think And Do provides Atlassian training and services to teams of all sizes.
Markus Kantonen
CEO, founder of Stormcharge Limited
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About Stormcharge Limited: Stormcharge provides the autonomous vehicles market with the safest, most scalable and most cost effective command and control environments.
Gareth Davies
Founder/CEO of Kwiziq
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About Kwiziq: Kwiziq is an AI language coach to help students improve their second language skills with intelligent, personalised coaching.
Fergus Bell
Founder & CEO of Fathm
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About Dig Deeper, EBU, Fathm: Fathm is a management consulting agency that offers content strategy, project management services, training and creative solutions.
Fergus Bell
Founder & CEO of Fathm
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About Dig Deeper, EBU, Fathm: Fathm is a management consulting agency that offers content strategy, project management services, training and creative solutions.
Emily Hinks
Founder and CEO of Mischief Makers
Emily Hinks runs SheSays in London – a global community helping women further their careers in creative media through talks, informative debates and a mentoring. Emily is also a facilitator on the rise in amongst London’s varied Creative scene. A Hyper Island Alumni, she’s jumped the globe leading Design Thinking and Team Development workshops for big brands and agencies alike.
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About Mischief Makers: A facilitation agency focused on collaborative working and the power of creativity.
