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 Fitness 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.
Eric Min
Co-Founder and CEO of Zwift
Zwift Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zwift. He was the Vice President at JP Morgan before co-founding and working as Chief Executive Officer at Sakonnet Technology, a commodities trading and risk management platform.
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About Zwift: Zwift operates an online fitness platform used to transform monotonous solo indoor cycling into dynamic and social adventures.
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Daniel Shellard
CEO, Co-Founder of Fiit
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About Fiit: The UK’s highest-rated fitness platform, Fiit has thousands of global members and partnerships with brands including Sky and The Gym Group.
Ian McCaig
CMO, Co-Founder of Fiit
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About Fiit: The UK’s highest-rated fitness platform, Fiit has thousands of global members and partnerships with brands including Sky and The Gym Group.
Sammi Adhami
CCO, Co-Founder of Fiit
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About Fiit: The UK’s highest-rated fitness platform, Fiit has thousands of global members and partnerships with brands including Sky and The Gym Group.
David Plans
CEO and Co-Founder of BioBeats
David Plans is a member of the University of Surrey’s Center for Digital Economy and Center for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, and is working towards machine learning solutions to foster human wellbeing. His primary research focus is adaptive media and affective modelling. Having worked on early mHealth projects in the NHS, he is now leading smartphone and wearable research projects at BUPA, AXA/PPP, and Microsoft Health with his startup, BioBeats, where they are helping actuarial and care provision teams think differently about preventative health.
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About BioBeats: BioBeats is a human company that creates digital artificial intelligence products to tackle mental health globally.
Jonathan Relph
Founder & CEO of VITL
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About VITL: On a mission to make healthy living more achievable, providing beautifully designed, expertly researched nutritional products and content.
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.
Melinda Nicci
Founder and CEO of Baby2Body
Melinda is founder and CEO of Body Collective (Baby2body) the award- winning, wellness company for women.
She is a Sports and Exercise Psychologist, author of two bestselling books, is a regular contributor on the BBC, and sits on numerous boards as a NED, including The ICE List and Team GB (Olympic and Para-olympics snow-sport teams).
Melinda was named the UKBAA High Growth Founder of the year 2019/20, and has won numerous accolades and awards for entrepreneurship, including being named in the UK list of the Most Influential Women in Tech for 4 years running.
A serial entrepreneur, she founded and sold her first business at the age of 25 in South Africa, and held the position of Senior Director for Consumer health Innovation at Philips in Amsterdam. Melinda brings her passion for sport, performance and wellness to the numerous companies she advises and has created a global business with Body Collective, helping millions of women all over the world to live healthier and happier lives.
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About Baby2Body, GB Snowsport, ICE List: Baby2Body is a fully automated health, fitness and wellbeing coaching platform for pregnant women and mothers.
Charles Wells
Founder & CEO of HelloSelf
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About Braintech, HelloSelf: HelloSelf is a health and wellness platform that provides its users with digital access to therapists.
Adam Bataineh
Co-Founder of Span
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About Span: Span is a fitness and health tracker app that offers data-driven support for health and fitness.
Alex Hind
CEO & Co-Founder of Heka
Alex Hind, CEO & Co-Founder of GoSweat.
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About Heka: The personalised health platform to make your employees feel valued.
Jack Tang
Co-Founder & CEO of Urban
A startup entrepreneur and angel investor. Currently Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Urban Massage – a B2C and B2B technology marketplace connecting wellness professionals with buyers in their local neighborhood. Prior to founding Urban Massage, he founded a social network and app-based job board TheStudentJob.com
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About Urban: Urban is an online wellness appointment platform for booking in-person and online treatments.
Nikunj Sondagar
Co-Founder & Non Executive Director of Brushlink
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About AUXO, Brushlink, Healthcare Angels Network, Medicalsupply, Tooth Wise, Wise360: Brushlink is a health and wellness company that specializes in the fields of oral care and dental insurance markets.
Nicholas Begley
Co-Founder of PSYT
Nick read physics at University College London, then qualified as an actuary and worked in the City of London for 8 years before retraining in psychology. He specialised in the neuroscience of mindfulness at UCL and the Institute of Psychiatry, and helped start up mindfulness company Headspace as Head of Research before founding PSYT.
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About PSYT: PSYT exists to help individuals live happy, fulfilling and productive lives.
Nik Naidoo
Co-Founder & Head of Brand of Grndhouse
Nik Naidoo Co-Founder & Head of Brand at Grndhouse.
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About Grndhouse: Grndhouse is an online fitness platform.
Louis Rennocks
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Grndhouse
Louis Rennocks is the Co-founder and managing director of Grndhouse.
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About Grndhouse: Grndhouse is an online fitness platform.
Paresh Thakkar
Founder of O-Teas
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About O-Teas: Oteas is a specialist British tea company.
Josip Balažević
Co-Founder of Racefully
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About Racefully: Enabling businesses to increase employee engagement and lower health costs through a compelling virtual team-based fitness solution.
Lanre Olaitan
Co-Founder of MedCircuit
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About MedCircuit, NHS England, NHS England: MedCircuit is a groundbreaking AI triage software assisting doctors and nurses in the clinical setting
Pamela Scarborough
Co-Founder & Clinical Director of Pactster
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About Pactster: Pactster is a social exercise platform for people with specific health conditions.
Jorge Armanet
CEO & Co Founder of HealthUnlocked
Technology and Media Entrepreneur In 2000 he founded Plataforma Publico, an open source media lab that promotes cultural creativity and ideas; in 2002 he founded the popular network and magazine Hecho en Chile – a Chilean ‘Big Issue’ and support network for low-income students; in 2007 he founded DO TANK, a technology lab building functional prototypes for the private sector to test and scale new web business models; and in 2009 he co-founded HealthUnlocked, the social health platform. He holds degrees in Engineering, Economics, Arts and Business from the Catholic University of Chile, Goldsmiths College, and Cambridge University. He held academic scholarships from the British Chevening, the Shell Centenary Fund, the Cambridge Overseas Trust and the Jesus College Foundation. Based in London, UK, he is now full time and permanently dedicated to HealthUnlocked.
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About HealthUnlocked: HealthUnlocked is a social network for health.
Jamie Ward
CEO & Co-Founder of Hussle
Jamie Ward grew up in Northern Ireland and then went to Nottingham University to study Chemical Engineering (MEng). Prior to becoming an Entrepreneur Jamie most recently working for Ernst & Young, running large scale M&A projects focusing on pre-deal due diligence and post-deal merger integration. Whilst training for a sporting event Jamie and his colleague at the time became frustrated at the lack of flexibility in the health club market. The pair saw a gap the market to make it easier and more flexible for people to go to the gym whilst providing an additional revenue to gyms. Hussle (formerly PayAsUGym) was launched in February 2011and has grown to the largest online gym marketplace in the UK with over 2,500 gyms on board servicing the need of thousands of those of us with lifestyles that demand flexibility. Hussle has developed into mainstream tech enabled fitness brand and a sophisticated pricing and insight tool for operators to acquire new customers and maximize club yields.
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About Hussle: The largest health & wellness platform in the UK connecting people and fitness.
Neil Harmsworth
Co-Founder & COO of Hussle
Co-Founder and Business Development Director at payasUgym.com. Focused on business innovation, finding new and better ways to do things and challenging ‘business as usual’. Constantly questioning why things are done the way they are and pushing people to think differently. The ‘ideas’ guy.
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About Hussle: The largest health & wellness platform in the UK connecting people and fitness.
Nick Paulson-Ellis
Founder & CEO of The Sports Edit
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About The Sports Edit: The Sports Edit is a multi-channel retailer.
Joseph Welstead
Co Founder & CEO of Motion Nutrition
Former international swimmer, Joe is a performance expert and cofounder of Motion Nutrition. ‘Smart drugs’ are what Joe and his team of neuroscientists develop helping to improve decision making, memory recall and mental performance under stress.
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About Motion Nutrition: Motion Nutrition help people stress less, sleep deeper and do better with our organic supplements.
Edem Vormawah
Founder of WorkOn
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About WorkOn: Software platform and marketplace for fitness professionals to sell fitness programs online.
Dale Goulding
Co-Founder of WorkOn
Co-Founder at WorkOn.
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About WorkOn: Software platform and marketplace for fitness professionals to sell fitness programs online.
Henrique Zago
Founder of WorkOn
Co-Founder at WorkOn
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About WorkOn: Software platform and marketplace for fitness professionals to sell fitness programs online.
Cheryl Anne Slater
Founder of Soul Seed Media
Founder at Soul Seed Media
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About Soul Seed Media: The best recommended retreats from around the world.
Xavier Bernal
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Findoc
Xavier Bernal is Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Findoc.
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About Findoc: Platform for booking appointments with healthcare professionals.
Sylvain Vuillen
Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Findoc
Sylvain Vuillen is serves as a Chief Operating Officer at Findoc.
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About Findoc: Platform for booking appointments with healthcare professionals.
Megha Prakash
CEO & Founder of Earthmiles
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About Earthmiles: Track and be rewarded for your healthy and fit activities. Get exclusive deals on the widest range of fitness products.
Rebecca Terrell
Founder and Managing Director of Tribeca Studios
Rebecca Terrell is the founder and managing director of Tribeca Studios.
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About Tribeca Studios: Tribeca Studios is a boutique fitness club that operates as a pay-as-you train studio.
Philip Kasumu
CEO Founder of Lyle
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About Lyle, Scanbite: AI Nutritional Weight Loss Coach for Men
Andrew Orrock
Co-Founder of Zeffr
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About IOTICS, Zeffr: Zeffr is a platform that supports workplace wellbeing through measurement and understanding.
Sean Radford
Founder & CEO of TrainAsONE
Our founder Sean Radford is a medical doctor, an international multi-day mountain marathon podium finisher and an IT expert – he designed the first internet- enabled primary care system for UK GP’s. Additionally he has worked on many varied health & social wellbeing projects for numerous organisations, including charities such as The Amy Winehouse Foundation.
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About TrainAsONE: The award-winning AI running coach for runners of all abilities and goals.
Frank Beechinor
Co-Founder of Cadence Performance
Frank Beechinor is the CEO at SmartSpace Software Plc.
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About Cadence Performance, SmartSpace Software: Cadence Performance London’s Hub for your Cycling needs – Bike Fits, Coaching, Fitness Testing, Wattbike.
Serge Didenko
Founder of BLOCKS
Serge Didenko is the Founder at BLOCKS.
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About BLOCKS: BLOCKS is a sensor platform for industrial data collection.
Fares Alaboud
CEO & Founder of The Medic App
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About The Medic App: The Medic App gives you the ability to schedule medication reminders and track your adherence.
Daniel Pike
Co-Founder of SuperCarers
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About SuperCarers: SuperCarers is an online platform helping families to find trusted carers living in their local area.
Adam Pike
Co-Founder & CEO of SuperCarers
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About SuperCarers: SuperCarers is an online platform helping families to find trusted carers living in their local area.
Ben Barker
Founder & CEO of Run An Empire
Founder of Run An Empire.
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About Hello Lamp Post, PAN Studio, Run An Empire: A real world strategy running game
Sam Hill
Co-Founder of Run An Empire
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About PAN Studio, Run An Empire: A real world strategy running game
Daniel Williams
Owner, Founder, and CEO of WIT Fitness
Daniel Williams is the Owner, Founder, and CEO at WIT Fitness Ltd
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About WIT Fitness: Itself as a unique, multi-brand fitness concept store.
Dauren Toleukhanov
Co-Founder and Chairman of BrainPatch
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About BrainPatch: BrainPatch is a Neurotechnology startup disrupting the industry of non-invasive brain stimulation.
Jamie Wilson
Founder and CEO of hometouch
Jamie Wilson is a UK doctor and founder of HomeTouch. His company offers an online marketplace for finding experienced care professionals locally for elderly and personal care. The carers have an app that allows them to respond to job enquiries, monitors their care activities and manages their contracts. HomeTouch is supported by organisations like the Nominet Trust and Technology Strategy Board.
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About hometouch: hometouch is a home-care marketplace connecting families looking for home care to professional carers.
Emeka Ogbonnaya
Founder and CEO of Zoique
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About Zoique: A marketplace to discover and book wellness-themed team-building activities, connecting corporate teams to a variety of fitness experiences.
Maria Ferrer Iori
CEO & Founder of FitSprint
After seven years experience as a fitness instructor, Maria realised many of her colleagues were being left in the cold of the digital revolution with limited software at their disposal. To address this major market gap, she founded FitSprint – a self-service tool to digitally empower instructors. Prior to founding FitSprint, Maria founded London Fitness and Health (LF&H), and successfully implemented a variety of dance, fitness and yoga programmes throughout the UK. She holds a BA from the University of Miami and a Master’s degree from Kings College London. Maria keeps fit by teaching Zumba, Power Yoga RYT200HR, Barre, AntiGravity Yoga, and Step classes throughout Greater London.
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About FitSprint: FitSprint provides custom designed websites for fitness instructors.
Antimo Farid Mir
CEO and Founder of AREEA
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About AREEA: Pioneering urban health
Venetia Archer
CEO & Founder of Ruuby
One of the Forbes 30 under 30, Venetia is Founder and CEO of Ruuby. A graduate of the University of Cambridge, Archer launched Ruuby in 2015, and the company has since been voted best on-demand app by Vogue, Harpers’ Bazaar and others. Ruuby is a luxury on-demand beauty services platform operating in London, delivering beauty and wellness services to private clients, hotel groups and other corporates.
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About Ruuby: London’s On Demand Beauty Services Marketplace
Sean Downey
COO + Co-Founder of MagnaPass
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About MagnaPass: MagnaPass is a fitness eco-system, allowing Partners (studios/freelancers) ways to gain new clients & manage their business.
Ilyanna Kerr
Co-Founder & CEO of See What I Mean
Ilyanna studied Design at Goldsmiths College, University of London and the SWiM app originated from a final year project focused on how linking speech to images can strengthen understanding and aid communication. Ilyanna’s work as a designer focuses on interaction and visual communication. She has worked at leading design agency Pentagram, where her clients included Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres, the Science Museum, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the Royal Academy of Arts.
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About See What I Mean: See What I Mean is a speech to image communication tool that translates words into pictures.
Peter Rogers
Co-Founder & CTO of See What I Mean
Peter is a senior computing tutor at Goldsmiths College, University of London and is the lead developer of the SWiM app. Peter also works as a designer and programmer. His recent projects have included social and speculative design in the sphere of citizen participation and mobile location aware services.
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About Goldsmiths, University of London, See What I Mean: See What I Mean is a speech to image communication tool that translates words into pictures.
Koen van den Heuvel
Co-Founder and CEO of Fitu App
Koen van den Heuvel is the co-founder and CEO of Fitu App. Prior to this, Koen spent more than one year as a self-employed online retailer at Amazon.
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About Fitu App: Fitu App offer group fitness classes from freelance trainers for the price of a pint, at any desired time and location.
Daria Kantor
CEO & Founder of TruBe
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About TruBe: Available in London initially, TruBe instantly connects you with all relevant trainers, ready to help you meet your goals.
Tristan Rushworth
COO & Co-Founder of Class-ify
Tristan is COO and Co-Founder of Class-ify. He has 15 years experience working with some of Europe’s largest businesses helping them with the strategies and funding to scale. Tristan started Class-ify after seeing the challenges his wife faced in building her own online coaching business and the various roles a solopreneur is required to master in order to build a successful business.
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About Class-ify: Class-ify’s mission is to create wealth for personal trainers. We provide all the software, sales & marketing tools and playbooks for personal trainers to build successful businesses – all in one place.
Chakabars Clarke
Founder of Spartanfam
Chakabars Clarke is the founder of Spartanfam.
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About Spartanfam: Spartanfam is a nonprofit organization that provides bodyweight training sessions to everyone.
Rafael Michaeli
CoFounder of SAVA
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About SAVA: The first effortless continuous molecular tracker unlocking human perfomance
Alexandros Tanti
Co-Founder of Racecheck
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About Racecheck: Community Platform and Race Discovery tool for Athletes
James Mason
Founder of Massif Central
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About Massif Central: Massif Central creates gallery-quality, bespoke info-graphic artworks celebrating great achievements.
Andraz Ogorevc
Founder, CEO & Director of iHELP World
Andraz Ogorevc is Founder & CEO at iHELP World.
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About iHELP World: An online platform that provides immediate assistance by connecting users in any type of emergency.
Hana Sutch
Co-Founder and Chief Walker & Talker of Go Jauntly
Hana has over 15 years experience in the digital product design business, previously operations director at at an award-winning design studio and now co-owner at Furthermore, a digital product and service design studio. Hana is at the front line of the business and in the past has led key projects for the likes of Google, Xbox and Nike, some of the world’s most innovative and disruptive brands. She is a strong believer in the power of tech for good. Her little jaunts are mostly with her husband and four year old explorer and as long as they are by the sea or have incredible views, they always finish their walks knackered but happy.
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About Go Jauntly: Go Jauntly is a health and wellness company working to increase walking, mobility and outdoor adventures.
Steve Johnson
Co-Founder and Chief Explorer of Go Jauntly
With 15 years experience under his belt, working both agency and client-side, Steve is our resident UX visionary. Formerly Head of Design and Product Management at Global Radio and founder at Furthermore, he is firm believer in iterative design, prototyping and user research at every juncture. Steve focuses on service design, user experience, user research and tech innovation day to day whilst simultaneously tending to his large collection of Rhododendrons. His walks are normally made up of nice views, rough terrain, places to go with kids, hills, lakes and lots of wildlife with the family in tow.
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About Go Jauntly: Go Jauntly is a health and wellness company working to increase walking, mobility and outdoor adventures.
John Stuart
Founder of Active Inspiration Technologies
Founder of Active Inspiration
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About Active Inspiration Technologies: SaaS Digital Health Platform
Vincent McKevitt
Founder of Tossed
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About Tossed: Tossed is on a mission to make healthy eating yummy!
Tom King
Founder of Velruso
Chartered Accountant (ICAS), starting his career in the Banking & Capital Market Division at EY, now working for Rapha Racing Limited as a FP&A Analyst.
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About Velruso: Workout. Be rewarded.
Shara Tochia
Co-Founder of DOSE
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About DOSE: DOSE is an online destination for healthy hedonists.
Matt Lo
Founder of The Outrivals Group
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About The Outrivals Group: The Outrivals Group is a fitness studio that offers personal and small-group training, as well as fitness classes.
Mikko Petäjä
Founder and CEO of Yogaia
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About Yogaia: Yogaia is the first live, interactive online yoga studio in the world. With Yogaia, the studio is where you are.
Barry Davies
Co-Founder of Nutrivend
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About Nutrivend, Nutrivend: Nutrivend is a sports nutrition company.
Kat Farrants
Founder of Movement For Modern LIfe
Kat has been practicing yoga for over 20 years. As a corporate lawyer, she found that she stressed more about getting to class than about her clients. A car accident and a divorce taught her what an invaluable tool yoga is for dealing with the challenges life brings. When she moved to rural England, she realised that all teachers are not created equally that she had to ask the best teachers to film videos so that she could continue to practice with them. She believes that yoga, movement and breath-work are invaluable tools for people to deal with the challenges which they face in life and her aim is to make these tools, taught by the very best teachers, to be accessible to all.
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About Movement For Modern LIfe: Movement for Modern Life is born in London to revolutionise Online Yoga & Wellbeing.
Serena Oppenheim
Founder of Good Zing
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About Good Zing: Good Zing Works the simple free way to find the best health tips.
Dominic Thorpe
Founder and Managing Director- Acting CEO and in charge of fundraising, strategy, and development of Wireless Fitness
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About Wireless Fitness: The Wireless Fitness is an app that portable exercise studio in your phone
Federica Trimarchi
Founder of The Mood Club
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About The Mood Club: The Mood Club inspires and supports women finding the time to focus on themselves and take care of their well-being.
Federica Trimarchi
Founder of The Mood Club
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About The Mood Club: The Mood Club inspires and supports women finding the time to focus on themselves and take care of their well-being.
Bonnie Lister Parsons
Founder and CEO of Seen On Screen
Bonnie Lister Parsons is the founder and CEO of Seen on Screen.
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About Seen On Screen: Seen On Screen Digital makes Seen On Screen’s super successful dance
Bonnie Lister Parsons
Founder and CEO of Seen On Screen
Bonnie Lister Parsons is the founder and CEO of Seen on Screen.
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About Seen On Screen: Seen On Screen Digital makes Seen On Screen’s super successful dance
Lydia Markwick
Co-Founder of Yaantu Ltd.
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About Yaantu Ltd.: Yaantu promotes a healthy, happy lifestyle by bringing together an organisation, its employees and the charities it supports.
Veronica Fengting Xu
Founder & CEO of RAWK Ltd
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About RAWK Ltd: Tailor made macro nutrition food, delivered daily.
Raj Gurung
Founder & CEO of FIITHIT
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About : Fitness Social platform to connect people with alike minds and share fitness contents. Get inspired and motivate others along the way.
