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 Oxfordshire based Founder operating in the Software 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.
Ingmar Posner
Co-Founder of Oxbotica
Ingmar Posner is co-founder at Oxbotica and leads the perception and planning work within the Mobile Robotics Group. He is also an associate professor in Information Engineering at University of Oxford. He has advanced research with contributions to premier international conferences and journals. His track record includes award winning work on semantic mapping, active perception and 3D reconstruction. Following an invitation as a visiting researcher to MIT, the work he led there on active perception was awarded a Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS). Two of his recent publications have been invited to the Best Paper track at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). Posner has served twice as area chair of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), the premier international robotics conference, as Associate Editor for the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems(IROS). He convened and organised the 2013 Oxford International Summit on Robotics. Prof. Ingmar obtained an M.Eng in Electronic Systems Engineering from Aston University in 2001 and then he took a D.Phil. in Engineering at the University of Oxford.
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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), Oxbotica, University of Oxford: Oxbotica powers the navigation, perception, user interface, fleet management, and other features needed to run self-driving vehicles.
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Tomas Halgas
Founder and CTO of Stealth
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About Sphere (Acquired by Twitter), Stealth: Making AEC software talk to each other in real-time.
Colin Cooper
Sage People Vice President & Founder of Sage Group
Colin Cooper serves as sage people vice president and founder at The Sage Group.
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About Sage Group: Sage Group provides small and medium sized company business management software and services.
Ali El Kaafarani
Founder and CEO of PQShield
Dr Ali El Kaafarani is the founder and CEO of PQShield, a British cybersecurity startup specialising in post-quantum cryptography and quantum-safe solutions. A University of Oxford spin-out, PQShield is pioneering the commercial roll-out of a new generation of cryptography that’s fit for the quantum challenge, yet integrates with companies’ legacy technology systems to protect them from the biggest threats of today and tomorrow. Dr. El Kaafarani is a research fellow at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute and a former engineer at Hewlett-Packard Labs, with over a decade of academic and industrial experience.
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About PQShield, University of Oxford: At PQShield, we help customers transition their product lines from legacy RSA and Elliptic Curve cryptography to quantum-safe standards.
Andrew Barker
Co-Founder & Director of Intelligent Ultrasound
Andrew Barker is the Chairman at Oxford Brain Diagnostics .
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About Anchard Associates, Brainomix, Intelligent Ultrasound, Oxford Brain Diagnostics: Intelligent Ultrasound develops software that improves the quality, reliability, and diagnostic power of medical ultrasound.
Oren Yogev
Co-Founder & CEO of Replay Technologies
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About Blink Technologies, Replay Technologies: Replay Technologies Inc. develops video 3D reconstruction technologies.
Michalis Papadakis
CEO & Co-Founder of Brainomix
Dr Michalis Papadakis is the CEO and co-founder of Brainomix. He leads the management team, commercial strategy, fund raising, and corporate partnerships. He has grown the company from the ground up, building the company’s global presence and has raised over £15 million of private investment and public funding. When he founded Brainomix he was the Scientific Director of the preclinical stroke lab at the University of Oxford. He has a BSc Honours in Biochemistry from Imperial College London and a PhD in neurosciences from UCL School of Pharmacy. He has been an invited speaker at international scientific and innovation conferences
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About Brainomix: Brainomix specializes in the creation of AI-powered imaging biomarkers that enable precision medicine for better treatment decisions
Darryl Mattocks
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Enistic
Darryl Mattocks is Co-Founder & Managing Director at Enistic.
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About Enistic: Enistic designs and manufactures its own range of smart-meters, software and end-to-end aM&T solutions.
David Grimes
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sorted Group
David Grimes is the founder and CEO of Sorted Group, formerly My Parcel Delivery Group.
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About MPD Group, myParcelDelivery, Sorted Group: Sorted Group is a global SaaS company that provides data-driven software for checkouts, warehouses, and shipping.
Stuart Mclean
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Zonal Retail Data Systems
Stuart Mclean is the Founder & CEO of Zonal Retail Data Systems & he attended Middlesex University.
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About Zonal Retail Data Systems: Zone Retail Data Systems provides technology solutions to the bar, restaurant, retail, hotel, and leisure industry.
Tim Ford
CEO and Founder of PriceSynergy.IO
20 Years of experience within software development, system architecture and eCommerce Platforms, successfully launched a business portfolio of 6 website revenue streams, running with exceptionally streamlined automated processes. Founded PriceSynergy.IO an amalgamated price management and advertising platform, sponsored by Microsoft For Startups completely based on Azure run on a global scale.
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About PriceSynergy.IO: Delivering powerful online adverting data to make informed decisions.
Simon Wheeldon
Co-Founder and COO of CloudApps
Simon is a co-founder of CloudApps and is responsible for Professional Services Delivery and Corporate Strategy. Prior to founding CloudApps, Simon spent 4 years at Salesforce.com leading the adoption of the pioneering Force.com platform across EMEA. Under Simon’s guidance the Force.com platform in Europe grew to be a multi-million dollar business. With over 20 years experience in the software industry, Simon was responsible for the widespread sales and adoption of the Force.com platform; helping numerous Salesforce.com’s customers to build and sell their very own Software-as-a-Service applications. Prior to joining Salesforce.com Simon was responsible for the financial services business at Siebel Systems in the UK. Previously, he has held senior positions at Business Objects and Accenture. Simon has a BSc in Computer Science from Bristol University. He is married with two children and lives in Oxfordshire, UK.
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About CloudApps: CloudApps increases sales performance by motivating more of your high-value, winning sales behaviours
Anthony Day
Co-Founder & Board Member of CloudApps
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About CloudApps: CloudApps increases sales performance by motivating more of your high-value, winning sales behaviours
Jason Lee
Founder & CEO of illumr
Jason is a visionary leader with a passion for emergent technologies. He has a proven track record of identifying early-stage, high-growth technology markets and executing business as a first-mover. He co-founded one of the first internet companies in the UK, which won a global award delivering to an international blue-chip client base. His background is in designing electronic, computer and software systems for the oil & aerospace industries. Jason holds a 1st Class MEng (Hons) from Aston University.
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About Founders Pledge, illumr: illumr helps organizations to better understand and predict patterns of behavior that affect them.
Norman Shaw
President & Founder of ExactTrak
Norman has started and managed a number of companies over the past twenty-five years. His career started with Sony Corporation in Australia and subsequently the UK, marketing and selling newly developed products and commercialising Sony’s IP over a period of 10 years. Since 2008 Norman has been CEO of ExactTrak, developing the products and business of its mobile data security technology.
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About ExactTrak: ExactTrak supplies embedded technology that protects data and devices, giving the user visibility and control over turned off devices.
Mark Preston
CSO & Co-Founder of StreetDrone
Mark Preston is a Formula E Team Principal and founder of Street Drone, not to mention all the years he has worked in Formula 1 with McLaren and Arrows. His vast experience makes Mark uniquely positioned to deliver business planning and execution advice including technical due diligence, operations and management.
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About StreetDrone: StreetDrone is a full-stack autonomous technology developer
Matthew Robson
Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Perspectum
Matt Robson is Perspectum’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO), co-founder and company director. He is responsible for overseeing development and implementation of our image acquisition and image analysis pipelines. Matt has over 25 years of experience working with MRI initially through his PhD at Cambridge in “Automated Analysis of MRI Images” that followed from a Natural Science (Physics and Theoretical Physics) also in Cambridge. He followed this with Research positions at Yale University and industrial roles with GEC, Surrey Medical Systems, Picker International and Marconi Medical before returning to academia with Oxford University where he pioneered the technologies that underpin Perspectum’s products.
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About Perspectum: Healthcare, Medical Technology, SaaS
Rajarshi Banerjee
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of Perspectum
Rajarshi Banerjee is CEO of Perspectum, which he co-founded in 2012, and now employs over 100 people in Oxford, Singapore and San Francisco. Rajarshi has worked in the National Health Service since 2002, and trained in cardiology and internal medicine in London and Oxford. He developed the MR techniques for rapid non-invasive liver assessment in Oxford, and commercialized the method as LiverMultiScan, which is now FDA cleared and used in over 200 sites. He graduated in medicine from Oxford, and went on to complete a Masters in Public Health in London before returning to Oxford for his doctorate. Dr Banerjee continues to work as a Consultant Physician with Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with research into the phenotyping of liver disease at an individual and population level in adults and children. He has many years of experience in running clinical trials and working in multidisciplinary scientific teams to develop applications for cutting-edge imaging technology and is a keen advocate of smart trial design.
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About Perspectum: Healthcare, Medical Technology, SaaS
Alex Davies
Co-Founder and Tech Lead of Mooloo
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About Mooloo: Bespoke software development, simplified.
Giovanni Idili
COO / Co-Founder of MetaCell
COO / Co-Founder at MetaCell
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About MetaCell, OpenWorm: Software for Neuroscience
Daniel Mitchell
Co-Founder, CEO of Hivemind
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About Hivemind: Data science and technology company specialising in the application of human and machine intelligence to complex unstructured data problems
Zachary Yerushalmi
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Living Optics
Zachary Yerushalmi is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Living Optics.
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About Circadian Therapeutics, Living Optics: Living Optics is an imaging technology company.
James World
Co-Founder of Tungl
James World joined Imburse as Solution Architect in 2021.
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About Imburse, Tungl: Tungl is a tech assessment platform designed to streamline tech recruitment and enable data driven hiring decisions.
Roger Noble
Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Zegami
Roger Noble is a Software Developer and Data Visualisation expert with a passion for building new and innovative technologies that help people see the world in a new way.
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About Zegami: Delivering explainable AI faster and more accurately. Zegami are end-to-end imaging AI specialists combining unique tools and ML services
Stephen Taylor
Founder & CSO of Zegami
Stephen is the Head of the Computational Biology Research Group for the Weatherall Institute at Oxford University and Chief Scientific Officer for Zegami. Stephen did his B.Sc. in Microbiology and holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science. He started using PivotViewer in 2010 to visualise large genomics datasets and microscopy data. To overcome its limitations he worked with Roger Noble to develop and publish HTML5 PivotViewer. As the CSO, Stephen is focused on Zegami’s contribution to research and ensuring that the platform contributes to making new discoveries that will change and improve the world we live in.
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About Zegami: Delivering explainable AI faster and more accurately. Zegami are end-to-end imaging AI specialists combining unique tools and ML services
Sean Miller
Co Founder & CEO of Tubular
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About Jyst Creative, Tubular: A sales tracking, collaboration, and workflow platform for sales teams.
Adrien Bizeray
Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist of Brill Power
Adrien Bizeray is the co-founder and chief data scientist at the energy storage start-up Brill Power.
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About Brill Power: Brill Power is a clean-tech platform that develops cutting-edge battery management technology.
Peter Marshall
Co-Founder & Professional Services Director of Commerce Decisions
Peter Marshall is professional services manager, responsible for managing Commerce Decisions consultancy and training services and assisting Commerce Decisions’ clients to deploy best-practice process and tool support on their procurement projects. Peter’s expertise includes procurement strategy, RFX development, requirements management, planning and executing evaluations, negotiation and contractor de-briefing.
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About Commerce Decisions: Commerce Decisions delivers proven software, best practice knowledge and expert services to assist in high risk sourcing projects.
Chris Allen
Co-Founder and Chief of Sales and Marketing of Licenseware
Chris Allen is the Co-Founder and Chief of Sales and Marketing at Licenseware.
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About Licenseware: The PAYG SAM App Ecosystem – What you need, when you need it.
John Miles
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Inkpath
John is Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Inkpath. John conceived and built the very first proof-of-concept prototype of Inkpath while at Oxford back in 2013 and has been developing the idea ever since. Before Inkpath, John was Training Officer for the Humanities Division at Oxford and a Research Associate at Wadham College. And before that he taught Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he was Caroline Spurgeon Research Fellow.
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About Inkpath: Inkpath is about people performance as well as course performance.
Christopher Hockley
Co-Founder and CTO of Cocoasoft
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About Cocoasoft, Wave Marketing: Cocoasoft is a software development firm that has developed and maintains a third party email application for the iPhone.
