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 Founder operating in the Smart Cities 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.
Dan Hubert
CEO & Founder of AppyWay
Dan initially founded AppyParking after experiencing first-hand the pain of parking caused by a fragmented and broken market when trying to park near the Royal Albert Hall for a concert. From this was born the AppyParking mobile app, but more questions quickly arose… What if we could digitise parking spaces? And not just spaces – but all of the UK’s kerbs? What opportunities would that unlock? How could a digitised, dynamic kerb not only meet the ever-growing demands of urban transport today – but shape that of tomorrow? From that lightbulb moment onwards, Dan was hooked and with AppyWay, he’s leading the charge to help cities thrive, from the kerb up.
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About AppyWay: AppyWay is a kerbside management & technology firm enabling intelligent mobility for cities.
Irfon Watkins
Founder and CEO of DOVU
Irfon co-founded Coull in 2008 and has led its growth from a small office in Bristol, UK, to a global data-driven video advertising platform with offices in London, New York and San Francisco. Earlier in his career, Irfon worked as Sales Director at Dell, before moving to Florida, where he led the acquisition and running of six software companies across Africa and Europe. Following this stint Irfon decided to set up his own company. Realizing online video was the next great medium, and recognising its potential as a platform for brand engagement and publisher revenue, he founded Coull with Aden Forshaw, CTO. Coull’s platform, which processes 15bn+ video ad requests every month, dynamically validates inventory against brand safety, viewability and fraud metrics and enriches it with IAB-standard content categories. This inventory is made available to the programmatic video marketplace via a variety of ad formats across desktop, mobile and in-app environments, giving advertisers access to validated, highly-targetable audiences and enabling media partners to realize the full value of their inventory.
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About DOVU, Personal Privacy Solutions (Tapmydata): DOVU is a global rewards platform for smart travel, powered by cryptocurrency.
Krasina Mileva
COO, Legal Counsel & Founder of DOVU
Register European lawyer with over 11 years of experience in Contract and Commercial Law. Krasina has headed an international legal department in a law firm, having to deal with various civil and international matters. Then she became a sole-practitioner, focused mainly in Contract, Commercial and Company Law, whilst co-founding a construction business in Belgium. As Head of Legal at a million dollar ad-tech company she discovered her passion around Data protection, Privacy and Smart legal agreements. Being part of the Company Secretariat team in Associated British Ports gave her an additional layer of Corporate Governance expertise.
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About DOVU: DOVU is a global rewards platform for smart travel, powered by cryptocurrency.
Erik Nygard
Founder and CEO of Kofa
Erik is the Founder and CEO at Kofa.
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About Kofa: Kofa is an automotive company that utilizes the latest electric battery and motor technology.
Ian Hetherington
Co-Founder of WRLD
Ian has been involved in the video game industry since 1982. He founded and was Managing Director of Psygnosis Limited, which became one of the most successful UK based publishers. Psygnosis was sold to Sony in 1993 and Ian was retained as the Managing Director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe from 1994-1997 where he was instrumental in the design and implementation of the hardware and software for Sony’s new Playstation console, and oversaw the development of the European launch catalogue (80% market share at launch).
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About Midoki, Realtime Worlds, WRLD: A 3D cloud-based platform of real-world environments to create digital twins.
Molawa Adesuyi
CoFounder & CTO of Recyclan
Tech entrepreneur passionate about building products and business that change lives
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About Recyclan: Tech Enabled Plastic Recycling Company
Cristian Parrino
CEO and Co-Founder of Greengame
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About Greengame, OpenUK: Working with organisations to incentivise sustainable behaviour using automated activity detection, gamification and behavioural economics
Raunaq Bose
CTO, Co-Founder of Humanising Autonomy
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About Humanising Autonomy: Humanising Autonomy is building the global standard for human machine interactions.
Maya Pindeus
Co-Founder, CEO of Humanising Autonomy
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About Humanising Autonomy: Humanising Autonomy is building the global standard for human machine interactions.
Leslie Nooteboom
Chief Product Officer, Co-Founder of Humanising Autonomy
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About Humanising Autonomy: Humanising Autonomy is building the global standard for human machine interactions.
Steve Marsh
Founder and CEO of GeoSpock
Steven Marsh is a Co-Founder of GeoSpock Limited and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Steven Marsh is also the lead architect of the Collide platform and co-lead architect of GeoSpock DB. He has experience of building real-time and highly-scalable systems he has overseen the creation of GeoSpock’s state-of-the-art geo-location and social networking mobile development platform. Steven Marsh is a computer scientist. As part of his research, Steve is part of a team building a customisable FPGA-based super-computer designed to carry out real-time simulation of extreme-scale neural networks such as the brain. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
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About GeoSpock: GeoSpock builds GeoSpock DB, the unique space-time analytics database that delivers rapid insights at a fraction of the cost.
Daniela Menzky
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Angoka
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About Angoka, Auto Clubs International, CyNation, CyNation: ANGOKA is an IoT security company focused on protecting machine-to-machine communications for Smart Cities and Mobility.
Shadi Razak
Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Angoka
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About Angoka, CyNation: ANGOKA is an IoT security company focused on protecting machine-to-machine communications for Smart Cities and Mobility.
Neil Tocher
Co-Founder, CEO, CTO of NCTech
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About NCTech: NCTech is a big data and analytics provider. Pioneering edge-to-cloud big data capture & provision with ML/AI for Google, government & AEC
Eric Tomaszewski
Founder / Managing Director of Itoma Lux
Eric Tomaszewski is the Founder & Managing Director of Itoma Lux. He founded Itoma Lux in 2017 after 10 years of corporate experience with companies like Ocado, Magna Exteriors and Magna Interiors, Ishida Europe Ltd, and Kimberly-Clark.
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About Itoma Lux: We enable PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT with FINANCE and then de-risk it and increase chances of commercial success with MARKETING & SALES solutions.
Kosta Mavroulakis
Founder and CEO of Empact Ventures
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About Empact Ventures: Empact Ventures co-designs some of the leading startup, tech and non-profit initiatives for large private or public sector organisations
