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 Director operating in the Real Time space. If you think a Director 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.
Paul Johnston
Interim Alliances Director of Ably Realtime
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About Ably Realtime: Ably is the platform to power synchronized digital experiences in realtime.
Dr. Martin Spollen
Co-Founder & Director of Yedup Limited
Martin M. Spollen joined Yedup AI Labs as Co-Founder & Director in 2015.
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About Strategic Investment Board, Yedup Limited: Yedup develops real-time, continually adaptive AI technology for high value, ultra-low latency capital markets applications.
Bonamy Grimes
Non Executive Director of Decidz
Co-Founder at Skyscanner
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About : Decidz is a simple app designed to help you meet up and do things with friends.
Mark Loader
Director of Product Management, Marketing & Partnerships of ITRS Group
Mark joined ITRS in June 2012 as Managing Director Asia and brings more than 20 years of international experience in the field of fintech and data. Mark is responsible for all of ITRS’ product, marketing and partnership strategy covering both Geneos and Insights & Valo. He’s regularly on the road evangelizing our business and platform strategy with customers, partners and colleagues. Prior to joining ITRS, he was Global Head of Quantitative Analytics and Datafeeds at Thomson Reuters with general management responsibility for over US$230 million in annual revenue from more than 1500 clients globally, spanning traditional asset managers, sell-side research, hedge funds and proprietary trading desks.
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About ITRS Group: ITRS Group is the leading provider of risk mitigation solutions to global financial institutions.
David Cumberworth
Managing Director International of Virtual Instruments
David Cumberworth is Managing Director at Virtana, responsible for the International business. Prior to joining VI, David was Vice President WW Sales for HiveIO following their acquisition of Atlantis Computing where he was WW VP Field Operations. David was responsible for sales, marketing and technical services teams and grew the business, channels and go to market strategy. In his previous role at Citrix Systems, David was responsible for managing the Enterprise Sales team which ran both Global accounts and large FTSE 100 accounts in the UK. David was responsible for closing deals with global accounts including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse and Bank of America. Before joining Citrix, David ran the Server Based Computing Business Unit for Computacenter in the UK, a leading provider of IT infrastructure services in Europe with 10,000 employees and £2.5 billion in revenue.
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About Virtual Instruments: Virtual Instruments offers IT infrastructure performance management solutions for physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.
Darryl Mattocks
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Enistic
Darryl Mattocks is Co-Founder & Managing Director at Enistic.
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About Enistic: Enistic designs and manufactures its own range of smart-meters, software and end-to-end aM&T solutions.
Ollie Jerome
Co-Founder and Director of BestX
Ollie Jerome was most recently European Head of FX at Morgan Stanley in London, responsible for Sales, Trading & Structuring. Oliver joined Morgan Stanley in 2010, performing a number of roles including Head of FX & Emerging Markets Sales for EMEA & the US, and Head of FX & EM in Europe. He was a member of the MS Global FID Management Committee. Oliver began his career in FX Sales at Chase Manhattan in 1998, and was promoted to Managing Director in 2007. He remained at the institution through the merger with JPMorgan until 2009, when he left to work for Standard Chartered. Oliver has a BA in Economics from the University of Manchester.
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About BestX: BestX is provide independent trade technology and analytics that enable clients to define, achieve & demonstrate Best Execution.
Mark Maydon
Director of Crowd Connected
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About Crowd Connected: Pioneering a new generation of big data location intelligence
David Miller
Development Director of MDX Technology
With over 20 years’ experience of commercial software development, David has developed products and solutions for the financial, healthcare and education markets. David ran the development team at Gissing Software (responsible for the creation of products including ConteX 4 and RealtimeXL), before becoming Head of Contributions Architecture at Thomson Reuters after Gissing Software’s acquisition. David joined MDX Technology in 2011.
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About MDX Technology: MDX Technology Ltd focuses on real-time market data connectivity solutions for Traders, Developers and Market Data Professionals.
James Allum
Managing Director, EMEA of Kitewheel
James is a marketing software veteran, having started his career at DoubleClick Software. His first foray into the world of campaign management took him to various clients in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and Malaysia – a trend that was to continue while helping to build the Asia Pacific partner network for Alterian/SDL. After moving to Pitney Bowes, James met Neil Skilling and Mark Smith – joining them for the last 4 years at Kitewheel. James mixes detailed technical knowledge with sound business acumen to support existing Kitewheel partners as well as providing support for new partners to flourish. He has over 20 years of experience in a distinguished career covering marketing automation, campaign management, predictive segmentation, database marketing and real-time engagement platforms. An all-rounder, James is comfortable in a range of roles from client relationship management, architecting systems, building business cases, briefing analysts or providing thought leadership through publishing his own thoughts on the Kitewheel blog. In his spare time, James is a keen ultra-runner, cook, gardener and father. He is married and lives on the banks of the Thames in Berkshire.
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About Kitewheel: Kitewheel is the world’s only cloud-based Customer Journey Hub built to support Journey Orchestration, Mapping, & Analytics.
Jonathan Nicol
Founder & Managing Director of Stratajet
Jonny Nicol Ranked as one of Aviation Week’s Top 10 Leaders of European Business Aviation (at EBACE 2016), Jonny Nicol has undoubtedly risen to be one of the most prominent and influential figures in the private aviation industry. A military man through and through, Jonny is adamant that preparation is the key to success. This is why his vision to revolutionise the private jet industry took five years to develop. Having trained as a fighter pilot and served as an officer and pilot for a decade with the British Army, Jonny Nicol left the British Armed Forces to pursue a career as a an entrepreneur. A self-taught computer scientist, Jonny developed a passion for using technology to disrupt typically traditional industries, his first two businesses doing precisely that in the recruitment and military sectors. After selling the second business to Hewlett Packard’s EDS Defence, Nicol spent time as a freelance commercial pilot, during which time he was struck by the archaic and inefficient nature of private aviation. Noting that old-fashioned systems, such as the means of booking a private jet over the phone via a broker, were holding back the industry from advancing in line with other travel innovations, Jonny set about building a system that could bring private jets into the modern age. Reinventing the industry was no mean feat, involving five years of highly advanced computer programming and overcoming major hurdles, but Stratajet, dubbed ‘the world’s most sophisticated price comparison site,’ is the result. The first of its kind, Stratajet is the world’s fastest private jet booking service. With a technology sophisticated enough to filter through all the necessary variables that go into calculating the cost of flights, it’s the only platform that gives customers direct access to the private jet market. It returns accurate costs of a large range of aircraft in seconds, all of which can be booked instantly. Streamlining an old-fashioned and time-consuming booking process, Stratajet is solving the major problems hampering private aviation; inefficiency and wastage. By cutting costs for aircraft operators and in turn driving down prices for the passenger, Stratajet is making private jet travel more widely accessible to the mainstream traveller.
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About Stratajet: Stratajet is a real-time private jet booking platform using the power of technology to give its passengers total control and freedom.
Mike Tanousis
Commercial Director of Pintrack Ltd
Mike pent many years in the commercial side of entertainment business working for Sony music. After training as an accountant, he first got involved in start-ups when he created his own record label. His in depth knowledge of the music industry lead him eventually into journalism where he wrote for a number of major music and related publications. After watching a close family member lapse into dementia, he decided to take his powerful journalistic skills into the Healthcare sector. He started and built up his own flagship magazine ‘Middle East Healthcare’ which he still controls. Mike holds numerous directorships including the boards of Janus Medical Singapore, Global Healthcare Resourcing, and Norjitsa Holdings
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About Pintrack Ltd: Pintrack Ltd is a tech company focused on software development.
Sandy Ng
Co-Founder & Creative Director of Agorafy
Leveraging her past experience in marketing, new business development, sales and graphic design, she aligns the development, design, execution and marketing efforts of Agorafy, and manages the overall look and feel of Agorafy. Her dream is world peace.
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About Agorafy: Agorafy is an open platform for organizing and sharing real estate listings and information in the U.S.
Charles Hindson
Non Executive Director of Diaceutics
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About Diaceutics: Diaceutics Group leverages analytics, software, services and consulting.
Paul Webster
Founder & Director of Hardware of Ubisense
Paul Webster is the Founder and Director of Hardware at Ubisense Limited.
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About Ubisense: Ubisense is a developer of real-time location systems that provide enterprise business automation services.
Chris Chapman
Commercial Director of Intelligence Squared
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About Intelligence Squared: Intelligence Squared is a forum for debate and intelligent discussion.
Eleanor Barnard
Finance Director of Reactec
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About Reactec: Reactec is the market leader in monitoring and management support solutions for hand and arm vibration syndrome
Mark-Paul Buckingham
Non-Executive Director of Reactec
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About Reactec, Xi Engineering Consultants: Reactec is the market leader in monitoring and management support solutions for hand and arm vibration syndrome
Tracey Gorman
Business Development Director of Reactec
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About Reactec: Reactec is the market leader in monitoring and management support solutions for hand and arm vibration syndrome
Tracey Gorman
Business Development Director of Reactec
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About Reactec: Reactec is the market leader in monitoring and management support solutions for hand and arm vibration syndrome
Richard Harris
Director of Okappy Ltd.
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About Okappy Ltd.: Innovative B2B Communications and Collaboration platform rethinking how companies manage their day-to-day work.
Gerry So
Director of Okappy Ltd.
Gerry is responsible for client liaison, listening to client’s needs and seeing how Okappy can help. Her ambition is to have more people know about Okappy, benefit from it and make working life a bit more fun!
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About AutoAlert Limited, Okappy Ltd.: Innovative B2B Communications and Collaboration platform rethinking how companies manage their day-to-day work.
Robert Davis
Technical Director of Communication Stem
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About Communication Stem: Communication Stem is a globally recognised reputation for helping businesses with their delivery of productivity & recreational assurance.
Andrew Brown
Managing Director of Communication Stem
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About Communication Stem: Communication Stem is a globally recognised reputation for helping businesses with their delivery of productivity & recreational assurance.
Andrew Brown
Managing Director of Communication Stem
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About Communication Stem: Communication Stem is a globally recognised reputation for helping businesses with their delivery of productivity & recreational assurance.
Laurie Reynolds
Managing Director of AquamatiX
Laurie Reynolds is a Chartered Systems Engineer; he spent 35 years with Thames Water, the largest water utility in UK, as an automation and asset management specialist. Projects included the London Water Control Centre and Ring Main which transformed the supply of water to London from a manual intensive process with high losses and inefficiency, to a demand-driven, automated process coordinated from a state-of-the art control centre. Over 3000 flow and pressure sensors were installed throughout London and the Thames Valley monitoring the distribution network, the project won a water industry innovation award for pressure and leakage management. Laurie also managed the delivery of a programme to automate 350 wastewater treatment plants and 750 wastewater pumping stations, and automation of one of the largest wastewater treatment plants in Europe.Subsequent to Thames Water he worked as a consultant in pumping, pipelines and process optimisation, and Technical Director of a new start-up company developing a unique model-based condition monitoring system for critical motor-driven applications such as pumps. He was also responsible for evelopment of asset management and standards for critical power systems in a major UK telecommunications company.He set up Aquamatix in 2011 to complete the work he began in Thames to try to introduce reusable, modular, reusable standard software for water management.
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About AquamatiX: Aquamatix is a software company specialising in the real-time control and development of smart water and wastewater infrastructure.
Laurie Reynolds
Managing Director of AquamatiX
Laurie Reynolds is a Chartered Systems Engineer; he spent 35 years with Thames Water, the largest water utility in UK, as an automation and asset management specialist. Projects included the London Water Control Centre and Ring Main which transformed the supply of water to London from a manual intensive process with high losses and inefficiency, to a demand-driven, automated process coordinated from a state-of-the art control centre. Over 3000 flow and pressure sensors were installed throughout London and the Thames Valley monitoring the distribution network, the project won a water industry innovation award for pressure and leakage management. Laurie also managed the delivery of a programme to automate 350 wastewater treatment plants and 750 wastewater pumping stations, and automation of one of the largest wastewater treatment plants in Europe.Subsequent to Thames Water he worked as a consultant in pumping, pipelines and process optimisation, and Technical Director of a new start-up company developing a unique model-based condition monitoring system for critical motor-driven applications such as pumps. He was also responsible for evelopment of asset management and standards for critical power systems in a major UK telecommunications company.He set up Aquamatix in 2011 to complete the work he began in Thames to try to introduce reusable, modular, reusable standard software for water management.
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About AquamatiX: Aquamatix is a software company specialising in the real-time control and development of smart water and wastewater infrastructure.
Fraser Park
Non Executive Director of Smartpipe Solutions
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About : Smartpipe allows mobile network operators to monetise mobile data at scale; safely and securely.
Fraser Park
Non Executive Director of Smartpipe Solutions
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About : Smartpipe allows mobile network operators to monetise mobile data at scale; safely and securely.
Stephen Chandler
Non-Executive Director of Smartpipe Solutions
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About : Smartpipe allows mobile network operators to monetise mobile data at scale; safely and securely.
