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 Children 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.
Sylvana Ward Durrett
CEO & Co-Founder of Maisonette
Whether you’re shopping for yourself, for your groceries, or for your dog, there’s some sort of curated, online, one-stop shopping solution,” says Maisonette co-founder and CEO Sylvana Ward Durrett. “We as parents–my co-founder and I–sort of scratched our heads when we realized this didn’t really exist in the kids world.” A former assistant to Anna Wintour and one-time editor at Vogue, Durrett has made it her mission to streamline the process of shopping for children’s luxury clothing.
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About Maisonette: Maisonette is a children’s clothing and lifestyle e-commerce site.
Ralph Cunningham
Chief Executive Officer of Hamleys PLC
Ralph Cunningham is the chief executive officer of Hamleys Group.
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About Hamleys PLC: Hamleys offers toys and products of all kinds for kids, bringing magical experiences.
Rene Rechtman
CEO of Moonbug
René Rechtman has been a successful part of the media, entertainment and tech environment since 1998 both as an entrepreneur and investor. René has completed three significant exits. Most recently, selling Maker Studios to The Walt Disney Company, prior Goviral to AOL and in 2005 leading Tradedoubler to IPO. René has been listed in Wired Europe’s Top 100 most influential list several times.
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About Moonbug, The Walt Disney Company: Moonbug is a global digital-first entertainment company for kids.
Asi Sharabi
Co-Founder & CEO of Wonderbly
Founded in 2014, Wonderbly is a unique, award winning startup that lives on the intersection of storytelling, engineering, digital and print. We are building a new class of global publishing business that brings millions of people into our superbly high quality products – as co-creators and audiences – and in doing so empower them to build connections with each other. We’re calling it Personal Publishing and we believe it’s going to be massive. Backed by top VCs (inc Google Ventures) Our company is based in the UK but with a global footprint. We are a ‘full stack publisher’, handling every aspect of the process of creating our books and serving our customers through our zero inventory, direct to consumer model. While we keep growing and nurturing our core business – creating stunning, uncompromisingly high quality and technically ambitious personalised books for kids – we have recently launched Wonderbly Studios: our strategic partnerships & joint ventures platform. Wonderbly Studios offers access to our world-leading personalisation expertise across design, tech and POD manufacturing.
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About Wonderbly: Wonderbly is a full stack publishing company from London.
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.
Will Straw
Chief Executive Officer of The Prince’s Trust
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About The Prince’s Trust: The Prince’s Trust is a youth charity that helps change young lives.
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.
Elizabeth Tweedale
Founder and CEO of Cypher Coders
Elizabeth Tweedale is the CEO and founder of Cypher Coders
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About Cypher Coders: Cypher inspires children to learn the language of the future through hands-on creative coding camps and courses.
Faisal Laljee
Co-Founder and CEO of KidSitter
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About Blow, KidSitter: Online marketplace for finding trusted, reliable and thoroughly vetted childcare
Joel Silverman
CEO / Co-Founder of KidsKnowBest
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About KidsKnowBest: A full-service creative agency; driven by insights; powered by youth. Delivering effective and results-led solutions.
Douglas Lloyd
CEO & Co-Founder of Macademia
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About Macademia: Macademia is an award-winning global EdTech company providing educational programming and games for children.
Andrew Purcell
CEO, Founder of Child Angel
Andrew has run a Wealth Management company for 25 years and is the Founder of Child Angel. He is at the forefront of the company and strives to achieve his heart’s desire of having an Angel look over your Child.
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About Child Angel: Child Angel™ is one of the smallest and most advanced child tracking devices available in the world today.
Gerard McBreen
CEO and Founder of Komodo Learning
Gerard McBreen is the CEO and founder at Komodo Learning.
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About Komodo Learning: Komodo Learning is an online mathematics home learning app for children.
Sara Tateno
Founder and CEO of Happity
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About Happity: Happity helps parents find baby & toddler classes. Fast.
Douglas Heidergren
CEO and Founder of Hyber
Founder of Hyber.
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About Hyber: Hyber is Sweden’s largest subscription rental platform for clothes and baby products for parents and children.
Meike Ziervogel
Chief Executive Officer of Alsama Project
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About Alsama Project, Peirene Press: Alsama aims to educate refugee children and empower refugee women in the Middle East.
