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 Peer to Peer 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.
Owen Turner-Major
Co-Founder & CTO of Fat Llama
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About Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace which allows people to rent spare items to others nearby, fully insured.
Rosie Dallas
Co-Founder & COO of Fat Llama
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About Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace which allows people to rent spare items to others nearby, fully insured.
Chaz Englander
Co-Founder & CEO of Fat Llama
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About Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace which allows people to rent spare items to others nearby, fully insured.
Nicolas Brusson
Co-Founder and CEO of BlaBlaCar
Prior to becoming Chief Executive Officer in October 2016, Nicolas oversaw BlaBlaCar’s global operations and international growth as Chief Operating Officer since 2011. He led the company’s corporate development, overseeing eight acquisitions, expansion to twenty markets, and three successive rounds of fundraising. Nicolas is a strong advocate of agile structures that allow quick iterations in fast-growing environments. He is also a supporter of autonomous local teams and acqui-hires, a strategy he implemented to expand BlaBlaCar’s footprint on a global scale. Nicolas is a regular speaker at leading international conferences and in the media, where he comments on the European startup scene, innovative growth strategies, and mobility. Prior to joining BlaBlaCar, Nicolas worked for several startups in Silicon Valley during the dotcom boom, before moving on to executive and investor roles, including spending time as a Venture Capitalist at Amadeus Capital Partners in London. He holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Masters in Optics from Ecole Supérieure d’Optique and a Masters in Applied Physics from Paris XI University. Nicolas is also an active angel investor and tweets @nbrusson. Nicolas holds an MBA from INSEAD, an MSc in Optics from the Ecole Superieure d’Optique and an MSc in Applied Physics from Paris XI University.
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About BlaBlaCar, Deliveroo, Doctolib, SIDE Capital, Stripe, Zenaton: BlaBlaCar is a long distance carpooling platform that connects drivers with empty seats and passengers to share travel costs.
Anj Latif
Co-Founder and CTO of British Pearl
Anj Latif is one of the founders of British Pearl and is the Chief Technical Officer. He is responsible for the design, implementation and administration of the entire IT infrastructure, including information security. Anj is a highly motivated and ambitious professional with extensive experience in IT management and networking and two decades’ experience in the SME sector. He has worked with companies in retail, legal, manufacturing, finance and health using technologies from Cisco, WatchGuard, Citrix, VMware and Microsoft. He has a BSc (Hons) in Software Engineering from Oxford Brookes University.
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About British Pearl: British Pearl is an online property investment platform facilitating share and loan-based investment in UK property.
Ali Celiker
Founder and CEO of British Pearl
Ali Celiker is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of British Pearl. He is an experienced financial professional and entrepreneur and has spent the last 19 years in financial services. He thrives on building innovative businesses with inspirational people and is principally interested in the alternative finance market , with a focus on equity and debt based collective investment platforms. Prior to establishing British Pearl Ali worked within the global capital markets as a trader and sales person. This included Vice President, Head European Financing Trader at Paloma Securities London Limited and Associate Director, Interest rates sales trader at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International plc. He has also worked for BNP Paribas, J.P.Morgan and Martins Brokers (UK) PLC. He holds a BA (Hons) in Economics and Econometrics from Kent University and other banking related professional qualifications.
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About British Pearl: British Pearl is an online property investment platform facilitating share and loan-based investment in UK property.
Nadeem Siam
CEO & Founder of Fund Ourselves
Nadeem Siam is the Founder & CEO of Fund Ourselves. The first fully automated short-term credit marketplace. Nadeem graduated from Canfield University in the UK and Lulea University in Sweden with two masters of science degrees in Astronautics and Space Engineering and Space Technology; respectively.
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About Fund Ourselves, PTP Funding: Short-term credit from the people to the people.
Tuomas Hietanen
Co-Founder and CTO of Fund Ourselves
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About Fund Ourselves: Short-term credit from the people to the people.
Daneh Westropp
Founder & CEO of Pickle
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About Pickle: Find different friends for different things!
Matt Ovenden
CEO & Founder of Borrow A Boat
Matt is an entrepreneur who is passionate about building teams and successful businesses to meet market opportunities on the forefront of technological or consumer trends. A Chartered Mechanical Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with MSc in Innovation & Design for Sustainability, Matt established leading energy & sustainability company Bright Green Shoots in 2009 to help organisations embrace sustainable “green” innovation as the UK makes the transition to a low carbon economy. Bright Green Shoots has acted as a focus point for activity in this industry for 7 years during which Matt has spun out two more companies, Free Wind Ltd in 2011 a prominent UK wind development company and Free Island Energy in 2014 a pioneer of remote renewables, eco-island and microgrid projects. Matt’s latest project is launching the new online peer-to-peer boat charter marketplace www.borrowaboat.com
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About Borrow A Boat, British Marine, Department for International Trade, Helm, Institution of Mechanical Engineers: Borrow A Boat is a Peer-to-peer boat charter and charter aggregator site.
Michael Bristow
CEO and Co-Founder of CrowdProperty
Mike Bristow, CEO and Co-Founder of CrowdProperty (www.crowdproperty.com), the leading specialist property peer-to-peer lender in the UK. Actual property development and investment experience lies at the heart of CrowdProperty meaning hands-on, expertise-led due diligence and loan monitoring. Lending is focused on the SME property developer market, a key segment for supplying much needed UK housing stock, which is poorly and inefficiently served by traditional funding sources. CrowdProperty’s unique combination of data, analytics, tech, expertise, rigour, relationships, security, extent of value chain disruption and vision means we stand out in sustainably delivering a better deal to lenders and borrowers alike through high-quality, institution-grade lending with huge potential ahead.
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About CrowdProperty, Growth Strategy: CrowdProperty is a property project program that develops a peer-to-peer lending platform to facilitate short-term loans.
Marcelo Barreneche
CEO & Co-Founder of TuTasa
Marcelo eats, sleeps and breathes business. He was born in Uruguay – moved to London in 2010 to set the company, complete his MBA and form a beautiful family. Following his serial-entrepreneurial instincts, he transformed the company from a digital agency into a Fintech Group to better lead and finance all the projects he looked forward to build, notably Moneybaba (t.a TuTasa in LatAm).
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About Join Universe, MoneyBaba, TuTasa: TuTasa specializes in the fields of peer to peer lending, Inversiones, fintech, lending, and financial services.
Tim Slesinger
Founder & CEO of LendingWell
Tim Slesinger is Founder & CEO at OSG Records Management
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About easyStorage, LendingWell: LendingWell is the single platform p2p investment partner.
Justine Roberts
CEO , Founder & Owner of Mumsnet
Justine Roberts is the Founder and CEO of Mumsnet. Over the last 20 years Mumsnet has grown into the UK’s busiest and most influential network for parents, with over 10 million unique users per month. Mumsnet regularly campaigns on issues including support for families of children with special educational needs, improvements in postnatal and miscarriage care, and freedom of speech on the internet. Mumsnet was awarded the Online Comment Site of the Year (Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards) 2011 and 2014. Justine was the Institute of Internal Communication Communicator of the Year in 2014 and EY Entrepreneur of the Year London and South Winner in 2016. Justine was one of EU-Startup’s Top 50 Most Influential Women in Startups and VC in 2019. Before Mumsnet, Justine wrote about football and cricket for the Daily Telegraph and the Times and before that she was an economist and strategist for SG Warburg. She is a mother of four (and two dogs) and was appointed CBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the economy.
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About Gransnet, Mumsnet: Mumsnet is the UK’s busiest social network for parents.
John Goodall
Co-Founder and CEO of LANDBAY
Prior to co-founding Landbay in 2013, John worked for an equity brokerage in the City of London. Before this, he co-founded and managed a leading financial services executive search consultancy. John has also spent some time teaching Economics, has an MBA from Imperial College, London, and a degree in Economics from Durham University.
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About LANDBAY: Landbay is a specialist Buy to Let mortgage lender using peer-to-peer technology to fund its loans.
Rhydian Lewis
CEO & Founder of RateSetter
Oversees strategy, manages the Executive Committee and represents RateSetter with external stakeholders. Rhydian founded RateSetter to provide a new investment choice that sits between savings and shares. He has pioneered innovations including the Provision Fund model, which makes investing simple and relatively low risk. He was awarded an OBE for innovation in financial services, specifically with regard to opening up access to returns to everybody. Prior to RateSetter, he spent six years at the financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard.
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About RateSetter: RateSetter is a P2P lending platform allowing users to lend and borrow money directly from each other according to their own interest rates.
Rosie de Malmanche
Founder of o|urmoire.
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About o|urmoire.: The Brighter way to Buy & Borrow
Jake Wombwell-Povey
CEO and Co-Founder of Goji Investments
Jake is an avid change provocateur and is passionate about developing Goji into a powerhouse of the marketplace lending sector globally. Jake is responsible for driving Goji’s strategy and managing Goji’s relationships with its lending and investment partners as well as the propositions they build for them. Prior to stepping up to launch Goji, Jake advised some of the largest UK P2P lending platforms whilst at a global advisory firm. His experience includes Corporate Finance (Public & Private ECM) as well as strategic and regulatory reviews for some of the biggest names in the FS, wealth management and Fintech including; Woodford Investment Management’s £800m IPO of Woodford Patient Capital, the sale of Intelliflo to Hg, and the sale of GoCompare.com to eSure. Jake is a chartered accountant.
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About Goji Investments: Investment platform providing access to regulated investment products from across the direct lending sector
Alex Crocombe
Co Founder, Chief Financial Officer of Goji Investments
Co-founder and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for an FCA regulated private asset investment platform. Qualified accountant with a background in fintech M&A and strategic advisory.
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About Goji Investments: Investment platform providing access to regulated investment products from across the direct lending sector
Paul Bojarski
CEO & Co-Founder of Sceenic
Building the ultimate co-viewing experience for OTT and TV #WatchTogether. Born in Poland, raised in London, lived in Israel, Spain, Puerto Rico, Argentina and Chile. Don’t drink coffee – don’t need it to “wake up”. Product guy. Innovator by observing human behaviour. Building startups since 1998 age 17. Top 20 entrepreneur in VOOM Richard Branson competition 2016 and Winner of the Hype Foundation & TEAM SKY UK Finals Aug 2016. Started Skipworth, first startup in London in 1998, age 17. Secured distribution deals in the US, Europe, UK and in Japan (JV). Most recently CEO of SayYeah, an award winning company of the HYPE Foundation and TEAM SKY UK Competition 2016, Winner of the Wolves Summit ‘Pitch’ Competition, Semi-finalists in the Telefonica “Global Innovation Awards” 2015 and Semi-finalist Top 20 in the Virgin Media #VOOM Pitch to Richard Branson 2016 UK Competition. Previously the Head of MTV LATAM Digital Ad Sales based in Argentina, responsible for double digit % year on year growth and hitting multi million dollar budget, previously MTV London. Also an expert in Ad Ops and Product from AOL UK back in 2004.
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About Sceenic: Watch Together”” software technology for media companies
Marcus Hill
Founder and CEO of Cashswapper
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About Cashswapper: Mobile app that provides a peer to peer currency exchange platform for users. Also acts as a bureau de change comparison.
Gary Corben
CEO and Co-Founder of Crowdahouse
Gary has been a residential property investor since 2006 acquiring and managing his own private portfolio. Gary has a background in entrepreneurial ventures in the music industry, in web-based businesses, and in property investment and trading, the common thread being taking innovative approaches to defunct and out-moded business models. In 1994 Gary joined UK startup Cerberus Sound & Vision, launching the world’s first digital music download service along with the world’s first functional online credit card payment system. In 2001, after two years at BSkyB heading online product development, Gary formed Whatmusic – an online record label specialising in restoring back catalogue for the music collectors market. In the first two years the company reissued over 80 titles and helped restore careers of dozens of ‘forgotten’ artists. In 2006, Gary decided to apply his online experience to the residential real estate market in the UK, including developing creative strategies to acquire properties without the need for bank finance and selling these properties to buyers at a premium. Since the credit crisis began, Gary has been at the forefront of non-bank funded property investment. In mid 2011, Gary joined forces with Peter Lane to form the Corlan Group to further explore the non-bank funded property market and to develop an asset backed crowdfunding solution, ultimately leading to the foundation of Crowdahouse.com.
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About Crowdahouse: Crowdahouse is a business to business peer to peer lending platform specialising in secured lending to property professionals.
Mark Hawkins
Chief Financial Officer and Co-Founder of Invest & Fund
Mark is an FCA qualified chartered accountant and has more than 30 years’ experience in a range of Financial Directorship roles. He co-founded Invest & Fund with David to help businesses and lenders tap into alternative sources of finance.
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About Invest & Fund: Invest & Fund is a credit-led alternative finance marketplace helping individuals, high net worth lenders, private banks and institutions.
David Turner
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Invest & Fund
David co-founded Invest & Fund after a 30-year career as a trader in the City of London, working for various financial institutions including Tullett Prebon and RBS. David has a clear vision for how the business can capture the growing peer-to-peer opportunity.
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About Invest & Fund: Invest & Fund is a credit-led alternative finance marketplace helping individuals, high net worth lenders, private banks and institutions.
Robert Pasco
Co-Founder & CEO of Plend
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About Plend: Building a better way to borrow, where people are no longer held back by their credit history
James Pursaill
Co-Founder & CTO of Plend
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About Plend: Building a better way to borrow, where people are no longer held back by their credit history
Davin Poonwassie
Co-Founder and Operations Director of Simple Crowdfunding
Davin was first introduced to crowdfunding in early 2013 and he spotted the opportunity that crowdfunding brings. At the end of 2013, Simple Backing, their first property crowdfunding platform focused on Peer to Peer Lending was born. After speaking to their customers, Davin soon realised that there was also a need to provide an Equity option, thus Simple Equity was formed. With a background in data, databases and information technology, Davin is well suited to this marketplace. Outside of crowdfunding, Davin is a business and property coach, helping others achieve their goals and aspirations. Davin is also a keen property investor, investing in parts of the UK and France.
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About Simple Crowdfunding: Simple Crowdfunding is a regulated peer to peer lending and crowdfunding platform, offering property finance.
Atuksha Poonwassie
Managing Director and Co-Founder of Simple Crowdfunding
Atuksha has been involved in Peer to Peer Lending and Crowdfunding since 2013. She is a Director of the UK Crowdfunding Association, and regularly engages with policymakers and Government to advance this marketplace for all sectors in the UK. Atuksha is also the 2017 national Venus ‘Influential Woman of the Year’ award winner and is recognised in the P2P Finance News’ 2020 and 2021 Power 50, making the top 10 cut. This list highlights the 50 most influential people in P2P. Being a firm believer in building a strong community and customer base, Atuksha uses her expertise to help property professionals raise finance, build a crowd, and stand out in the market, whilst providing better access to the UK property market to everyone.
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About Simple Crowdfunding: Simple Crowdfunding is a regulated peer to peer lending and crowdfunding platform, offering property finance.
