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 Corporate Training 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.
Rasha Khawaja
Founder of Toucan
Rasha Khawaja is the founder of Toucan. Rasha’s innate desire for knowledge took her to Brown University where she studied Psychiatry and Cognitive Science. Further education followed at both Oxford University and Cambridge University before Rasha started her career at Condé Nast Publications and went on to work at Christie’s. These experiences heightened her entrepreneurial drive and after spotting a gap in the market for a way to help creatives get their businesses out in front of influential business luminaries, Toucan was born. Rasha’s passion for innovation and nurturing new talent and business continues through her role as a member of the UKBAA, and being an active member of the advisory board of Innovation RCA and the development and strategy board of the ZSL. Outside of the world of Toucan, Rasha is a devoted mother and an adventurous traveller who one day hopes to conquer Kilimanjaro and The Great Wall of China. Rasha is also dedicated to a number of charities and sits on the board of ‘The Playing For Change Foundation’, as well as supporting her family’s charity, ‘The Said Foundation’. Toucan Ventures were proud to win ‘One to Watch – Best Entrant to the Angel Ecosystem’ at the 2016 Angel Investment Awards.
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About Toucan: Toucan Academy, our ever-growing online encyclopaedia where you can come to learn, refine ideas and find valuable business advice.
Euan Blair
Founder & CEO of Multiverse
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About Multiverse: Multiverse is a tech startup that matches talent who have not graduated from college with apprenticeship opportunities.
Jan Lynn-Matern
Founder and Partner of Emerge Education
I am a Founder and Partner at Emerge Education. Emerge Education is a European seed investor focused on companies that bridge the skills gap. Emerge specialises in providing its portfolio companies with access to market insights, partners and customers through its unique industry network. We have a particular focus on investing in challenger universities, bootcamps, workforce re-training programmes, and companies that help universities scale online.
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About Emerge Education: The only fund backed by the world’s leading education entrepreneurs
Rajeeb Dey
Founder & CEO of Learnerbly
Rajeeb Dey joined Learnerbly as Founder & CEO in 2016.
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About Learnerbly: Learnerbly is a Learning Development Platform.
Fadl Al Tarzi
Founder & CEO of Nexford University
+15 years of experience in media & technology-related businesses. Hands-on experience building successful strategies, growing companies, raising VC funds, building & managing teams. Founded and played pivotal role in growing several successful businesses,
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About Nexford University: A next generation online university providing students with access to quality, affordable, dynamic education.
Craig Massey
Founder of Satoshi Block Dojo
Over the last 23 years, Craig has started five technology companies primarily in the mobile and digital marketing space. He has sold four of those companies including Last Second Tickets, to Monitise PLC in June 2014 for £12.3M and Brainstorm to Opera Telecom for £3.2M. This means he totally connects with entrepreneurs and understands their pain in starting a new company. It also means that he understands how to use digital marketing efficiently to reach both B2B clients and direct to consumers.
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About Satoshi Block Dojo: Satoshi Block Dojo provides best-in-class with cutting-edge technology to educate, develop, and elevate start-up entrepreneurs.
Gi Fernando MBE
Founder of teamtogether
Founder of Freeformers
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About New Automotive, Subak, teamtogether: teamtogether is the change management platform that humanises organisational transformation by putting people at the heart of change.
Rhys Marc Photis
Founder & MD of GPi
Rhys is best known as a passionate advocate of people-driven business growth that is future proof. He is an entrepreneur and acclaimed leadership and business coach; co-founded GPi and developed the Pathfinder method to enable business leaders to unlock their business potential and find their own way. He regularly publishes articles on digitalization on LinkedIn and is a business writer for www.BusinessZone.co.uk. Coming from a dynamic entrepreneurial background he understood early on the ups and downs of successful family businesses. He was an intrapreneur within large organisations, setting up businesses in emerging markets and seen first-hand the dynamics of team growth as a result. Then went on to lead international internet-based projects that rolled out across over 50 countries, which inspired him to do an MBA International. He has been the founder and entrepreneur of his own businesses since 2004. Rhys is fascinated about technology and the possibilities which come with it. However, he believes we should use technology to better our lives. Furthermore, he believes the success of digitalization lies with getting the people and the organization ready to embrace change… for the better.
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About GPi: GPi Global Performance Improvement enable your sustainable growth from the inside out by providing a unique business diagnostic tool.
Sean Dukes
Founder and CEO of Learnsmarter
Sean Dukes is the founder and CEO of Learnsmarter.
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About Learnsmarter: Learnsmarter provides on-demand training administration solutions for organisations of any size.
Boyd Mulvey
CEO & Founder of Chorus Intelligence
Boyd started his career in 1990 as a data analyst for Credit Suisse Financial Products (CSFP), an investment bank which created and traded derivative financial instruments based in London. At CSFP Boyd created a database for analysing capital at risk for the bank called FRED (Financial Risk Exposure Database) which is still in use today. Boyd moved from analyst to strategy at UBS and then into investment banking where he helped to raise money for and float several technology companies on the UK Stock Exchange before launching a Venture Capitalist Fund called the CREATE East of England Fund, which specialised in investing into early stage tech companies around the Cambridge area. Following the completion of that Fund, Boyd founded Chorus Intelligence to focus on data analytics once again.
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About Chorus Intelligence: Chorus Intelligence provides technology that allows authorities to investigate crimes using mobile phone records.
Kaan Akın
Founder, CEO of Hackquarters
Tech investor, startup mentor and founder of Hackquarters Startup Accelerator. He is involved with corporate accelerator programs.
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About Hackquarters: Hackquarters accelerated 150+ startups and helped 40+ corporates to innovate with startup collaboration
Dom Barnard
Founder of Virtualspeech
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About Virtualspeech: Virtualspeech provide a realistic training platform for soft skills training in VR.
Damien Ducourty
Founder & Managing Director of B9lab
#B9lab is the independent provider of quality education, advice and research about blockchain technology and decentralised applications. Our clients are leading global institutions as well as talented individual developers around the world. I’m an experienced entrepreneur and executive with a track record of bringing disruptive software solutions to market in technology and finance. I like working with groups of talented people to provide tangible and valuable solutions. I always engage ethically and believe that sustainability and accountability can fuel growth. I want to be proud of what I do everyday! Attributes: Hands on, conscientious, strategic, persistent but not stubborn, creative, curious and highly personable, love Win Win, try hard everyday to change the world and resist my biases.
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About B9lab: Upskilling gifted developers for high paying, bleeding-edge jobs whatever their background
Clare Griffiths
Founder and Chief Enabler of The Thrive Effect
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About The Thrive Effect, University of Brighton: The Thrive Effect provides business coaching and professional training to aspiring female entrepreneurs.
Martin Higham
Founder & Partner of Ocasta
Martin Higham serves as a co-founder and partner at Ocasta.
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About Ocasta: Ocasta develops knowledge, training & education tech for your employees or students.
Kirsty Hulse
Founder and facilitator of Roar!
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About Roar!: Roar! offers tangible and measurable trainings designed specifically for agency environments.
David Lawlor
Co-Founder of Enforcd
David is co-founder and COO of Enforcd, and has worked in the financial services industry for over 20 years. He is a senior product manager and content expert, who most recently led Thomson Reuters’ response to Dodd Frank and MiFID 2. As Accountable Product Owner he managed across all work streams to formulate strategy and execute on the firm’s product roadmap and was the key Thomson Reuters regulatory representative at all major industry events and groups. Earlier in his career David worked as an FX broker for ICAP, and an FX and Eurobond trader at UBS. He also spent a period of time running the content business for risk, for Deutsche Bank.
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About : Enforcd is a global regulatory intelligence platform that helps banks and others stay up to date with regulatory change and identify risks.
Jamie Randall
Founder of The Friendly Nerd
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About The Friendly Nerd: The Friendly Nerd Ltd is an innovative cyber security training company specialising in practical, approachable training for SMEs
Phanella Mayall Fine
Co-Founder of Up Rising
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About Up Rising: Up Rising offers group and individualized training in wellbeing areas and transforms the workplace by coaching and strategic consultancy.
Helen Richardson
Founder & Chair of Workpays
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About Workpays: Workpays provides apprenticeship, professional coaching, and educational training services.
Sue Wright
Founder of First in the Queue
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About First in the Queue, The XX Corporation: First in the Queue provides mental resilience training through professional coaching.
Tim Aston
Founder and Director of emoquo
Tim Aston is Founder & Product Director at emoquo.
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About emoquo: Emoquo is an award winning digital coaching app and real-time people analytics platform for everyone at work.
