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 Product operating in the Social space. If you think a Product 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.
Marie Outtier
Director of Product Management of Twitter
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About Twitter: Twitter is a social networking platform that allows its users to send and read micro-blogs of up to 280-characters known as tweets.
Mike Hutchinson
Chief Product Officer of SuperAwesome
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About SuperAwesome: SuperAwesome offers kid-safe tools and technology for the children’s digital media ecosystem.
Jasmine Cox
Product Designer of BBC
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About BBC: BBC is a large-scale broadcasting corporation that offers content to inform, educate, and entertain people.
Tim Sargeant
Head of Product, Systems & Services of BBC
Tim is a Chartered Engineer with significant experience in the broadcast and media industry. In his current role he leads a team of engineers to plan, develop and deliver production systems used by BBC teams at MediaCityUK, including Sport and Children’s. Big focus areas for him at the moment are the tools and technologies used for the production of low-cost Live and Short-form content for the BBC’s digital platforms. He is passionate about developing new talent and sponsors the BBC’s broadcast engineering apprenticeship and trainee schemes, accredited by the Institute of Engineering and Technology. Tim has Masters degree in Electronic Engineering & Music Technology, and started out his career in working in Research & Development writing software for AR and VR for broadcast television.
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About BBC: BBC is a large-scale broadcasting corporation that offers content to inform, educate, and entertain people.
Matthew Postgate
Chief Technology and Product Officer of BBC
As Chief Technology Officer, Matthew Postgate is responsible for the corporation’s Technology & Systems. In addition, Matthew is a director of Youview Ltd; a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, C4, Channel Five, BT, Talk Talk and Arqiva that is developing a next-generation hybrid television platform. Prior to his current role within the organisation Matthew was Controller, Research & Development. He was part of the management team that launched BBC iPlayer and was in charge of BBC mobile where he was responsible for building the corporation’s world leading mobile services. Before joining the BBC, Matthew worked as a telecommunication consultant, was the director of an internet infrastructure start-up and worked at a digital strategy agency for clients including the Royal Mail, BT, Lloyds TSB, Visa and Qinetiq.
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About BBC: BBC is a large-scale broadcasting corporation that offers content to inform, educate, and entertain people.
Daniel Whaley
Senior Architect – Product (Voice + AI) of BBC
Dan Whaley has been involved in voice and artificial intelligence since the earlier noughties and has worked in design, development and as a consultant. Currently at the BBC, helping build the future of broadcast media, Dan has seen the AI world emerge from the shadows to the mainstream and gained years of practical experience along the way.
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About BBC: BBC is a large-scale broadcasting corporation that offers content to inform, educate, and entertain people.
Neil Hall
Head of Product, BBC iPlayer of BBC
A senior product leader with over 15 years’ experience creating and managing digital services, Neil is currently Head of Product for BBC Sport, leading the product development of the UK’s biggest and best digital sport offering.
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About BBC: BBC is a large-scale broadcasting corporation that offers content to inform, educate, and entertain people.
Stephanie May
Executive Product Manager of BBC
Stephanie is a product management expert who was included in Product Management Festival’s 50 Women in Product in Europe List in 2018. Having gained an MEng from the University of Cambridge, she spent the next two years volunteering as a Biomedical Engineer on the MV Africa Mercy, the world’s largest charity hospital ship, before moving into software development. She’s passionate about collaboration and design thinking and has a range of product management experience across FinTech, B2B and consumer products. Stephanie now leads the Content Discovery product team at the BBC, looking at the strategy and delivery of products such as the BBC Homepage, Discovery Engine and Search.
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About BBC: BBC is a large-scale broadcasting corporation that offers content to inform, educate, and entertain people.
Niko Vijayaratnam
Director of Product of Financial Times
Niko Vijayaratnam is Head of Product for FT Core who develop platforms that support the wider FT Product and Technology division. Prior to working for the FT, Niko has developed products for global media companies such as the BBC and Dow Jones & WSJ.
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About Financial Times: Financial Times is a business news organization providing essential news, comments, data, and analysis for the global business community.
Amy Nicholson
Product Manager of Financial Times
In 2016 Amy graduated from Makers Academy, a coding bootcamp in London, and joined the Financial Times as a junior developer. After 18 blissful months of coding she decided to dive into the curious world of Product and has since been a product manager working on FT.com.
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About Financial Times: Financial Times is a business news organization providing essential news, comments, data, and analysis for the global business community.
Thomas Dunn
Product Designer of Buffer
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About Buffer: Social Media Management Software for Growing Brands
Steve Forde
Director of Digital Products of ITV
Steve Forde has nearly 20 years of digital marketing and product experience. He has spent the majority of that working for the UK’s leading broadcasters. Steve joined ITV in 2015 having spent a decade at Channel 4 where he headed up the marketing for 4oD and the award winning viewer data strategy. Steve joined ITV to launch of the ITV Hub, which has had a 43% increase in viewing in it’s first year. As the Director of Product and Online Marketing, Steve is responsible for the ITV Hub’s product and viewer strategy. Him and his team of product, engagement and experience professionals are placing the viewer at the heart of the end-to-end viewer experience vision.
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About ITV, ITV, ITV: ITV is an integrated producer broadcaster, operating the largest commercial family of channels in the UK.
Natalie Bolton
Production Manager of ITV
Natalie has been working in Production Management now for over 18 years, working at Broadcasters and Independents in London and Manchester including Discovery, Endemol, Zig Zag Productions, ITV and BBC. Natalie joined BBC Children’s in 2012 and whilst looking after the CBeebies development team one of the first projects to develop was the Sesame Workshop Co-Production The Furchester Hotel which Natalie took through the development and production as Line Producer. Natalie was instrumental in shaping the series and achieving the high ambition of the show, she has also Line Produced a new CBBC Comedy Drama – Class Dismissed and The Cbeebies Ugly Duckling annual ballet in conjunction with the Northern Ballet.
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About ITV: ITV is an integrated producer broadcaster, operating the largest commercial family of channels in the UK.
Elena Pavon
Product Lead of Badoo
Elena Pavon, born and raised in Spain, currently living in London. Coming from a mixed background, she started her career at eBay doing everything from customer support to mobile marketing management, before she decided it would be more fun to build products than sell them. That’s when she jumped into the product management world, working with several startups in Spain including Woom and Cabify. Having worked her way up, now she’s a Product Lead at the Badoo Group, responsible for both Bumble and Chappy, and she also teaches Data Driven Design at La Nave Nodriza.
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About Badoo: Badoo is a dating-focused social network, allowing users to chat, make friends and share interests.
Luba Vyaznikova
Product Lead of Badoo
Luba Vyaznikova, originally from Russia but now living in London. Luba has worked on a vast range of products, from mobile maps (geo services) to natural language understanding products to dating. Having been a PM at Yandex, Russia’s largest IT company, she went on to launch and grow her own startup helping people to break free of social media addiction. She has a passion for building new products and helping people to make their lives better – a passion she brings to her current role as product lead at the Badoo Group, responsible for the company’s largest product, Badoo, across 4 platforms.
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About Badoo: Badoo is a dating-focused social network, allowing users to chat, make friends and share interests.
Rebecca Carson
Chief Product Officer of Brandwatch
After 10 years conducing consumer research using a variety of offline methodologies and SaaS insight platforms, I now have the pleasure of building the software and intelligence that powers them.
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About Brandwatch: Brandwatch is a consumer intelligence and social media listening platform.
Philip Agnew
Director of Product Marketing of Brandwatch
Phillip Agnew is the Director of Product Marketing at Brandwatch.
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About Brandwatch: Brandwatch is a consumer intelligence and social media listening platform.
Jamie Hoyle
SVP of Product of MirrorWeb
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About MirrorWeb: We archive thousands of websites a year, hundreds of social media accounts, and index billions of documents.
Karl Stringer
Chief Product Officer of MirrorWeb
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About MirrorWeb: We archive thousands of websites a year, hundreds of social media accounts, and index billions of documents.
Jeff Moriarty
EVP/Chief Product Officer – Digital of Nexstar Broadcasting Group
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About Nexstar Broadcasting Group: Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc., is one of the nation’s leading diversified media companies.
Michael Bullion
Chief Product Officer of Glow Digital Media
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About Glow Digital Media: Glow Machine is an ad tech platform for creating, improving and understanding Facebook and Twitter Ad campaigns.
Thomas Baggio
Chief Product Officer of Favorey
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About Favorey: We are building a community of trust, where we can all ask for help from trusted contacts, and use our skills to help others.
Wolfgang Hauptfleisch
Head of Product of ScoopLoop
Wolfgang grew up in Germany and has worked as a software developer and system administrator for more than 25 years. He studied musicology and logic at the University of Münster. He has worked in R&D on autonomous embedded systems and has a long experience in development and deployment of large web services. He oversees the development of our online services and leads our technical team.
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About ScoopLoop: ScoopLoop is a mobile application that enables its users to discover practical advice and share resources with their neighbors.
Faye Woodcock
Co-Founder and Head of Product of TimeAway
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About TimeAway: Enriching family holidays, tried and tested by like minded mums
Andrew Harris
Director, Product Activation of Jellyfish
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About Jellyfish: Jellyfish works as a digital platform, supporting and drives digital transformation by providing strategy, technology, and training.
Haydon Godbeer
Chief Product Officer of yourfeed
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About yourfeed: yourfeed is an online platform that connects people to relevant opportunities via their real life skills!
Sara Johnson
Executive Producer & Head of Co-Productions of Keshet International
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About Keshet International: Keshet International is Keshet Media Group’s global distribution and production arm.
Georgy Kravtsov
Product Owner of William Hill
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About iWantRobot, William Hill: William Hill is a is a bookmaker that provides online betting and gambling games for sports betting and gaming markets.
Darshan Sanghrajka
Founder & Product Director of State of Ambition
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About State of Ambition: State of Ambition is a social enterprise that helps young individuals build support networks around their ambitions.
Fabio Murra
Product & Marketing of V-Nova
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About V-Nova: Next-generation video and image compression that works today
Ellie Hoy
Product Manager of The Work Crowd
Ellie is our Product Manager here at The Work Crowd, she is passionate about the user experience and adding intuitive and meaningful functionality. After graduating from Leeds University Ellie worked for an online tutoring start-up, helping build their online platform, helping take the company from a standing start to receiving first round funding. Ellie has also worked in executive search prior to joining The Work Crowd, so also appreciates the challenges companies face finding the right talent to meet their business needs.
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About The Work Crowd: The Work Crowd is changing the way talented people choose to work and how work finds talented people!
Nick Bennett
Chief Product Officer of Live For Football
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About Live For Football: Live For Football is a vertical social network co-owned by the people that make the content that matters most to fans
Jay Krall
Chief Product Officer of Socialgist
Jay Krall is a Chief Product Officer at Socialgist
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About Socialgist: Socialgist is social media data provider.
Laurence Parry
Lead Administrator and Product Owner of Inkbunny
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About Inkbunny: Inkbunny is a furry art community, showcasing artwork, comics, stories, music and animations for fans of anthropomorphic animals.
Craig Curchin
Production Director of Swift Social
Founder of Swift Social Ltd
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About Swift Social, Swift Social: Smart and Easy Twitter Management. The ultimate tool for natural growth, content curation and driving traffic
Pete Willcox
Head of Product Delivery of Sportlobster
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About Sportlobster: Sportlobster was born out of the frustration that sports fans face in having to visit multiple sites or download multiple apps.
Marc Irvin
Head of Product of Secco
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About Secco: UK based startup creating a mobile social economic network
Louise Curtis
Product Manager of Telegraph
Louise Curtis is the product manager at The Telegraph.
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About Telegraph: Telegraph is a social network mobile app.
Gavin Ellis
Business and Product Development Manager of gamesGRABR
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About gamesGRABR: gamesGRABR is a London-based social gaming network, which is available on mobile, tablet, and PC.
