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 Chairman operating in the Mobile space. If you think a Chairman 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.
Sir David Michels
Chairman of Miroma Ventures
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About : Miroma Ventures is the investment arm of The Miroma Group, predominantly investing in growth stage consumer brands and media platforms.
Jonathan Robinson
Executive Chairman of Afilias
Jonathan Robinson has extensive executive and non-executive experience in the Domain Name industry over many years. He was a co-founder of NetBenefit in 1995, a supplier of Domain Name management and associated services, which was admitted to AIM in June 1999. Jonathan served as a main board director at NetBenefit from 1999 to 2009, which was subsequently renamed Group NBT plc in 2004, and then renamed NetNames in 2011 following its acquisition by HgCapital. He previously served two terms as a non-executive director on the board of Nominet. Jonathan is currently Chair of the ICANN GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) Council. He has served as a director of Afilias since 2001 and was appointed Executive Chairman in 2014. Jonathan is 48 years old.
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About : Afilias provides back end domain name registry services, DNS, idn and RFID services.
Nick Land
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, The Vodafone Foundation of Vodafone
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About : Vodafone is a mobile telecommunications company that offers voice, messaging, and data services.
Demetrios Zoppos
Co-founder & Exec Chairman of Klevio
Zoppos is a London-based Cypriot entrepreneur and early stage tech business leader. Before founding onefinestay in 2009,he was founding CEO of GradFutures, a web community site and co-founder of GF-X, the leading airfreight trading platform, which raised £50m and was acquired by Descartes. Previously, Zoppos was a consultant at McKinsey & Co. where he specialised in e-commerce, and was an associate at the World Bank. He earned his MA with First Class Honours in Economics from Robinson College, Cambridge, and his MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. Zoppos is currently launching Klevio, a start-up in the “Internet of Things” area and will walk us through the path of turning an idea into a business.
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About Klevio: Klevio lets users open doors and share their virtual keys using a smartphone.
Ismail Ahmed
Founder & Executive Chairman of Zepz
Ismail Ahmed, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, founding WorldRemit was the culmination of 20 years’ experience in the money transfer industry – spanning academic, consulting and in-house roles. Before setting-up his own business, he worked for the United Nations Remittance Programme, helping African money transfer companies comply with tough anti-money laundering rules introduced after the 9/11 attacks. Ismail has published widely-cited research on the effect of remittances in Somaliland following the country’s civil war. He holds an MSc and PhD from the University of London and an Executive MBA from London Business School.
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About Zepz, Zepz: Zepz is a money transfer service that helps migrants send money to their loved ones all over the world.
Ron Zeghibe
Executive Chairman, Founder of FREE NOW
Ron Zeghibe is the Founder & Chairman of the Board of Directors at Hailo. Prior to this he has enjoyed a successful career in media and outdoor advertising.
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About FREE NOW, Xenomorph: FREE NOW is one of the biggest ride-hailing apps in Europe and currently available in 11 countries.
Farid Haque
Co-Founder ,CEO & Chairman of Erly Stage Studios
Farid Haque is the Co-Founder ,CEO & Chairman of Erly Stage Studios.He attended to the University of Toronto.
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About AssetVault, DataKiwi, Erly Stage Studios: An Education Venture Studio and digital publishing business, our mission is to make learning fun through engaging content and technology.
Dan Wagner
Founder, Chairman and CEO of Rezolve
Dan Wagner began his career as a junior Account Executive at the advertising agency WCRS. While doing market research, that involved laborious searching of back copies of newspapers, journals, and research reports Dan first generated the concept of an electronic, PC-based information service. In 1985 at the age of 20, he left WCRS to pursue his ambition of creating such a service and established M.A.I.D. Dan was the driving force behind M.A.I.D.’s growth and development, including listings on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Throughout his career he has engineered numerous acquisitions and has been responsible for forging a wide array of strategic alliances. He led M.A.I.D.’s move into the Internet technology and eCommerce markets, being one of the first to understand their huge potential, and conceived the technology which is now Venda, in 1998. He has won a variety of business awards that recognize his achievements including The World Economic Forum’s Global Leader of Tomorrow in 1997 and Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999.
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About Bright Station Ltd., Bright Station Ventures, Rezolve, Venda: Rezolve allows any kind of product or media to instantly trigger a highly relevant, contextual engagement between consumer and retailer
Peter Opperman
Chairman of Decision Tech
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About : Decision Tech mission is to create destination websites and apps that help people to find the very best communications and entertainment.
Lord Rothermere
Chairman of the Board of Directors of DMG Media
Lord Rothermere has been Chairman of DMGT and a Non-Executive Director of Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC since 1998. Lord Rothermere worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris and the Mirror Group before moving to Northcliffe Newspapers Group in 1995. In 1997 Lord Rothermere became Managing Director of the Evening Standard.
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About : DMG media is a consumer media company engaged in print and online newspaper publishing.
Matt Isaacs
Founder & Executive Chairman of Essence
As one of the founding partners, Matt helped shape Essence into the company it is today. That agency is now the world’s largest independent buyer of digital media with billings in excess of $650MM USD, is 480 people strong, and has offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Singapore and Tokyo. Current clients include Google, eBay, Financial Times and Barclays. Matt served as Global CEO of the agency until spring of this year. During his last four years in that role, both billings and headcount doubled every year. Today, as Executive Chairman, Matt oversees the Board, supports the execution of corporate strategy and helps to ensure the legacy of Essence exists well beyond the agency and the industry. Before co-founding Essence Matt was Chief Marketing Officer at Create Services & Goldfish Bank, a subsidiary of Lloyds TSB Group that handled all of the bank’s non LloydsTSB branded retail banking business across 15 brands and with £2B in assets. Matt’s ‘first career’ was in strategy consulting at McKinsey spin-off MMG, where he was part of the core team that built MMG Europe from 14 consultants to 400 across 13 offices. Matt lives on a small farm with his wife, 4 children, 5 hens, lots of sheep and bees in the depths of East Sussex, UK.
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About Essence: Essence, part of GroupM, is a global data and measurement-driven agency whose mission is to make advertising more valuable to the world.
Shamil Chandaria
Chairman of Omnidrone
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About Omnidrone: Omnidrone is a videogame developer focused on tablets and mobile platforms. All founding members have a long history of working in the
Aaron Ross
Chairman of Cake Technologies
Aaron is founder of Cake and CityHawk, two of London’s fastest growing restaurant applications. With CityHawk diners can discover the best places to eat, with Cake they can pay for their bar and restaurant bills straight from their phones. Aaron is an experienced entrepreneur having co-founded FirstCare, Europe’s largest absence management company in late 2004 and grew it, as Chief Executive, to a £6m turnover in 5 years.
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About Cake Technologies, CityHawk, SolarCraft: CAKE is revolutionizing the way restaurants and bars engage with their customers.
Iain Ferguson
Chairman of Red Ant
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About : Red Ant is a technology partner that empowers retailers to connect online with offline, delivering fully connected retail experiences.
Richard Dilworth
Vice Chairman of Zapaygo
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About : Zapaygo provides a menu of goods or services and a pre-order and payment facility to consumers.
John Pluthero
Chairman of the Board of Directors of MyAppConverter
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About : Mobile Application Code Conversion
Dominic McGonigal
Founder & Chairman of JiveBird
Dominic McGonigal is the co-founder of JiveBird.
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About JiveBird: JiveBird is a unique digital consumer package targeted at the card & gift market – the next disruptive innovation in the greetings market.
Jon Wilkins
Executive Chairman of Karmarama
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About Karmarama: Karmarama is a full service communications agency, combining creative excellence with technology-inspired solutions
David Priestley
Executive Chairman of Cuelogic Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
A career entrepreneur in technology for the Finance and Commodities sectors. Founder of 6 successful start ups over a 30 year career. Finalist in the 2001 Entrepreneur of the year and winner of the AIM Fastest Rising Share in 2003. Responsible for the creation of several hundred technology jobs in the sector and with an excess of over £100 million in exports achieved over the years Priestley remains committed to deploying the very latest technology using the very best software engineering talent. David was part of Gissing Software’s management team that sold the business to Reuters in 2008. David co-founded MDX Technology in 2010.
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About Cuelogic Technologies Pvt. Ltd., MDX Technology: Outsourced Product Development for leading edge startups and Fortune 500 enterprises looking to compete with unicorns.
Paul Swaddle
Chairman & Co-Founder of Pocket App Limited
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About Pocket App Limited, The Supper Club, Westminster City Council, Westminster City Council: Pocket App is the UK’s Leading Mobile Development Agency, based in the heart of London.
Roger Wilson
Chairman and Founder of Adept Technology Group Plc
Roger has worked in telecommunications since 1993. In addition to being the first Managing Director for Telewest’s residential consumer business in the UK he spent 3 years in Poland successfully building a business for American investors. He was Managing Director of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association until January 2006.
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About Adept Technology Group Plc: Adept Technology Group is one of COMMS Integrators offering best-in-class breed solutions from any UK network, customized to your needs.
Lady Barbara Judge
Independent Non-Executive Chairman of LoopUp
Lady Judge is a Senior Advisor to Triangle Growth Partners, and chairs the Investment Advisory Committee.Lady Judge, a trained commercial lawyer, has an unusually broad and successful international career as a senior executive, chairman and non-executive director in both the private and public sectors. She was previously a partner in a major US law firm specialising in corporate and financial transactions. In 1980 she was appointed by the President as a Commissioner of the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Thereafter she was appointed as the first woman executive director of News International and Samuel Montagu and held many positions in the financial services industry including Chair of the UK/US Committee on Corporate Governance and Senior Advisor to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. She is currently Chairman of the Energy Institute of University College London and Chairman of the UK Pension Protection Fund. In 2002 she was appointed as a director of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and became its Chairman in 2004 and was reappointed in 2007. After completing two terms she was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Tepco Nuclear Reform Committee and Chairman of its Task Force on Nuclear Safety. She is also a member of the UAE Advisory Board for the Development of Peaceful Nuclear Energy. Lady Judge is a non-executive director of NV Bekaert SA (Belgium) and Magna International Inc (Canada) and a strategic advisor to a number of international corporations, including Statoil and Barclays. She is a member of the International Advisory Board of Sabanci University and a member of the Steering Committee of the Istanbul International Energy & Climate Center at Sabanci University. In addition she is currently a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. In June 2010 she was awarded Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the nuclear and financial services industries. Lady Judge received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and Juris Doctor with honours from New York University Law School.
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About University of Oxford: LoopUp is a premium remote meetings solution.
Richard Syme
Chairman of Optimise
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About Optimise: Global Performance Marketing Company
Ian MacKenzie
Chairman of Genesis Technical Systems
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About : Genesis Technical Systems is a provider of patented, awarding winning, cutting-edge broadband solutions.
Graham Duff
Chairman of Opinsta
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About : Opinsta is a single platform to manage defect reporting (QA), health and safety checks, Inspections, 3rd party maintenance and more.
Robert Clare
Executive Chairman of Local Puzzle
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About Local Puzzle: Supporting independent merchants, rewarding shoppers’ loyalty, revitalising the high street
Stephen Critchlow
Executive Chairman of Evergreen Life
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About Evergreen Life: Evergreen Life is a personal health app provider that revolutionizes the way people manage their medications.
Ingolv Urnes
Executive Chairman of psHEALTH
Ingolv Urnes is a successful technology entrepreneur based in London with an obsession for process automation. He is the founder of psKINETIC, a leading provider of digital process automation solutions in the UK, which has leveraged Appian extensively for nearly 10 years with customers such as AIG, Bupa, hospital chain BMI, Goldman Sachs. In addition to healthcare, psKINETIC delivers compliance solutions and facilities management – all built on Appian. He is also the founder of ART which uses Appian, AI and sophisticated rules engines to provide automated Referral Management and Care Coordination software to enable better health outcomes at lower cost delivering to NHS organizations. Ingolv was the co-founder of Mobizio, a successful mobile app for nurses in the field, and Active Health Partners, a pioneer in technology-based absence management and occupational health. Prior to his involvement in technology, Ingolv spent a decade as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs in Frankfurt, New York and London. Ingolv is known for his energy and for pushing his teams hard to leverage new technologies to solve big problems.
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About psHEALTH: Case Management, fieldforce mobilisation
Brian Phillips
Chairman of Preoday
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About : B2B pre-ordering platform for integrated e-commerce solutions for businesses serving food and beverages
David Bell
Executive Chairman of GoReport
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About : GoReport provides a range of purpose-built solutions for a variety of survey types across the entire property sector.
