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 CEO’ operating in the Marketing Automation space. If you think a CEO’ 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.
Abakar Saidov
Co Founder & CEO of Beamery
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About Beamery: Beamery is a talent acquisition, engagement, and retention platform that manages sourcing, hiring, and retaining of people.
Peter Simmonds
CEO of dotmailer Group
Peter Simmonds commenced his career in 1976 as a trainee accountant with Unilever Plc and has over 20 years of experience at senior management and board level, principally in the areas of banking, insurance, finance, I.T. and outsourcing. He has considerable business entrepreneurial experience having been involved at start up or early stage of a number of companies in various industry sectors including consultancy services, vehicle leasing, computer software and internet solutions sectors. Peter also has experience of business acquisition and post acquisition integration and management of businesses.
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About : dotmailer Group provides digital marketing professionals with SaaS technology solutions and tools, and offers an email marketing platform.
Peter Irikovsky
Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder of Exponea (acquired by Bloomreach)
Peter Irikovsky is the CEO of Exponea, the leading customer data and experience platform (CDXP). Prior to heading up the Exponea team, Peter demonstrated his passion for entrepreneurialism as the CEO of Slevomat Group, where he helped grow revenue to €100m in fewer than four years. His past experience also includes LRJ Capital, McKinsey, and Groupon. Peter is a frequent speaker (Davos, Forbes, StartupGrind, US Embassy, EU commission), and serves as the head of the supervisory board at Duke of Edinburgh International Award in Slovakia, board member of National Monuments Foundation, and committee member at Millennium Calendar Prize. He is a Singularity University graduate and holds a degree in Computer Science.
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About Exponea (acquired by Bloomreach), Infinario: Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP) with marketing automation capabilities
Tony Buffin
CEO / Chair of Tecsa
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About Tecsa, Travis Perkins: Tecsa assists consumer-facing firms in collecting and making the most of their customer data.
Qamar Aziz
Founder & CEO of SalesSeek
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About CloudApps, Opsview, SalesSeek, Traackr: All-in-one business CRM platform and hub for your customer data.
Theofilos Vasileiadis
CEO/Founder/Lead Investor of Socital
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About Socital: Socital is a SaaS platform specialized in personalization and lead generation for ecommerce.
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
Simon Ward
Founder and CEO of Team ITG
Simon Ward ITG and Simon Ward SP Group: Simon Ward is CEO of ITG (Inspired Thinking Group) and former Commercial CEO of SP Group, a part of St Ives Group. Simon founded ITG in 2009 and has played a key role in the company’s growth, running the business and obtaining investment for expansion and acquisitions.v ITG delivers best-in-class marketing software, procurement and studio services to numerous blue-chip clients, including PUMA, M&S, KFC, Audi and Heineken. In 2015, ITG joined the London Stock Exchange’s 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain. Prior to founding ITG, Simon Ward was commercial CEO of SP Group, based in Redditch. He joined the printers in 1999, as co-founder and head of SP Digital. This soon became the most profitable part of the business, and Simon took over the reins of SP Group in 2000. In 2004, Simon sold SP Group to St Ives, becoming the group’s commercial CEO, remaining with the company until the launch of ITG.
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About Team ITG: Team ITG is a technology-led provider of outsourced multichannel marketing services.
Ivan Mazour
Co-Founder & CEO of Ometria
Ivan Mazour is a Russian-born, London-based serial entrepreneur, investor and author. He is the CEO and Founder of Ometria – a predictive analytics and marketing platform built specifically for retailers, letting them use data to increase revenues and provide an improved customer experience. Ometria is his seventh company, in a career spanning various industries from property to education – http://www.ometria.com Alongside this main role, he is also the Founding Partner of Innova Kapital – an early stage VC firm investing in UK-based technology startups, including companies like YPlan and organisations like Entrepreneur First – http://www.innovakapital.com As well as holding multiple degrees in Mathematics from Cambridge University, and in Economics from the Open University, Ivan Mazour is the author of a number of books including “Russian Convoys – Memories of the Heart”. His translations of Russian literature have been staged professionally in various cities, and he has been presented with a UNESCO medal for his literary achievements. He regularly speaks at conferences around the world on topics of ecommerce, technology, and investment, and also writes a popular blog called “A Young Entrepreneur in London” – http://www.ivanmazour.com
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About Ometria: Ometria is a customer data and marketing platform that helps retailers increase CRM revenue by sending personalized marketing messages.
Mat Atkinson
Founder and CEO of Ziflow
Ziflow is led by Mat Atkinson, founder and CEO. Prior to co-founding Ziflow, Mat was the founder and CEO of ProofHQ, the industry’s leading online proofing solution. Under Mat’s leadership, ProofHQ defined the SaaS market for online review and approval and guided the company to its successful acquisition by Workfront. Prior to ProofHQ, Mat was the CEO of Mtivity which was a pioneer in the marketing workflow space, providing marketing automation for agencies and brands worldwide.
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About Ziflow, Ziflow: Ziflow is a SaaS company that builds smart tools for creative production teams.
Tim Cobbold
CEO & Executive Director of UBM Plc
Tim is the CEO & Executive Director of UBM, an event services platform.
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About UBM Plc: UBM is a global events-led marketing and communications services business.
Paul Robert Cary
CEO of Automagical Video Stuff of Kamua
Classically trained pianist & composer, 20 years working in strategy, sales, marketing & startups. History degree, speaks 6 languages. Born in Africa, educated in the US. NCAA Division 1 Athlete. Award winner at Columbia Business School.
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About Findie, Kamua: SaaS Video Editing Automation Tools
Jigar Patel
CEO & Co-Founder of The Ticket Fairy
COO & Founder at The Ticket Fairy. CEO & Founder at Desinex Group International.
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About Desinex Group International, The Ticket Fairy: Full-stack event marketing, ticketing, analytics and advertising platform
Henry Hyder-Smith
Founder and CEO of Adestra
Henry has been working within the email marketing industry since its inception. As co-founder, Henry leads the board of Adestra and has a unique understanding of different clients’ needs, industry issues and development. Henry has a hands-on approach, and is devoted to keeping Adestra’s products, services and staff at the cutting edge of email marketing.
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About Adestra: Adestra is a trusted provider of First-Person Marketing solutions for global and growing brands.
Michel De Wachter
Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Appiness
Michel De Wachter (born 1981) founded Appiness in cooperation with Jonas De Cooman in 2015. Today he functions as co-CEO and COO of the company and operates out of London. Together with his co-founder Jonas, he transformed an idea into a company with more than 20 FTEs developing state of the art technology. Launched in Belgium just 1 year ago, the Spott platform makes any video content interactive and shoppable. With 135.000 users, partnerships with all national broadcasters, 7 million product views per month and a total basket value of 6 million euros, the platform is ready to be launched in the rest of the world. On a monthly basis, Spott is making 15.000 minutes of content interactive and shoppable for OTT, apps and set top boxes.
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About Appiness, GLG, Spott: Appiness is a marketing & advertising platform that makes TV content & ads shoppable, actionable & interactive.
Boris Raicheff
CEO of Cloudpipes
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About Cloudpipes: Cloudpipes is an provider of integration platform as a service deployed on Google Cloud.
Paola Marinone
Founder & CEO of BuzzMyVideos
Founder & CEO at BuzzMyVideos.
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About Blackbox, BuzzMyVideos, TechItalia:Lab: BuzzMyVideos is leading martech company that drives hyper-growth & new revenue from and on YouTube.
Simon Bird
CEO of RevLifter
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About Big Data for Humans, RevLifter, Tailify: RevLifter is an AI powered technology provider helping brands increase revenue through real-time personalised offers.
Jacob Laurvigen
Group CEO & Co-Founder of Dexi
Jacob Laurvigen has been helping businesses achieving above expectations and personally invested in multiple successful start-up’s!
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About Blockware, Dexi, Mozenda: Dexi provides the leading Data Extraction and Data Automation Software.
Matt Wheeler
CEO of Driftrock
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About Driftrock: Driftrock helps brands find their audience online, using data from around the web to power better targeted, more timely Social Media Ads.
Alexander Alimovs
Founder & CEO of Automations.io
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About Automations.io: No-code automation platform to visually automate repetitive work and build workflows to save time and increase productivity.
David Tymm
CEO of I-Movo Limited
David Tymm is CEO and Owner/Founder at i-movo Limited.
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About I-Movo Limited: I-Movo Limited enables businesses to issue vouchers to their customers, which can then be redeemed securely at over 50,000 stores.
Jo Eckersley
CEO & Founder of Bubbl Ltd
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About Bubbl Ltd: Cutting-edge mobile app plug-in that allows companies to hyper-focus their marketing efforts with geo-triggered customer engagement tools.
Adam Gordon
CEO & Co-Founder of Candidate.ID
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About Candidate.ID, Social Media Search: Candidate.ID is a marketing automation software specifically developed for recruitment.
Rasmus Gustavsen
Founder & iCEO of NerdPeople
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About NerdPeople: DIgital Marketing, Software Development, Web and App development, QA. Our nerds will help you reach your business goals in next to no time!
Rahul Jayawant
Founder and CEO of Eureka Mobile Advertising
Rahul is an accomplished professional with experience of creating new businesses for global technology and consulting conglomerates across India, Singapore and the UK. He is passionate about customer delight through excellence in service, business value and innovative technologies. An alumnus of IIT Varanasi, India; he believes the purpose of business is to make friends (wealth creation is a by-product)!
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About Eureka Mobile Advertising: Eureka Mobile Advertising utilizes technology and advanced analytical tools to engage with opt-in subscribers in return for rewards.
Mike Austin
CEO of Fresh Relevance
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About Fresh Relevance: The Personalization Platform to Boost ROI. Built to Help Marketers Get Their Jobs Done..
Syd Lawrence
CEO of The Bot Platform
CEO of The Bot Platform. Co-founded and sold various businesses. Serial Entrepreneur. First company at the age of 12.
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About : Empowering people to build a better employee experience using bots, digital assistants and automation tools.
Darren Hill
Founder & CEO of Inzite
Founder & CEO, Inzite (inzite.com)
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About Inzite: Smart discovery tools and streamlined scheduling help your customers hold meetings with the right people, at the right time.
Peter Ward
Founder and CEO of Shoppar
20 years creating engaging customer experiences in retail. Extensive knowledge of how big brands like Diageo, Cadbury, Red Bull engage and sell to their customers. Previously on the POPAI UK Executive Board.
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About Shoppar: Generate digital content for Social Media advertising that performs
Si Brown
Founder & CEO of skignz
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About skignz: skignz: A Precise Location AR platform providing an Enterprise API/SDK that is capable of placing digital content anywhere on the planet
Torben Vejen
Partner, co-CEO of Impact Extend
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About Impact Extend: Impact Extend delivers omni-channel and data-driven solutions that help solve challenges in a strategic approach to get the maximum ROI.
Steve Wright
Founder & CEO of Captini
Steve Wright is the Founder & CEO at Captini.
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About Captini: Captini transforms Guest WiFi networks into an automated marketing service that increases customer return rates.
Jamie Parker
founder and CEO of wayve
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About wayve: Wayve offers businesses with multiscreen advertising solutions to connect with audiences across mobiles and PCs.
Lee Chadwick
Chief Executive Officer of Spotler
Lee Chadwick is the Chief Executive Officer of Spotler Group.
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About Spotler: Spotler is a provider of online email marketing and marketing automation software and associated knowledge and services.
