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 Hardware 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.
Alexander Asseily
Co-Founder of Elvie
Alex is an entrepreneur and investor with more than 20 years of experience in consumer products and wearable technology. Among other things, Alex co-founded Jawbone, where he led the team to release its most iconic consumer products. Alex advises a number of companies and charities in the US and Europe, including Nectarine Health, Lilium and Atomico.
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About Elvie, State.it: Elvie is a British femtech company developing smart technology for women.
Tania Boler
Founder and CEO of Elvie
Tania is an internationally recognized women’s health expert and has held leadership positions for various global NGOs and the United Nations. Passionate about challenging taboo women’s issues, Tania founded Elvie in 2013, partnering with Alexander Asseily to create a global hub of connected health and lifestyle products for women.
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About Elvie: Elvie is a British femtech company developing smart technology for women.
Roland Lamb
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of ROLI
After leaving school in the UK, Roland moved to Japan to practise Zen Buddhism. He then moved on to Harvard University, and a degree in Classical Chinese and Sanskrit Philosophy. This – naturally – led to an interest in technology and industrial design, so he won a scholarship to pursue an MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art. While at RCA, he invented an award-winning new approach to building pressure-sensing interfaces and ROLI was born. Roland is joined on ROLI’s board of Directors by Salahdin Imam, Sarah Chalfant and Tahmima Anam.
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About ROLI: ROLI is a London-based music technology company that produces musical instruments and software products.
Michael Raven
Founder of Blazon Agency
Michael Raven is Founder & Managing Director of Blazon Agency. Michael has had Two Startup exits, and has ran 70 Agency Campaigns across Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and direct launches, actively participating in the raising of over $115M+ for his extensive list of clients.
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About Blazon Agency: The Brand Launch Agency
Alex Klein
Co-Founder and CEO of Kano
Alex Kleinis Co-Founder and CEO at Kano Computing.
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About Kano: Kano provides a system of kits and coding platform that enables users to develop apps, games, and music.
Greg Mesch
Founder & CEO of CityFibre
With over 25 years of telecom, internet and technology-based experience behind him and five companies successfully built from start-up phase, Greg is an expert when it comes to business plan development, management team building and the capital formation of high growth, fibre optic based telecom companies. Greg had extensive involvement in the founding of Esat Telecom, assisting them in raising all their early stage capital, their core product positioning and network implementation. Esat was later sold to BT for over €1 billion. He went on to make the founding investment in Versatel Telecom NV. Versatel operated in Holland, Belgium and Germany building one of the largest fibre based infrastructures in those markets. He was instrumental in the development of its business plan, recruiting the core management teams and raising over €1.5 billion in capital. Versatel was sold for over €2 billion to Tele2.
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About CityFibre: CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings plc is the UK’s largest independent provider of fibre infrastructure in secondary cities
Dimitri Mikhalchuk
Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Teslasuit
Dimitri Mikhalchuk is the founder and co-founder of several tech companies and start-ups. He is also in charge of the London based digital marketing agency. Previously he worked with some of the world’s leading chip and electronics manufacturers. Dimitri is an expert in electronics, haptics, wearables, robotics and software development. He’s at the top of the most influential people in the field of VR \ AR (according to Evening Standard, UK), keynote speaker, business consultant and an investor.
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About MKSTAR, Teslasuit, TravoLab: Teslasuit is a team of talented developers and designers, creating innovative products for XR and MedTech.
Andrey Chuprin
Co-Founder, Investor of Teslasuit
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About ITI Capital, Mainprimus, Teslasuit: Teslasuit is a team of talented developers and designers, creating innovative products for XR and MedTech.
Hammad Kayani
CEO, Founder of BitFutr
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About BitFutr: BitFutr is the home of your Crypto. The BitFutr app helps you spend your crypto, get up to 8% in saving and invest your crypto 24/7.
Daniel Ivesha
President and Founder of hereO
President and Founder at hereO
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About Beyon3D, hereO: HereO is a developer creating GPS watches for children as young as three.
Jan Medvesek
Co-Founder of Emotech LTD
Jan Medvesek is a technical co-founder of Emotech. Before joining Emotech, Jan got the PhD in Computer Science from UCL. Before joining Emotech, Jan worked on industrial Computer Vision projects across Europe and collaborated with Microsoft, MathWorks and BBC.
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About Emotech LTD: Emotech is an AI startup aiming to redefine the relationship between humans and technology.
Chelsea Chen
Co-Founder of Emotech LTD
Chelsea is a technologist and creativist with diverse and international experience: from consumer strategy planning, marketing and brands. She previously leads the OgilvyOne’s team for clients such as Diageo, VW, Nestle and P&G to name a few.
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About Emotech LTD: Emotech is an AI startup aiming to redefine the relationship between humans and technology.
Hongbin Zhuang
Co-Founder and CEO of Emotech LTD
Hongbin was the product director of Renren.com and assisted it to become one of the largest SNS in China with over 35 million monthly login users, which went to NYSE IPO in 2011. He graduated from UCL with a distinction in the degree of MSc HCI & Ergonomics and strongly believes that the revolution of human computer interaction will make a better world.
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About Emotech LTD: Emotech is an AI startup aiming to redefine the relationship between humans and technology.
Philip Ellis
Co-Founder ,CEO & COO of Beryl
Phil is here to make sure that it happens. Phil approaches cycling with the same ripped down simplicity he does most outdoor pursuits, look good and go fast. In his case one or the other is usually achieved but rarely both. With a law degree, accountancy qualifications and consulting experience, Phil brings a triple threat of legal, financial and operational experience to Blaze.
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About Beryl: The UK’s leading micromobility company
Emily Brooke
Founder of Beryl
Emily is the Founder of Beryl, the UK’s leading micromobility company. Beryl sell their micromobilty operating system to leading transport operators (Eg. London’s Santander Cycles) and operate their own bike, e-bike and e-scooter systems. Currently in 6 UK cities, with an exclusive contract for New York, they typically operate under exclusive, funded and long-term contracts. Beryl designed and built their micromobility system in-house (on-bike IoT, proprietary backend operating technology stack, on-street operations etc) which allows them to tailor their offering to a city’s needs and become their fully-integrated, long-term, micromobility partner, as well as partnering with other technology operators to sell their technology and platform in markets they are not yet in. Beryl began as Emily’s final year university project in 2011, she founded the business a year later with the sole purpose; ‘to build a better world by getting more people in cities on bikes.’ Beryl started with a range of consumer cycling products and were first known for their Laserlight safety innovation; a front bike light with a green laser projecting the symbol of a cyclist ahead of the bike. This was later adopted by all of the 12,000 Santander Cycles in London, and Beryl then went on to provide the London Bike Share Scheme with all on-bike technology and supporting asset tracking software. Beryl are the only micromobility company that is a certified BCorp. Emily has won numerous awards, including the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman New Gen Award and the Everywoman Woman of the Year, Bloomberg Innovator and in 2017 she was awarded an MBE from the Queen for her contributions to Transport and the Economy.
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About Beryl: The UK’s leading micromobility company
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.
Ben Drury
Co-Founder and CEO of Yoto
Ben began his career in 1996 as a founder of dotmusic.com, an internal venture at United News and Media which attracted over 1.8m unique users per month (in 1999). In 2000 Ben was recruited by BT Group to head up the broadband music efforts at their ISP BT Openworld where he successfully launched a major music channel. Following the partnership between BT and Yahoo! to form BT Yahoo! in 2003, Ben engineered the sale of dotmusic to Yahoo! for approx. £3.3m. Ben then founded 7digital with James Kane in 2004 with the vision of creating a digital media marketplace. 7digital operates services that bring together suppliers and consumers of digital media. In September 2008 7digital.com was the first company in Europe to launch DRM-free MP3 downloads with all four major record labels. In September 2009 HMV Group acquired a 50% equity stake in 7digital with an investment of £7.7m. Ben was named by Growing Business magazine as a Young Gun 2006 – the award for leading entrepreneurs under 35. In 2007, 7digital was awarded the prestigious Red Herring Top 100 Europe Award as one of the most promising technology companies in Europe.
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About Pimoroni, Yoto: Yoto – The screen-free audio platform for kids.
David Mitchell
Founder & CEO of XYZ Reality
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About XYZ Reality: XYZ Reality is disrupting the Construction Industry with a unique Augmented Reality solution able to reduce project costs by up to 20%
Umar Ahmed
Co-Founder and COO of XYZ Reality
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About XYZ Reality: XYZ Reality is disrupting the Construction Industry with a unique Augmented Reality solution able to reduce project costs by up to 20%
Tom Evans
Founder & CEO of BleepBleeps – Smart Family
Tom Evans is the Founder of BleepBleeps.
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About BleepBleeps – Smart Family, Central Research Laboratory, D&AD, SapientNitro: Cute, connected gadgets that make parenting magic.
Eve Tamraz Najjar
Co Founder and Chief Scientist of Sensio Air
Graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris where she wrote a thesis on the neuronal interactions during the development of the cranial circuits, Eve also has a scientific background in Toxicology, Health and Environment. Her interest in cutting edge technology led her to specialize in Synthetic Biology, an emerging research area at the convergence of advances in chemistry, biology, computer science, and engineering. She is now an Allergy UK ambassador and focuses all of her time on bringing high-end laboratory equipment to the end users in order to simplify allergy and asthma prevention.
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About Sensio Air: Sensio Air is a healthcare analytics company that helps people with asthma and allergy predict prevent and manage their symptoms.
Eliott Wertheimer
Founder of FuroSystems
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About FuroSystems: We are the direct to consumer brand for elegant, practical and high performance electric vehicles.
Albert Nassar
Founder of FuroSystems
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About FuroSystems: We are the direct to consumer brand for elegant, practical and high performance electric vehicles.
Josh Thomas
Co-Founder, Head of Innovation of Karakoram
I’m Josh Thomas, an engineer, designer and innovation specialist with a career devoted to discovering and exploiting opportunities that arise when emerging technologies or business changes create new consumer and user needs. I build and lead cross-disciplinary teams of designers, engineers, developers, strategists, stand-up comics, and experiential artists who focus on new approaches to creating digital and physical products, platforms and organizational design.
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About BuyLevel, Glorious Labs, Karakoram: Karakoram is an award-winning innovation consultancy that creates breakthrough solutions for the world’s toughest humanitarian challenges.
Dugald Macdonald
Co-Founder & CEO of Sportable
Dugald Macdonald is a Co-Founder and serves as a Chief Executive Officer at Sportable. Prior to founding Sportable, he serves as an Investment Associate at GEM Investments for over a year.
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About Sportable: Sportable is a sports data company that changes the game for teams and audiences.
Gerard Rubio
CEO & Founder of Kniterate
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About Kniterate: Kniterate is an affordable and compact digital knitting machine for your workshop.
Josh Baah
Co-Founder of Joos
Josh Baah is the Co-Founder at Joos.
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About Joos: Rent a power bank, charge your device on the move, and return anywhere in our multi-sector network; all through our app.
Hann Zhao Liu
Co-Founder of Joos
Serial angel investor/entrepreneur in a wide variety of sectors, including: hospitality, retail, technology, real estate.
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About Joos: Rent a power bank, charge your device on the move, and return anywhere in our multi-sector network; all through our app.
Tony Fish
Co-Founder of Fab Lab London
Tony is a seasoned executive director with over 25 years of experience in investment, innovation and high growth. He brings digital and transformation skills to any board. His professional life has cut across a diverse range of sectors including venture capital, health, finance, digital fabrication, media, mobile, sport and education. His attention is currently focused on AI, voice, ethics, DLT and cryptocurrency Tony has founded, co-founded, sold and listed many businesses but remains passionate about highly disruptive technology which has the capability of scaling fast and is at an early stage. He brings professional working knowledge and experience of raising funding as a founder and adviser, funding growth companies as a partner and general partner of funds and representing corporates in M&A transactions. Whilst his style is based on deep involvement, clear decision making, robust financials, fast iteration, trust, transparency and strong open governance controls; he brings innovation, entrepreneurship, energy, enthusiasm and transformation skills. In addition to speaking at over 200 events and conferences on innovation, entrepreneurship, digital trends and early stage growth, he has authored and published three books. He is a visiting Fellow at Henley Business School for entrepreneurship and innovation, Teaches at LBS and LSE and an EC expert for Big Data.
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About Fab Lab London, iNeed: Rapid Prototyping and hardware acceleration in the City of London
Gregor Hoefter
Founder of GridDuck
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About GridDuck: GridDuck is a cloud-based hardware, dashboard & API enabling control of your clients’ energy
Matko Bosnjak
Founder of Bloomsbury AI
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About Bloomsbury AI: Bloomsbury AI enables everyone to easily create their own question-answering system.
Pedro Nuñez Porras
Founder and CEO of Eskesso
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About Eskesso: Eskesso is smart sous vide cooking appliance and cloud platform.
Fred de Haro
CEO & Co-Founder of Pycom
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About Pycom: The world’s most integrated IoT Platform
Bettina Rubek Slater
COO & Co-Founder of Pycom
Strategist Marketeer Tech and innovation seeker Telco, consumer electronics and IoT specialist
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About Pycom: The world’s most integrated IoT Platform
Roger Wilson
Chairman and Founder of Adept Technology Group Plc
Roger has worked in telecommunications since 1993. In addition to being the first Managing Director for Telewest’s residential consumer business in the UK he spent 3 years in Poland successfully building a business for American investors. He was Managing Director of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association until January 2006.
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About Adept Technology Group Plc: Adept Technology Group is one of COMMS Integrators offering best-in-class breed solutions from any UK network, customized to your needs.
Mark Jenner
Co-Founder of Beeline
Mark Jenner is a Co-Founder at BeeLine.
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About Beeline: Smart navigation, made simple. For a global community of adventurers
Tom Putnam
Co Founder of Beeline
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About Beeline: Smart navigation, made simple. For a global community of adventurers
Rishi Chowdhury
Co Founder of Incube
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About Incube, Momentum London, Your Hidden Potential: Incube specializes in the fields of commercial real estate, proptech, and smart buildings.
Douglas Higgins
Founder & Director of Mujo Mechanics
Douglas Higgins is the Founder & Director at Mujo Mechanics.
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About Mujo Mechanics: Mujo Mechanics provides smart devices and intelligent cloud platform for a data-driven approach to musculoskeletal health.
Joanna Montgomery
Founder & Director of Little Riot
Joanna Montgomery started her own company, Little Riot, to develop a product called Pillow Talk. In the last few years, the company has grown from strength to strength, securing vast amounts of funding and winning several awards.
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About Little Riot: Little Riot mission is to alleviate loneliness and empower people to use technology to communicate without staring at a screen.
Paul Thomas
Co-Founder & Development Director of Cupris Health
Paul Thomas is the Co Founder & Development Director at Cupris Health.
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About Cupris Health, PD HIVE: Cupris Health develope communication software and smartphone-connected medical devices.
Jim McCoy
Founder/CEO of Q-Branch Labs
Jim McCoy joined Q-Branch Labs as Founder/CEO in 2016.
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About Q-Branch Labs: Cybersecurity protection for remote and work from home employees
Pauline Issard
CEO & Co-Founder of Trackener
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About Trackener: Trackener is revolutionising the equine care with data and technology.
Jeremie Charlet
CTO & Co-Founder of Trackener
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About Trackener: Trackener is revolutionising the equine care with data and technology.
Maria Karam
Founder, President of Tactile Audio Displays Inc.
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About Tactile Audio Displays Inc.: R&D Leaders in Sound Systems for the body
Alastair Donaldson
Co-Founder of GraphicsFuzz
Alastair Donaldson is a co-founder of GraphicsFuzz.
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About GraphicsFuzz, GraphicsFuzz: GraphicsFuzz offers automated reliability testing of GPU drivers.
Paul Thomson
Co-Founder of GraphicsFuzz
Paul Thomson is a co-founder of GraphicsFuzz.
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About GraphicsFuzz: GraphicsFuzz offers automated reliability testing of GPU drivers.
Julian Williams
Founder of Wizdish
Julian is an experienced control system developer, technical lead and architect for television broadcasting with 30 years’ experience with the BBC in the UK and USA. Computer games have interested Julian since the late 70’s and the Wizdish ROVR concept grew out of this interest. • Senior Control System Engineer & technical lead • 30 yrs at BBC in UK and USA • Avid gamer and Wizdish Inventor & Founder
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About Wizdish: Wizdish is the original virtual reality motion platform.
Will Burrard-Lucas
Founder of Camtraptions Ltd
Wildlife photographer and founder of Camtraptions, WildlifePhoto.com and RAW Exposure.
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About Camtraptions Ltd: Remote and camera trap photography
Will Burrard-Lucas
Founder of Camtraptions Ltd
Wildlife photographer and founder of Camtraptions, WildlifePhoto.com and RAW Exposure.
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About Camtraptions Ltd: Remote and camera trap photography
