Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Founder operating in the Service Industry space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Sebastien Breteau
Founder & CEO of QIMA
Sebastien Breteau is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. He is the founder and CEO of QIMA, a global supply chain compliance solutions provider headquartered in Hong Kong. Founded in 2005, QIMA partners with brands, retailers and manufacturers in consumer goods and food to secure and improve the quality of their global supply network. QIMA combines on-the-ground experts in 85 countries for quality inspections, supplier audits, certification and lab testing, with a digital platform that brings accuracy, visibility and intelligence for quality and compliance data. In 2013, Sebastien created the Breteau Foundation, a non-profit organisation which aims to promote digital education for children in developing countries. 18,000 children are now enrolled in its program. Sebastien Breteau is also an active private investor in Europe, China & the US and has invested in over 30 start-ups globally.
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About Breteau Foundation, QIMA: QIMA is a provider of supply chain compliance solutions to secure, manage and optimize global supply networks.
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Kai Feller
Founder & CEO of Bark.com
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About Bark.com: A new better way to buy services online
Andrew Michael
CEO, Director & Founder of Bark.com
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About Bark.com: A new better way to buy services online
Niccolò Corsini
Founder, CEO of Logidot
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About Logidot: Logidot is a plug-and-play and high-performance indoor location intelligence platform for warehousing and factory automation.
Ian Strang
Founder & CEO of Beyond
Fortunate enough to have been an integral member of some very successful start-ups. ● TRM Corporation (launched fee-charging ATMs in UK) – 3rd employee to £43m exit in 2005 ● Arts Alliance Media – set up their service operations from scratch in 2006/7 – they became global leader before large exit to Luxin Rio in 2017 ● Verve (prev StreetTeam) – as MD, turned small 5 client marketing agency (£150k rev) into international SaaS company & took to £15m Series A in 2013/16. They’re now post Series B. ● Beyond – founded, current, building a consumer brand for death…
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About Beyond: Your knowledgeable companion for everything after life.
Will Wynne
Managing Director, Co-Founder & Chief Executive of Arena Online Ltd
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About Arena Online Ltd, Smart Pension: Flowers & gifts, London, UK & Europe
Sherry Coutu
Founder & Executive Chairman of Founders4Schools
Sherry Coutu is an angel investor and serves on the boards of companies, charities and universities.As an entrepreneur, Sherry established and successfully sold two businesses in the financial services industry. The first (acquired by Euromoney plc) has operations in more than 70 countries. The second was floated in 2000 on London and Nasdaq and the company was valued at more than $1 billion before being acquired (by AMP plc). Sherry is active in early stage investing and has raised several rounds of venture capital and public equity totaling more than $200 million. Sherry has decades of experience serving companies which range from fast growth private early stage to public and boards with turnover of more than £ 1 bn.She is a frequent public speaker, a national judge of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards, and presents regularly at the top business schools. She specialises in consumer, internet, information services and clean energy. Current university affiliations include Cambridge University and Harvard Business School. Charitable / Government affiliations include the Prince’s Trust, Cancer Research UK and NESTA.
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About Cambridge Angels group, Founders4Schools, London Stock Exchange, PrimeLocation.com, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Silicon Valley Comes to the UK, The Digital Property Group, University of Cambridge, Workfinder: Founders4Schools is a free service that enables teachers to invite founders of successful, businesses to visit schools, to inspire learners.
Alex Dacre
Founder & Chief Executive of Marlowe Plc
Alex Dacre is the Founder and CEO at Marlowe Plc.
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About Marlowe Plc: Marlowe Plc focuses to acquire and develop businesses in the outsourced business service sector.
Khizarr K
Co-Founder of ONLICAR
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About ONLICAR: They use Formula1 techniques to deliver scalable solutions that create actionable value for our customers.
Julien Deray
Co-Founder & CTO of Mespo
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About Mespo: Mespo is an independent platform that manages money across all of the accounts.
Richard Hart
Founder of Suggestion.io
Co-founder of Suggestion.io, NewsTrapper, Viewshound and Publisha.
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About NewsTrapper, Suggestion.io, ViewsHound: Build product recommendation wizards for your online store that help your customers purchase exactly what they want.
Prashant Kumar
Co-Founder & CTO of Cardinality
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About Cardinality: Cardinality’s innovative new analytics platform has been designed from the ground up with the primary focus on the Telco market.
Ravi Sharma
Founder & CEO of PoochPlay Limited
Ravi is the Founder & CEO of PoochPlay, a UK based startup behind the revolutionary intelligent dog well-being management app and a Bluetooth enabled activity tracker that delivers valuable benefits to dog owner. Previously, Ravi managed enterprise level product development projects for over a decade for leading brand viz. Faber & Faber, Pineapple Studios, Aman Resorts, Chanel, Elemis, Affordable Art Fair, Lulu Guinness, Karen Millen and many more. Ravi is an electronic engineer, possesses a degree in IT, a degree in business administration, a masters in marketing and management and is a PRINCE2 certified professional.
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About PoochPlay Limited: PoochPlay is a free mobile app & dog activity tracker that manages your dog’s complete well-being!
Chris Donnachie
Co-Founder of UniZest
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About BESPOKE, UniZest: Global banking for international students
Justine Roberts
CEO , Founder & Owner of Mumsnet
Justine Roberts is the Founder and CEO of Mumsnet. Over the last 20 years Mumsnet has grown into the UK’s busiest and most influential network for parents, with over 10 million unique users per month. Mumsnet regularly campaigns on issues including support for families of children with special educational needs, improvements in postnatal and miscarriage care, and freedom of speech on the internet. Mumsnet was awarded the Online Comment Site of the Year (Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards) 2011 and 2014. Justine was the Institute of Internal Communication Communicator of the Year in 2014 and EY Entrepreneur of the Year London and South Winner in 2016. Justine was one of EU-Startup’s Top 50 Most Influential Women in Startups and VC in 2019. Before Mumsnet, Justine wrote about football and cricket for the Daily Telegraph and the Times and before that she was an economist and strategist for SG Warburg. She is a mother of four (and two dogs) and was appointed CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the economy.
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About Gransnet, Mumsnet: Mumsnet is the UK’s busiest social network for parents.
Timothy Armoo
Co-Founder and CEO of Fanbytes
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About Fanbytes: Creating unforgettable experiences with the stars you love.
Guillem Singla Buxarrais
Co-Founder and CEO of Neurofenix
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About MedTech Innovator, Neurofenix: Neurofenix is aiming to make rehabilitation more autonomous, enjoyable and accessible to stroke victims.
Dimitris Athanasiou
Co-Founder and CTO of Neurofenix
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About Neurofenix: Neurofenix is aiming to make rehabilitation more autonomous, enjoyable and accessible to stroke victims.
John Mushriqui
Founder/CEO of Swiffix
Founder at Swiffix
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About Swiffix: Swiffix is a technology platform.
Serge Lubensky
Founder | Executive Managing Director of ReTool Ventures
Serge is a geek who enjoys finding pragmatic solutions to difficult problems. Along the way, he managed to become a successful entrepreneur with a track record of starting, growing and selling technology companies. Serge grew up in a family of scientists and artists. Not smart enough to become a scientist and not creative enough to be an artist, Serge chose to pursue a computer engineering degree in his hometown of Minsk strictly to avoid being drafted into the Russian Army during the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan. Serge’s first successful exit, from a failing 70-year old startup called the USSR, occurred in 1988. Fresh off the boat, Serge joined a computer company in Queens, NY, developing software for service contractors. Architecting and supporting a system that businesses relied on allowed Serge to learn the intricacies of the commercial repair and maintenance trades and ways to apply technology to solve real-life challenges for business owners and their field technicians. In the process, Serge and the company’s founder, Steven Gottfried, became friends and business partners and started to formulate plans for their next business venture. In 1999, Steven and Serge founded a cloud-based facilities management platform, ServiceChannel, with the goal of transforming the highly inefficient multi-billion dollar commercial repair and maintenance industry. As with their previous company, which was successfully sold, Steven was the idea generator and a master salesman, while Serge worked behind the scenes as CTO to help ServiceChannel achieve a dominant position in the global facilities management marketplace. In 2016, Serge moved to London to accelerate ServiceChannel’s expansion in Europe. In the summer of 2017, Accel, an elite technology VC firm, invested $54M in ServiceChannel continuing to fuel its growth and allowing Steven and Serge to realize a highly successful exit. Now Steven and Serge run ReTool Ventures, a technology investment firm.
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About Equip ID, ReTool Ventures: ReTool Ventures is a new technology investment firm that seeks to retool the facilities management industry by curating a “digital toolbox”
Guy Armitage
CEO / Founder of Zealous Solutions
Guy graduated MSci Artificial Intelligence from Kings College London, before working 3 years for the London Stock Exchange, heading up the FTSE reviews and streamlining processes within the business. In 2006, Guy quit to start a IT consultancy and contracting company in Cairo, Egypt (Bright Creations), where he and his partner grew to 25 employees, and contracts with local and international companies (Google), before selling up and returning to the UK (2 weeks before the Egyptian Revolution). Upon returning Guy came up with Zealous, a creative network aimed at empowering artists worldwide, facilitating collaboration, promotion and distribution of media across all creative fields. Having spent the first year bootstrapping on a shoestring budget, Zealous hired it’s first employee in January 2012.
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About Zealous, Zealous Solutions: Zealous Solutions is a cleaning, hygiene, maintenance, garden and pest management company.
Matthew Connelly
Founder & CEO of ihateironing.com
Mr. Matthew Connelly, also known as Matt, serves as Managing Director of ihateironing.com Ltd.
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About ihateironing.com: ihateironing.com is a company that provides dry cleaning and laundry services on delivery.
Ian Hobson
Co-Founder, CEO & Managing Director of ChargeBox
Ian has set and delivered the mission and objectives for ChargeBox which has seen the company grow rapidly. Involved since the companies inception, Ian took over control of the company and formulated the change in strategy driven by the smart phone market and Olympics in 2012. Ian is passionate about ChargeBox and passionate about bringing free charging to everyone who needs it everywhere they need it. A graduate of Imperial College, Ian’s career has taken him from Accenture to Hambrecht & Quist and Tibco, all the time delivering rapid growth and businsess development.
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About ChargeBox: ChargeBox They pride Theirselves for providing the easiest to use, most trusted and innovative charging solutions for public spaces.
Glenn Woodcock
Founder of Global City Futures
Glenn Woodcock is the Founder at Glenn Woodcock. He also the Diretor at Oxygen House and in Low Carbon.
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About Global City Futures, Low Carbon, Oxygen House: Global City Futures is a professional consultancy that bridges the gap between the public sector, private investment, and local communities.
Daniel Axsäter
Co-Founder & Managing Director of bySTORED
Daniel Axsäter works as a Co-Founder and Managing Director at bySTORED.
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About bySTORED, CronLab Sweden AB, CronLab Sweden AB: Taking the stress out of storage since 2013
Sir Nigel Shadbolt
Co-Founder of Open Data Institute
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt is Chairman and Co-Founder of the Open Data Institute. He is alsoProfessor of Artificial Intelligence and Head of the Web and Internet Science Group, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton. With over 400 publications he has researched on topics ranging from cognitive psychology to computational neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence to the Semantic Web. He was one of the originators of the interdisciplinary field of Web Science and is a Director of the Web Science Trust which seeks to advance our understanding of the Web and promote the Web’s positive impact on society. He has recently been awarded £6M funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to lead a research project on The Study and Practice of Social Machines (SOCIAM). In 2009 the Prime Minister appointed him and Sir Tim Berners-Lee as Information Advisors to transform access to Public Sector Information. This work led to the highly acclaimed data.gov.uk site that now provides a portal to over 9000 datasets. In May 2010 he was asked by the UK Coalition Government to join the Public Sector Transparency Board – this oversees Open Data releases across the public sector. In April 2011 he became Chair of the UK Government’s midata programme – whose goal is to empower consumers by releasing their data back to them. In the November 2011 Autumn statement he was awarded £10M funding via the Technology Strategy Board to set up the Open Data Institute with Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
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About Open Data Institute, University of Southampton: Open Data Institute is an organization thats works to lead the movement of the open data in the web.
Fiona McIntosh
Creative Director, Co-Founder of Blow
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About Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A, Blow: Blow is an online platform that provides its users with a range of beauty services.
Arjun Singh
Founder of Raptor Supplies
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About Raptor Supplies: Industrial supplies / MRO ecommerce, serving the world
Ian Walker
Co-Founder of LaundryRepublic
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About LaundryRepublic: Lockers in your building for your laundry and dry cleaning
Sarah Aramesh
Co-Founder, Director of Josla
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About Josla: Work Movement uses power of people and business to create opportunities for everyone to achieve happiness, equality and success from their W
Omer Brakin
Co-Founder, Director of La-Terra
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About La-Terra: La-Terra provides end-to-end services to clients throughout the entire investment life cycle.
Dihan Algama
Co-Founder of Henchman App
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About Henchman App: Get anything you want from any restaurant or store delivered to you in less than 60 minutes.
Philippe Legrain
Founder of Open Political Economy Network (OPEN)
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About London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Open Political Economy Network (OPEN): Open Political Economy Network is an international platform that engages and influences policymakers and global debate on openness issues.
Calan Horsman
Founder & Managing Director of Loogun
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About Loogun: The Loogun is a hand-held motorised device that cleans above and below the waterline in a toilet.
Henry Chamberlain
Founder of Loogun
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About Loogun: The Loogun is a hand-held motorised device that cleans above and below the waterline in a toilet.
Henry Chamberlain
Founder of Loogun
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About Loogun: The Loogun is a hand-held motorised device that cleans above and below the waterline in a toilet.
Matt McCormack
Founder of QDiscovery
Matt brings over 22 years of litigation support experience to QDiscovery. Prior to founding QDiscovery, Matt began his career at a Regional Litigation Support Company and was instrumental in helping guide it to enormous success in becoming one of the top National Litigation Support firms prior to its sale. During his tenure there, Matt held various positions including Senior Project Manager, Director of Operations and finally as a Regional Sales Manager. He contributed much of his success in the sales arena to his strong roots in operations. Shortly after the sale of that company, Matt joined Daegis as an equity partner. After many years of continued success in sales, Matt was then instrumental in positioning Daegis in the merger with Unify, a publicly held company. Matt was consistently the top producer at Daegis and always maintained an active role in the operations side of the business. Matt has been an active member of EDRM and other local associations. While Matt is involved in every aspect of the organization from technology to project management, his most important focus is client relations.
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About QDiscovery: QDiscovery is a provider of electronic discovery and forensic technology services across the entire EDRM spectrum.
Howard Davies
Founder of Direct Ferries
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About Direct Ferries: Direct Ferries helps customers plan ferry routes and compare prices on different lines.
Neil Herron
Founder and CEO of Grid
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About Grid: Grid connects city businesses, services, people and technology.
Maarten Wermers
Co-Founder of DriverHunt.com
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About DriverHunt.com: Help professional drivers find local jobs
Will Taylor
Co-Founder of DriverHunt.com
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About DriverHunt.com: Help professional drivers find local jobs
Hussein Yehia
Co-Founder of CairoSitters
Hussein Yehia is the founder of Cairositters.
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About CairoSitters: CairoSitters is Egypt’s first babysitting and tutoring agency.
Max Rose-Collins
Co-Founder of RankTracker
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About RankTracker: Rank Tracker automatically tracks your daily keyword positions movements across all major search engines.
Andre Kashiwara
CTO – Co-Founder of FitCat
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About FitCat: FitCat is an app, a device and a community that keeps your cat in top condition
Jared Ruddy
CEO – Founder of FitCat
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About FitCat: FitCat is an app, a device and a community that keeps your cat in top condition
Andre Kashiwara
CTO – Co-Founder of FitCat
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About FitCat: FitCat is an app, a device and a community that keeps your cat in top condition
