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 United Kingdom based CEO’ operating in the Social Entrepreneurship space. If you think a CEO’ 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.
Tom Hooper
Founder and CEO of Third Space Learning
Matr is Tom’s second venture in education technology. In 2009 he founded BrightSpark, an online teaching business he sold to TES in 2012. He graduated with an MA in Philosophy and Politics from the University of Edinburgh, then worked in investment from 2003-9, when his start-up career began.
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About Third Space Learning: Third Space aims to help every student access great quality online tuition to help them succeed in, and love, their learning
Lyric Jain
Founder & CEO of Logically
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About Logically: Logically develops the latest in AI technologies to combat information overload, misinformation, fake news & other types of harmful content.
Jack Parsons
Chief Executive Officer of Big Youth Group
Young, motivational and opinionated, Jack Parsons is a millennial on a mission. Making waves in the millennial market as someone not afraid to break the status quo. Jack Parsons is now CEO of yourfeed. A social platform he created to help connect young people and their skills to employers. He has grown a significant social following of brands and fans watching and supporting his mission to connect two million young people to commercial opportunities by 2020. Jack has amassed 32,000 followers on Twitter and 25,000 followers on LinkedIn – and this continues to grow.
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About Big Youth Group: Big Youth Group helps to improve the odds for young people aged 18-30 years old around the world.
Jack Parsons
Chief Executive Officer of Big Youth Group
Young, motivational and opinionated, Jack Parsons is a millennial on a mission. Making waves in the millennial market as someone not afraid to break the status quo. Jack Parsons is now CEO of yourfeed. A social platform he created to help connect young people and their skills to employers. He has grown a significant social following of brands and fans watching and supporting his mission to connect two million young people to commercial opportunities by 2020. Jack has amassed 32,000 followers on Twitter and 25,000 followers on LinkedIn – and this continues to grow.
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About Big Youth Group: Big Youth Group helps to improve the odds for young people aged 18-30 years old around the world.
David Goldberg
Co-founder and CEO of Founders Pledge
David is the co-founder and CEO of Founders Pledge a new international charity through which tech entrepreneurs commit to donate a small percentage of their personal exit proceeds to high impact social causes. Since launching in June 2015, Founders Pledge has raised $575 million for high impact charities through more than 1300 pledges in 30 countries. Having run the gauntlet of finance, start-up, and academia, David started Founders Pledge to make it absurdly easy for entrepreneurs to do good through their work and in lives. David moved into the non-profit sector from an eclectic commercial background. Immediately following high school, David joined one of the largest privately held mortgage banks in the U.S., where he launched the secondary marketing department, after which he worked as an investment banker Los Angeles. David also founded and ran a boutique real estate firm in Germany. David is a graduate of UCLA and the University of Cambridge.
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About Founders Pledge, Wayra: Founders Pledge is a global community of entrepreneurs finding and funding solution’s to the world’s most pressing problems.
Nik Kafka
Founder, Chief Executive Officer of Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF)
Nik Kafka is the founder and Chief Executive of Teach A Man To Fish. Leaving a successful banking career in the City of London for a local microfinance institution in Paraguay, Nik discovered an innovative school aiming not only to teach the poor how to become rural entrepreneurs, but to do so as a self-financing social enterprise. Having helped transform this school into a replicable model, and realising the huge potential for funding education through enterprise rather than charity, he returned to the UK to found Teach A Man To Fish. Under his stewardship Teach A Man To Fish has grown into an international network whose membership now numbers over 4,500 education institutions and experts in more than 125 countries. Over 50,000 young people have benefited directly from Teach A Man To Fish programmes across Africa, Asia & Latin America. Honoured as a Young Global Leader in 2009 by the World Economic Forum, he was more recently named in 2011 as one of Devex’s 40 Under 40 International Development Leaders in London. He holds a first-class BSc in Chemistry from the University of Bristol, an MSc in International Development from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London, as well as professional qualifications in finance.
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About Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF): Encouraging and supporting education projects that generate sustainable livelihoods for young people across the developing world.
Moritz Kurtz
CEO of Acorn Collective
Entrepreneur, doctor, dog lover. Moritz has combined 4 years of working in anaesthesia, intensive care and emergency medicine with a passion for entrepreneurship, driven by the belief that technology can and should bring opportunity within reach of everyone, everywhere. In 2017, he left medicine to co-found Acorn, a crowdfunding and startup ecosystem that helps founders and projects across the world access funding and deliver on their goals. Alongside his incredible team (and Benny, the office dog), Moritz wants to use blockchain and crowdfunding as the key tools to help those entrepreneurs that are bold and ambitious enough to help themselves. PS. Have we mentioned Moritz now gets to work with an incredible team of passionate people? Yea, they’re amazing!
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About Acorn Collective: Blockchain Crowdfunding & Startup Ecosystem
Neil Chandler
CEO of Cathartic.co
Founder at Cathartic
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About Cathartic.co: Share your story with complete anonymity
Ifty Nasir
Co-founder and CEO of Vestd
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About Vestd: Vestd is a secure online platform that makes giving shares to your team, customers or partners simple, affordable, and fast.
Anouk Agussol
CEO and Founder of Unleashed
Anouk Agussol is the CEO and Founder of Unleashed.
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About Unleashed: Unleashed works with early-stage start-ups and scale-ups to build a better and more successful business.
Robert Kay
CEO of DISC Holdings
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About DISC Holdings: DISC networks reduce costs, improve security and give individuals ownership based control of their transaction and identity information.
Katz Kiely
CEO & Founder of We are beep
A award-winning expert in open-innovation, participatory systems design and digital engagement. She converts complex challenges into memorable experiences, smart solutions and strong innovative cultures. Over a 17 year career, she has supported a host of global brands through transformation: including BBC, GSK, HP and the UN. Some highlights. She has: * Helped organisations use digital to evolve, drive efficiency and connect to customers/ stakeholders * Influenced at C- level * Build and led large multi-disciplinary teams and managed multiple service provider * Designed winning pitches, multi-channel strategies and services * Built strong partnerships * Worked in global environments * Grown large and loyal networks As a digital pioneer she has delivered a number of breakthrough projects including: * The first open-innovation competition for Hewlett Packard * A massive transformation project for a UN agency. A visible voice in the digital transformation, innovation and behaviour change arena, she is a regular speaker at global conferences including TED, SXSW and IBC and regularly writes for b2b publications on stuff like this: http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2016/8/18/recruit-change-agents-and-save-11-trillion.html#gs.Cja9aQU She is a proud ambassador for the Burning Man Foundation.
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About We are beep: beep (Business Enterprise Engagement Platform), a world changing enterprise platform, that unlocks the wisdom of employees
Simon Glass
CEO of Qodeo
Simon has worked in venture capital for Amadeus Capital Partners, advisory at EY, in academia and banking. Simon holds BA, MA and MBA degrees from Cambridge University and trained in corporate finance at London Business School. Simon founded qodeo to save transaction costs and time in his work as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Simon leads the team and strategy.
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About Qodeo: Qodeo creates smart matches between entrepreneurs and investors for faster market and reduced risk.
Peter Harrington
Founder and CEO of SimVenture
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About SimVenture: SimVenture is a business simulation tool that helps people learn about entrepreneurship and understand business issues and principles.
