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 Identity Management 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.
John Lord
Founder & CEO of Trunarrative
Appointed in 2009, John Lord leads the Group’s growing global capability to provide fraud, risk and compliance solutions to many of the world’s largest commercial organisations, governments, as well as disruptive start-ups. Prior to GBG, John led global sales before heading up the UK business for one of the world’s largest credit rating agencies, Dun & Bradstreet, and also led a major data analytics, outsourcing and contact centre business.
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About Trunarrative: Trunarrative is a risk and financial crime management platform that offers fraud prevention, identity, and compliance solutions.
Richard H Harris
Group CEO, Founder of Ensygnia
Richard is known as a hands-on, technology entrepreneur with a track record of building and transforming early-stage technology companies such as Ensygnia, Swivel Secure, Mobix, SAVortex, Clearswift and Tumbleweed. As Chief Executive and a founder of Ensygnia, Richard conceptualised and patented a visual alternative to NFC called Onescan. Ensygnia’s Onescan platform enables a consumer to go from looking to buying in under 10s from first contact – including new customers! At the Mobile World Congress over 1500 industry leaders voted Onescan as one of top 3 the innovations most likely to have the greatest impact on the mobile industry over the next ten years! Ensygnia beat tough competition from AirWatch, CloudX, Metrical and SpatialBuzz to win the Mobile Industry Awards 2014: Best Use of Software. In his spare time, he enjoys Ceroc & Scuba, is a campaigner for the rights of vulnerable adults and mental health issues when possible working with Zacchaeus 2000 Trust and Mental Health Research UK as well as mentoring Nicholas Fearn a young man with Asperger’s. Also enjoys mucking around with molten glass, composing music, painting and digital art.
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About Ensygnia: Ensygnia delivers integration Platform as a Service for large payment companies and corporations deploying omnichannel solutions
Ian Welch
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer of Callsign
Ian Welch is the COO of Callsign. Previously he held positions at Ladbrokers and Ascot Racecourse. Ian has a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from Coverntry University
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About Callsign: Delivering digital trust through simple secure customer interactions
Zia Hayat
Founder and CEO of Callsign
Zia is Chairman, CEO and founder of Callsign. With a PhD in Information Systems Security from the University of Southampton, he has served in various roles in the cybersecurity industry. From research engineer at BAE Systems to internet banking security architect at Lloyds Bank. Zia oversees the overall direction and strategy of the company while contributing to innovation and design of the service.
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About Callsign: Delivering digital trust through simple secure customer interactions
Jonathan Scudder
Founder of ForgeRock
Jonathan held key roles in a variety of large identity projects before co-founding ForgeRock in Norway, running finance and operations and then relocating to build the ForgeRock engineering lab in Bristol. He believes that awesome humans are the basis of great companies, and has spent the ForgeRock years proving this. He has sat on several voluntary, political and private boards and founded a handful of small companies in the past, but thinks ForgeRock is the best thing since sliced bread. Jonathan is a qualified youth and community worker, and has a degree in Informatics from the University of Oslo, Norway.
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About ForgeRock: ForgeRock is a multinational software company that develops commercial open source identity and access management products.
Steve Ferris
EVP Global Customer Success & Co-Founder of ForgeRock
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About ForgeRock, ForgeRock: ForgeRock is a multinational software company that develops commercial open source identity and access management products.
Justin Pike
Founder & Chairman of MYPINPAD
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About : INVENTORS OF THE WORLD’S FIRST SOFTWARE PAYMENTS TERMINAL
Donald Andrew Gillies
CEO & Co-Founder of Passfort
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About Passfort: PassFort is a turnkey compliance solution for onboarding customers in regulated markets.
Henry Irish
CPTO and Co-Founder of Passfort
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About Passfort: PassFort is a turnkey compliance solution for onboarding customers in regulated markets.
Irra Ariella Khi
Co-Founder & CEO of Zamna
Irra Ariella Khi is a serial entrepreneur based in London, who is obsessed with cyber security and data privacy. She is the co-founder and CEO of VChain, a deep tech company that is developing and patenting a blockchain solution for Digital DNA, to identify each person online and reinvent verification, privacy and trust. Irra speaks 9 languages, and graduated from Oxford University with 1st Class Honours. She is a speaker and mentor at General Assembly, StartUpBootcamp and Oxford
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About Zamna: Award-winning blockchain-powered data verification platform improving airport security while delivering a seamless passenger experience
Alexander Gorelik
CoFounder,CTO & VP Product of Zamna
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About Zamna: Award-winning blockchain-powered data verification platform improving airport security while delivering a seamless passenger experience
Robin Tombs
Co-Founder & CEO of Yoti
Robin Tombs is Founder of Yoti, a digital identity system which helps you prove who you are and confirm who other people are, online and face to face. Robin was Co-founder at Gamesys, one of the world’s leading online gaming operators with annual revenues over £200m, 950 staff and offices in 8 countries. He worked at PWC as a Chartered Accountant from 1993 to 1997 in the UK before co-founding IDM, a web game business which was sold in 1999. Robin is also an investor in a handful of early stage for profit and social UK businesses, including Infinitesima, Trumin, Luxdeco, Working Knowledge and the National College for Digital Skills. Robin is passionate about creating opportunities for young people to achieve their potential in life and to bring scalable web and mobile technologies to the not-for-profit sector. As such Robin set up ZING in 2009. He is a Trustee at Future First, a charity which is designed to help state schools build and manage an alumni community. He holds a degree in Economics and Politics from Bristol University. He is a keen sports enthusiast mostly watching either his 3 children play or great teams on the TV.
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About Gamesys Group, Yoti: Yoti is a digital identity platform that provides a simple and secure way of proving identities, online and in person.
Duncan Francis
Co-Founder of Yoti
Duncan is Founder and Director of Trumin, an events management software business specialised in making life simpler for event participants and for event owners. Trumin manages the entire event management process from registration, check-in, timing, cashless access, reporting to real-time results at sporting events and festivals around the world. In terms of major clients, Trumin is the main UK partner for Spartan races – famous for their obstacle courses. At a typical event Trumin often registers between 4-8,000 event participants in under 3 hours. Duncan has a keen interest in enabling young people from a range of backgrounds to become more active. As a result, Trumin offers timing and event management software free of charge to UK schools, colleges and charities. Trumin is also partnering with UK Youth and Sport England to run events to offer young people an exciting physical challenge and signpost them to local opportunities where they can become more active. Prior to Trumin, Duncan was MD of TI consultancy a systems integrator working with many UK blue chip companies, which became increasingly in demand in the tech infrastructure for major events such as the London Marathon. Duncan has a keen interest in meditation, music and political ideology.
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About Yoti: Yoti is a digital identity platform that provides a simple and secure way of proving identities, online and in person.
Olga Saliba
Founder of Verimuchme
Olga co-founded Verimuchme as a result of having to share her personal information over again for pre-employment screening checks for various contract roles in the financial sector throughout her career. Winning a place on the GCHQ cyber accelerator programme she was able to complete the first version of the wallet and secure commercial partners for its launch. Olga has an extensive background in retail and investment banking, with her experience ranging from online banking to wealth management, client-on boarding, compliance and regulation including KYC and AML.
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About Verimuchme: Verimuchme is a digital wallet and exchange platform of verified personal information and documentation.
Paul McGuire
Co-Founder & CEO of tru.ID
Paul McGuire is the Co-founder & CEO at tru.ID. Serial Entrepreneur – previously founded two leading international transaction platform businesses. Now at JustInvesting, building the online transaction platform for the next-generation of Angel investing – moving venture investing online, to the benefit of Investors, Entrepreneurs and the whole economy. Prior to JustInvesting Paul co-founded Paymo, later acquired by BOKU, and led the company to become one of the leading mobile payments platforms, available in over 50 countries. Prior to Paymo, Paul co-founded mBlox, the world’s leading mobile transaction network, where he led the company’s sales and marketing organizations, guided the company’s expansion into the European market, and led M&A efforts to acquire six companies. Before founding several start-ups in the telecommunications sector, Paul began his career in management consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton.
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About tru.ID: tru.ID is reinventing mobile authentication for today’s world through a modern developer platform.
Singe (StJohn) Deakins
Founder and CEO of Citizenme
StJohn Deakins As Founder and CEO, StJohn oversees the commercial and technical direction for citizenme. His vision was to create a service for everyone that lets us take back control of our digital identities and asset our right to self. He works with our team, partners, suppliers, advocates, the media and the general public to ensure that the citizenme vision realises its potential to positively impact the lives of every single digital citizen. . StJohn is a successful serial Internet entrepreneur, digital visionary, mobile evangelist, and documentary producer. In late 2010 he sold his mobile multimedia platform company, 3ple-media, to a US private equity firm. StJohn subsequently advised on the acquisition of the NSN Wimax business unit by SkyView. In 1995 he was instrumental in helping to put Lloyd’s List, the world’s oldest daily newspaper, online. Later, his team at Agency.com developed the first British Airways booking system and global Internet presence. . StJohn produced the acclaimed crowd sourced documentary Twittamentary. He provides formal and informal advisory to a number of start-ups including Distrify, the innovative Internet movie distribution platform. StJohn returned to London to found citizenme after spending 12 years living in Singapore where he worked to advance mobile data services in the emerging markets of Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and South America.
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About Citizenme: CitizenMe empowers us people and organisations with the true value of personal data.
Fabian Eberle
Co-Founder of Keyless
Fabian Eberle serves as the co-founder of Keyless.
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About Keyless: Pioneering privacy-preserving cloud-native biometric authentication to enable businesses adopt zero-trust passwordless authentication.
Andrea Carmignani
Co-Founder & CEO of Keyless
Andrea Carmignani serves as the founder and CEO of Keyless.
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About Keyless: Pioneering privacy-preserving cloud-native biometric authentication to enable businesses adopt zero-trust passwordless authentication.
Neil Norman
Founder and Chief Executive Office of MSite
Founder, Vice Chairman & Head of Innovation at Human Recognition Systems.
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About MSite: Human Recognition Systems is technology automates identity dependent business processes to deliver efficiency, safety and security.
Laura Degiovanni
CEO and Founder of TiiQu
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About TiiQu: TiiQu is a trust mechanism derived by immutable verifiable sources about one’s ID, Work, Knowledge, Performances
Gary McKay
Co-Founder & MD of APPII
Gary is the co-founder and managing director of APPII, a blockchain start up revolutionising CV verification and employee background checking. APPII was founded in early 2016 and is based in London. He has more than 20 years’ experience across many different industries including financial services, media, staffing and recruiting, and management consulting. All of his roles have centred around using his technology experience and knowledge to transform businesses and disrupt business models. Born is Scotland, Gary studied Building Surveying at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, before moving to Australia for 18 years where he studied at the UNSW Business School and was awarded a Master of Business and Technology.
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About APPII: Using blockchain technology to quickly and simply verify identities, backgrounds (such as criminal history) and career history (CV / Resume)
Andy Lee
Founder & Chief Product Officer of Sphonic
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About Sphonic: Sphonic is a Context-Broker that leverages 3rd party vendor data with a workflow engine to enable fraud prevention, AML, KYC
Michael Newman
Founder & CEO of My1Login
Michael has twenty years leadership and management experience in the technology sector spanning sales, marketing, operations and product development in a number of UK PLCs.
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About My1Login: My1Login is a next generation Identity and Access Management solutions for Enterprise.
Aravind Sopinti
Founder of 9tree.co.uk
Founder at 9tree
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About 9tree.co.uk, 9tree.co.uk: 9tree provides IT consulting, digitalization, and managed services.
John Atherton
Director & Founder of Sonalytic
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About Sonalytic: Sonalytic develops a content identification approach that enables us to connect creators and rights-holders to monetization opportunities.
Dan Caputo
Founder of Concard
Founder at Concard
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About Concard: Concard is an app to manage contacts by always keeping them up to date, complete, and accessible.
