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 Video Games 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.
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Frank Sagnier
CEO of Codemasters
Frank has been in the games industry for over 20 years. He started at Acclaim Entertainment as Head of European Marketing. He then moved to Electronic Arts Limited where he successfully managed the European marketing and Third-Party Publishing teams. Frank was also part of the global leadership team that drove the company into the online and mobile era. After many years in the corporate world Frank spent several years running a number of game development studios backed by venture capital firms and focused solely on digital free-to-play business models. Frank joined Codemasters in 2014, when he was recruited as Chief Executive Officer to implement the Group’s strategy. Frank is also an Ambassador for BAFTA Games and a Vice President of ‘SpecialEffect’, a UK based charity which uses video games and technology to enhance the quality of life of people with disabilities.
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About Codemasters: Codemasters is a developer and publisher of interactive entertainment products for a global audience across multiple gaming platforms.
Wil Stephens
Founder, CEO of Fusebox Games
Wil is a Welsh entrepreneur with extensive experience of building transformational businesses in media and interactive entertainment. Wil is currently CEO of Fusebox Games, an interactive entertainment company he co-founded in 2016 that develops and publishes mobile games based on hit TV shows. Wil founded his first business aged 23 and as CEO of Cube TV, led the company to win BAFTAs and Broadcast Digital Awards for their ground-breaking interactive and TV formats. After growing Cube TV to offices in Cardiff and London, he joined the leadership team at New York based video streaming company Boxee to build out their international business, later acquired by Samsung. Wil is an investor in the media and interactive entertainment industry through his holding company, Closs Holdings.
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About Cube Interactive, Fusebox Games: Live the stories you love with Fusebox Games.
Sam Mathews
Founder & CEO of Fnatic
Sam Mathews is an entrepreneur most known for his exploits in the gaming community. Best known for founding Fnatic, the worlds number 1 professional gaming team, managing over 25 professional video gamers with big name sponsors such as title sponsor MSI. He founded UGAME in 2008, a focused social network providing a complete gamer profile, as well as linking niche gaming content sites together through one user base and offering a platform to share user content around gaming.
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About Fnatic: Leading esports performance.
James Draper
Founder and CEO of Bidstack
From Bidstack.com: James founded Bidstack in 2015 utilising more than 15 years of commercial experience to launch his own business. Since the initial launch he has seen the company grow from a one man operation to an international business which trades on the London Stock Exchange. Under his stewardship, Bidstack became the first ever Crowdcube funded company to go public and he pivoted the business into gaming in 2017. James leads the business as a whole and is responsible for the company’s direction, growth, development, and vision.
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About Bidstack: Bidstack empowers brands to place advertising into spaces that sit naturally within video games.
Dominic Wheatley
CEO of Catalis
Co-Founder & CEO at Bright Things .
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About Bright Things, Catalis: Catalis provides high-end technical services relating to the creation of digital content for the digital media & entertainment industries.
Thomas Fairey
Founder & CEO of Stakester
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About Stakester: Stakester is a mobile first skill-based competition platform that enables competitors to compete with each other for prizes.
Henrique Olifiers
Co-Founder, Gamer-In-Chief (CEO) of Bossa Studios
Henrique Olifiers Co-founded and leads Bossa Studios, a multiple award-winning games company in London, makers of the BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread, amongst several other titles across all digital platforms. Bossa is also a leading Virtual Reality studio in Europe, hosting VR Meetups for the past three years. As a hobbyist, Henrique is a Maker passionate about 3D printing materials, robotics and human-machine interfaces.
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About Bossa Studios: Bossa Studios is a games developer and publisher, creators of BAFTA-winning Monstermind, Surgeon Simulator and Worlds Adrift.
Chris Adams
Chief Executive Officer of OTHERWORLD
Chris Adams is the Chief Executive Officer at The Dream Corporation.
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About OTHERWORLD: The brick-and-mortar metaverse. An island paradise in the cloud reached through a growing network of multi-sensory immersion pods.
Gareth Edwards
CEO of Cubic Motion
Gareth Edwards is the CEO of Cubic Motion He is Winner of the 2015 IEEE Test of Time Award for “one of the most influential papers in the field; inspired many (if not all) subsequent works on deformable models for face analysis.” Also awarded Olympus Science for Life and Sullivan Prizes. Creating novel technologies for 20 years.
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About Cubic Motion: Cubic Motion is the world leader in real-time model-based computer vision and digital animation technology.
Jon Rissik
Chief Executive Officer of Dovetail Games
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About Dovetail Games: Dovetail Games creates digital hobbies enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of passionate enthusiasts across the globe.
Bobby Thandi
Founder & CEO of XR Games
Bobby Thandi joined XR Games as Founder and CEO in 2017.
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About XR Games: XR Games is an award-winning game development studio specialising in immersive AR and VR games. We make fun games people love to play and talk about.
Noor Alkhadra
Founder & CEO of WeGeek
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About WeGeek: We are passionate geeks who take great pleasure in bringing gamers together by creating AWESOME gaming events.
Paul Sulyok
Founder & CEO of Green Man Gaming
Paul is the Founder and CEO of Green Man Gaming, an award-winning global eCommerce technology company in the video games industry. His disruptive innovation and entrepreneurship has driven the company’s fast growth success from a team of three working with just 26 publishers in 2010 to a multi-million pound company today with over 100 staff and over 700 publisher partners. From its headquarters in Kings Cross, London, the company offers gamers in 195 countries a wide catalogue of digital games on its store, a social platform for the community and a games publishing business. Through Paul’s leadership, Green Man Gaming has also been able to leverage its technology and build strong partnerships with leading hardware manufacturers such as Intel®, Lenovo and HP. As an already distinguished business leader, Paul is passionate about raising the profile of British businesses and technology internationally. He believes in the truly immersive and engaging power of video games as an unrivalled form of entertainment and strives to promote the benefits of the industry at every opportunity. Before Green Man Gaming, Paul founded Prizefight, a video games and betting hybrid, and built customised algorithmic trading engines for the cash equity markets. He was also a management consultant, a banker and an Officer in HM Forces.
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About Green Man Gaming: Green Man Gaming is a global pure play e-commerce and technology business in the video games industry.
Steve Cottam
CEO of AntStream Arcade
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About AntStream Arcade: The de facto retro games platform. With 1000 games ready to play, you can enjoy old console, arcade and computer classics on most devices
John Earner
Co-Founder & CEO of Space Ape
John Earner brings extensive expertise in online gaming to his role as vice president of product management at Playfish, where he oversees the daily service operation of the company’s growing portfolio of live popular social games. Prior to Playfish, John was with Sony Computer Entertainment America where he designed the micro-transaction business model for PlayStation Home, Sony’s free-to-play virtual community, which he also helped launch. John also was a project leader at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a leading strategy consulting firm, where his role focused on online gaming. Before BCG, John was an officer in the United States Navy. John earned a MBA from University of California at Berkeley and holds a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University.
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About Playfish, Space Ape: Space Ape is a mobile gaming company dedicated to creating the highest quality games for players.
Mitchell Smallman
Co-Founder & CEO of Pocket Burger Games
Mitchell Smallman is the Co-Founder and CEO at Pocket Burger Games.
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About Pocket Burger Games: Pocket Burger is dedicated to discovering, creating and building new genres in the mobile games space.
Callum Brighting
CEO of Netspeak Games
Running Netspeak Games. Diversity, Inclusion and Creativity are our pillars. Always looking to talk about games, technology and people. Previous: Improbable, Bloomberg, Kuju, Traveller’s Tales
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About Netspeak Games: Netspeak Games operates as a zero-crunch studio that develops online multiplayer games.
Sophia Hayes
Founder & CEO of Gamer Guides
Sophia Hayes is Founder & CEO at Gamer Guides.
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About Gamer Guides: Gamer Guides is a comprehensive game database and publisher of interactive digital strategy guides for video games.
Andrew Hall
CEO of Sumdog
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About Sumdog: Online site making learning fun for k-12 students while allowing teachers and parents to track progress and create activities.
Harvey Elliott
Chief Executive Officer & Founder of PlayStack
Harvey is an industry leader whose 20 year career spans EA, Acclaim Entertainment and Marmalade, where he led two successful capital raises. He recently finished his 4 year tenure as Chair of the BAFTA games committee. Now CEO and Founder at PlayStack, a new and exciting games publisher. Leveraging the team’s experience in games, entertainment and finance to redefine the way in which games are funded, developed, enjoyed and shared. The objective is to actively work with the team to select the games that can be published; tailoring the funding model to support each game and identifying the creative and technical innovations that will drive game adoption, build community and deliver success.
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About PlayStack: PlayStack is a company that helps developers in end-to-end funding, publishing expertise, and technology to develop the next big game.
Andrew Wafer
CEO of PixelToys
Andy loves games. He’s been playing them for over thirty years and notched up credits on more than 30 in the last decade and a half, most recently for companies like Codemasters and Activision. He’s worked in diverse roles including Chief Game Designer, Global Brand Manager, Head of Digital Platforms and many other senior roles across game development and publishing, always as a champion for innovation and quality.
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About PixelToys: Pixel Toys is a developer and publisher of digital games and entertainment.
Chris Seavor
CEO of Gory Detail Limited
Chris Seavor (born 1968) is a British video game designer and voice actor, known for creating the Conker franchise.
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About Gory Detail Limited: Video Game Company
Douglas Lloyd
CEO & Co-Founder of Macademia
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About Macademia: Macademia is an award-winning global EdTech company providing educational programming and games for children.
Rob Gay
CEO and Co-founder of Venatus
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About Venatus: Venatus is a global advertising technology platform, focused on gaming and entertainment.
Benjamin Woolf
Chief Executive Officer of Gameway
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About Gameway: Gameway is the mobile gaming experience of the future.
Peter Phillips
Chief Executive Officer of Amuzo
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About Amuzo: A multi-award winning team of game developers, with experience spanning mobile, web and console production.
Roberta Saliani
CEO of Just a Pixel
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About Just a Pixel: Just a Pixel is a Video game development company based in Brighton, UK. Own-IP development, collaborative works and work-for-hire.
Mark Cundle
Founder and CEO of Tammeka
Mark has 15 years experience of defining and launching disruptive software in the technology sector. A seasoned marketing professional, Mark founded Tammeka to realise a life long dream of combining lead edge tech with gaming.
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About Tammeka: VR games development studio based in Ascot, UK
Jonathan Lloyd
Co-founder & CEO of CGHero
My mission and passion for the past decade has been to help talented CG artists market and sell their amazing work to companies around the world.
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About CGHero: Outsource 3D Modelling, Concept Art, Textures, VFX & More
Nizar Romdan
CEO & Co-founder of Virtual Arts Ltd.
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About Virtual Arts Ltd.: We are building a leading state of the art Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality Technology and interactive content company.
Ben Cooper
Co-Founder & CEO of Gallantcloud Games
Ben Cooper is a Co-Founder & CEO at Gallantcloud Games.
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About Gallantcloud Games: Gallantcloud Games are striving to create new and interesting games and bring fun and reward to the masses.
Jon Hare
CEO of Tower Studios
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About Tower Studios: Tower Studios develops games for android and iOS platforms.
Eric Elms
Chief Executive Officer of Cojac Limited
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About Cojac Limited: Cojac has invented and patented an award winning 6-axis controller for PC gaming.
Michiel Bakker
CEO of Ginx TV
CEO GINX Esports TV.
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About Ginx TV: Ginx TV, founded in 2008, is a UK-based international media company dedicated to the creation of videogaming TV channels around the world.
