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 Loyalty Programs 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.
Adam Ward
CEO & Co-Founder of Airtime Rewards
Adam is the co-founder and CEO of Airtime Rewards Ltd.
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About Airtime Rewards: Airtime Rewards is an innovative loyalty platform pioneering unique rewards solutions with mobile operators.
Josh Graham
Co-Founder & CMO of Airtime Rewards
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About Airtime Rewards, Samply: Airtime Rewards is an innovative loyalty platform pioneering unique rewards solutions with mobile operators.
David John
Founder & CEO of Loyalize
David has worked for a number of financial organisations, from Private Equity to Commodity Trading. Most recently, he worked as a Financial Services Consultant, focussed on developing and supporting national and international businesses going through strategic change. Outside of business, David is a keen and accomplished rugby player, and attempting golfer!
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About Findr, Loyalize: Loyalize is a white label payment, loyalty and customer engagement platform
Tsewang Wangkang
Co-Founder of Embargo
Tsewang is the visionary. Tibetan by origin, born in India and raised in Switzerland, his background is multi-faceted. He studied finance at the University of Zurich and went onto work in London, Hong Kong and Switzerland for several, multi-national bulge, bracket banks. He has spent over nine years in Investment Banking at JP Morgan and UBS, where he led a number of major mergers and acquisitions as well as capital market transactions. Tsewang also established the regional franchise and promoted strategic equity solutions in Europe. As co-founder of Embargo, one of his key strengths is knowing how to lead the business, identify its needs, as well as find solutions. Since launching the business, Tsewang implements his high-level expertise to continuously drive innovation across all elements of the company.
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About Embargo: Beacon powered loyalty app and SaaS/CRM system for hospitality businesses and customers
Charlie Casey
Co-Founder & CEO of LoyaltyLion
Charlie sets the company’s vision and strategic direction. He holds a degree in Economics and has worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as an Economist and Deloitte as a Management Consultant. When Charlie isn’t working on LoyaltyLion, you’ll find him training for his next challenge.
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About LoyaltyLion: Social loyalty framework for ecommerce
Dave Clark
Co-Founder & CTO of LoyaltyLion
Dave handles software development, system administration and design. He holds a degree in Computer Science and has worked for Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Alongside LoyaltyLion, Dave writes about coding and devops and reads lots of books.
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About LoyaltyLion: Social loyalty framework for ecommerce
Ayo Dawodu
CEO & Co-Founder of Loystar
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About Loystar: Loystar is a loyalty and retail platform that helps merchants build customer loyalty and drive repeat sales in their business.
Marcus Kern
Co-Founder, CEO & Director of Duesday
Kern started as an entrepreneur in 1998 when he founded voiceIT communications, offering voicemail services. Prior to that Kern graduated with distinction in Physics at the University of Hamburg after completing a research year at the Optoelectronics Research Centre in Southampton. Early in the new millenium Kern led the architecture and implementation of O2’s strategic SMS platform. During 2004 Kern worked for T-Mobile International driving technical design and implementation of a £2 million SMS/MMS alerting platform across T-Mobile’s European footprint. In 2005 Kern co-founded Mobile Interactive Group (MIG) and started as CTO. He was imperative to MIGs expansion to 200 employees over six years. In 2008 MIG was ranked No.1 in the Tech Track 100, securing the title of fastest growing technology company in the UK. MIG was acquired by NASDAQ listed Velti plc in November 2011 and Kern then acted as VP of Technology for the corporation. In 2014 Kern co-founded Fonix Mobile and guided the messaging and payments venture throughout its three year growth phase. In early 2016 he co-founded CFT Group, a brand new payments provider re-inventing direct debits through a revolutionary consumer incentive scheme: DUESDAY. In December 2017 Kern was named Digital Entrepreneur of the Year by Cornwall Live,
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About Duesday, Fonix: Duesday is a Payment Institution.
Ebbe Groes
Member of board, Investor, Phd Economics, Harvard, CEO & Founder Everymatrix ltd of Shopbox
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About : Shopbox is a cloud-based checkout system that empowers business owners in hospitality to run their business hassle-free.
Alexander Mark Lemon
President,Co-Founder & Executive Director of Mkango Resources
Mr Lemon is a graduate of the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, London (MSc Mineral Exploration) and Oxford Brookes University (BSc Geological Sciences) He has 21 years experience in mineral exploration and business development and from 1994 to 2001 was the Managing Director of a Gold Mining company, which owned and operated a producing gold mine in Central Asia, where he gained extensive operating experience in emerging markets including government negotiations and project management. From 2001 to 2005, he worked for a family office Allied Commercial as an investment advisor. Mr Lemon is a founding Director and President of Mkango Resources Limited which listed on the TSX.V in January 2011 and is a founding director of its major shareholder Leo Mining and Exploration Limited. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society and a Member of the Southern African Institute of Mining & Metallurgy.
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About Mkango Resources: Mkango Resources Ltd. is a mineral exploration and development company.
Greg Barden
Founder and CEO of Pixie
Greg Barden is the Founder and CEO at Pixie.
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About Pixie: Pixie is a community marketplace for people to discover, pay and earn loyalty across independent businesses
Dmitry Gorkov
Founder of CASHOFF
Founder of CASHOFF (Top 10 Fintech by Deloitte). Strong business background, MBA, excellent experience and knowledges in e-banking.
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About CASHOFF: Provides profit-generating open banking API solutions for banks and unique digital experience for their consumers
Massimo Sirolla
Co-Founder and CEO of Loyalzoo
Loyalzoo is an innovative and super simple loyalty card app for independent merchants. It helps retail businesses increase their revenue by improving repeat business. See www.loyalzoo.com for further details.
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About Loyalzoo: Digital loyalty system for independent retailers and eateries
Martin Wright
Founder of Lucky Checkout
Martin Wright is a serial entrepreneur with a history of being at the forefront of innovation and new ideas. Whether it be the oldest internet bookmaker in Britain or more recently peer-to-peer lending, Martin has been there before most people have started poking around to see what this next big thing everyone is talking about is. He got a degree in Computer Science at a time when everyone still said he was much too interesting and extroverted to do Computer Science, has lived in 3 countries and 2 of the world’s most important cities. He has stood for Parliament, been granted a patent by the US patent office, and learnt to fly a plane and play the piano. But nowadays, in his spare time you are more likely to find him standing on a stage in front of a large(-ish) crowd while singing his heart out.
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About Lucky Checkout: Lucky Checkout is the smartest and most rewarding way to shop online
Robin Vanderzee
Co-Founder of Scrummy Club
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About Scrummy Club: Scrummy is the smarter alternative to paper loyalty cards and will become the complete consumer experience for independent merchants.
John Stuart
Founder of Active Inspiration Technologies
Founder of Active Inspiration
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About Active Inspiration Technologies: SaaS Digital Health Platform
Luke Ballantyne
Co-Founder, Director of WhotNow
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About WhotNow: WhotNow is the app that rewards you for going out.
Alex Munro
Founder of SpreeTree
Founder of SpreeTree.
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About SpreeTree: SpreeTree offers a loyalty platform that enables physical stores to reward their customers.
