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 Surrey 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.
Julian Ranger
Chairman & Founder of Digime
After early work integrating as an aeronautical engineer, Julian founded STASYS Ltd in 1987, specialising in data interoperability and the military internet, and grew it to a staff of 230, with subsidiaries in the United States, Germany, Malaysia and Australia prior to its sale to Lockheed Martin in 2005. Julian’s management responsibilities encompassed the complete range from Board level vision, direction and control to business development, operational, finance and technical leadership, including developing the iSMART process used for interoperability management by militaries worldwide today. Julian left Lockheed in 2007 as Vice President International Strategic Development, and set up his angel investment and consultancy business, J Ranger Ltd. Julian has invested and supported over 20 start-up businesses, highlights include: Astrobotic, aiming to be the first commercial lunar landing, rover and exploration business; Hailo, revolutionizing the licenced taxi market worldwide; DataSift, providing intelligent access to the world’s social data streams. Julian continues to build new businesses, currently founder and Chairman of digi.me which is reimagining the personal internet putting users back in control of their own data. Julian is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the IMechE and Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Engineers, and is also a Virgin Galactic Future Astronaut.
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About Digime, iBundle, J Ranger, Kantara Initiative, Mobile Ecosystem Forum, Worshipful Company of Engineers: Digi.me allows consumers to gather their personal data and share it with businesses in a mutually beneficial value exchange.
Roger Llewellyn
Managing Director & Founder & CEO of Kognitio
Llewellyn joined Kognitio in April 2003, having previously been Managing Director of Arelon for two and a half years – a company acquired by Cedar Software. Roger instigated the Management Buy-Out of Cedar and the formation of the Redac Group with Alchemy in May 2002. Roger has started a number of American companies in Europe, including WICAT Europe, where he was Managing Director for 6 years and Vice President USA Sales, and Macromedia, where he was Managing Director Europe for 5 years from start-up to IPO. Roger then took the helm at VINCA Europe for 4 years, until it was purchased by Legato, now EMC. He was also Vice President of Elevon Inc. He trained as an Electronic Engineer before taking his first job for Hewlett Packard. He then held senior positions in Digital Equipment and Prime Computers, before becoming Managing Director of Prime Sweden. After two years in this role Roger took the Managing Director role for Prime in Switzerland.
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About AB Electronics, Kognitio: Kognitio is an in-memory analytical software platform that supports BI, OLAP and analytical applications on large and complex data.
William Saville
Co-Founder and CEO of Unily
William Saville is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Unily. He was the Co-Founder of BrightStarr before that.
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About Unily: Unily is the full digital workplace solution uniting the very best of Microsoft Enterprise Technology.
Richard Paterson
Co-Founder of Unily
Richard Paterson is a Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director at Unily. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at the University of the West of Scotland.
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About BrightStarr, Unily: Unily is the full digital workplace solution uniting the very best of Microsoft Enterprise Technology.
Ben Stoneham
Founder and CTO of Autologyx
Ben Stoneham is the Founder and CTO of Autologyx.
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About Autologyx: Autologyx is the next-generation Fabric Automation Platform for enterprise businesses.
Paul Walsh
CEO & Founder of Infinity
Paul founded Infinity in 2010, and has a 20 year history of successfully launching tech-based companies.
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About Infinity: Infinity is a call tracking and hosted PBX service provider.
Michael Howard
Founder and Managing Director of Frontier Software
Michael founded Frontier Software in 1983 to deliver Human Resource and Payroll software from the first office in Melbourne, Australia. Michael concentrates on worldwide expansion that now includes offices in 7 countries. In May 2014, Michael celebrated the 31 year company anniversary in Melbourne, Australia.
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About Frontier Software: Frontier Software is Provider of integrated Human Capital Management & Payroll software/services.
Aaron Mason
Founder and CEO of Combine AI
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About Combine AI, Snap Out: Combine AI is a software company that specializes in intelligent business productivity tools.
James Cobb
Founder and CEO of Crowd Connected
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About Crowd Connected: Pioneering a new generation of big data location intelligence
Peter Mildon
COO & Co Founder of Vivacity Labs
Peter is responsible for the commercial delivery of Vivacity. After graduating from Cambridge University, Peter joined a leading systems engineering consultancy, leading projects across the oil, civil nuclear, and renewables industries. With substantial process-driven experience under his belt, Peter leads operations at Vivacity, ensuring we deliver on time and to specification, every time.
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About Vivacity Labs: Vivacity Labs makes intelligent cameras to gather transport data, using the latest machine learning & computer vision techniques.
Dave Ward
CEO and Co-Founder of ClubSpark
Dave founded ClubSpark in 2012 with Nathan. He has a strong desire to see a growth in sports participation across the UK and globally, through the innovation of technology and the enabling power it provides to venues and participants alike. Dave is approaching 20 years in User Experience Design delivery and will stop at nothing to ensure the team delivers a first-class experience for our product users.
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About ClubSpark: ClubSpark is an award-winning, market-leading sports booking and management SaaS platform.
Robert Newry
Managing Director and Co-Founder of Arctic Shores
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About Arctic Shores: Arctic Shores pioneer behavioural assessments combining neuroscience, AI and game technology to generate data-driven people insights.
Rod Crawford
Co-Founder & Technical Director of Zennor Petroleum
Rod’s wide experience includes the use of seismic inversion, attributes and reservoir characterisation over the whole range of geological environments: rifts, fold belts and forelands; both clastic and carbonate reservoirs; post/sub salt and sub basalt targets. Additionally, Rod has been an active member of several multi-disciplinary teams looking at projects as diverse as frontier exploration, prospect definition, field development studies and equity determinations. Rod graduated from the University of Wales with a BSc in Geophysics.
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About Zennor Petroleum: Zennor Petroleum is an oil and has E&P company focused on the UK North Sea.
Eddy Swindell
Co-Founder, CRO of Fresh Relevance
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About Fresh Relevance: The Personalization Platform to Boost ROI. Built to Help Marketers Get Their Jobs Done..
Riccardo Valente
Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Restorepoint
Chief Technology Officer at Restorepoint
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About Restorepoint: Restorepoint is a pioneer in network configuration and change management.
Hans Wiberg
Founder & boardmember of Be My Eyes
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About Be My Eyes: Be My Eyes is a free app that connects blind and low-vision people with sighted volunteers and companies.
Tony Cotterill
Founder and Chairman of BridgeHead Software
Tony has worked in IT for more than 30 years with 25 of those years spent building and managing software businesses in the UK, Netherlands and USA. As the founder of BridgeHead Software in 1994, Tony continues to lead the organization globally. He previously managed the European subsidiary of Raxco Software following its merger with UIS, where he had established and led UIS’ overseas divisions to profitability. Tony’s introduction to data and storage management was as an IT Director responsible for providing IT services to the civil engineering community. It was from this experience that he saw the need for an independent software provider that would focus on the complexities in data management.
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About BridgeHead Software: BridgeHead Software delivers data management solutions to healthcare organizations across the globe enabling them to improve patient care.
Mark Rendle
Founder & CTO of oort Inc
Mark is the founder and CTO of Oort Corporation, a new company building cloud-based software for people who build cloud-based software. Oort’s first product, Zudio, a Windows Azure Storage toolkit, is currently in public preview and will be fully launching in April 2013. Mark has been a Windows Azure Development MVP for three years. In his spare time, Mark work’s on the Simple.Data not-an-ORM and Simple.Web projects, and wanders the world speaking at conferences and user groups. Or he just geeks out learning new programming languages and frameworks; in 2013 he’s working a lot with TypeScript and AngularJS.
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About oort Inc: OORT designs and manufactures hardware and software solutions which enable customers to turn their home or office into a smart one.
Peter Richards
Co-Founder & CTO of Gleanin
Peter Richards is a Co-Founder & CTO at Glean.in.
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About Gleanin: Gleanin help event organisers leverage the social web.
Niklas Palaghias
CEO and Founder of Quadible
Dr Niklas Palaghias is the CEO and Founder of Quadible, offering a game-changing AI-based continuous behavioural authentication solution. He has a native interest in human behaviour recognition and cyber security. He was a PhD Researcher at the Home of 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey, where he received his PhD in understanding different aspects of human behaviour by using mobile devices. He was working as a software engineer for 4 years in telecommunications consultancy at UIT Athens
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About Quadible: Quadible provides the easiest and most secure way to authenticate your phone.
Alan Parkinson
CEO and Founder of Hindsight Software
Alan Parkinson is the CEO and founder of Hindsight Software.
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About Hindsight Software: Hindsight Software provides enterprise grade tools and training to help companies integrate BDD into their software development process.
