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 CTO’ operating in the TV space. If you think a CTO’ 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.
Azeem Akhtar
CTO & Head of Design Team of BT Global Services
An articulate, highly driven and infectiously enthusiastic professional currently serving as the CTO on one of the BT’s largest outsource contracts. Technically and commercially adept with a proven track record of complex solution sales in the most challenging commercial environments globally. A finally astute problem solver with a high degree of commercial acumen focused on delivering bottom-line benefit. Very experienced in formulating market entry strategies, commercial analysis, writing business cases, and contract negotiation. A genuine team player that inspires through thought leadership, challenging the status quo and empowering team members. Multi-lingual and adept at using strong interpersonal skills to develop trusting relationships to drive business benefit. Undertakes a voluntary non-executive director role as Chairman of Active Essex.
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About BT Global Services: BT Global Services plc is a division of United Kingdom telecommunications operator BT Group.
Kim Gasson
FFA & FFAvr Product Owner and CTO, Supply Chain of BT Global Services
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About BT Global Services: BT Global Services plc is a division of United Kingdom telecommunications operator BT Group.
Mark Smith
Group Chief Technology Officer of ITV
Mark joined ITV in 2011 as a member of the Technology Management team and was promoted into the CTO role in 2015, before taking on the Group CTO role in 2018. Prior to joining ITV Mark held senior Technology positions at the BBC, BBC Worldwide and Sky. Over the past 15 years Mark has specialised in digital transformation and has led the design, build and delivery of industry leading VOD platforms. Mark started his career as a software engineer at BT R&D.
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About ITV: ITV is an integrated producer broadcaster, operating the largest commercial family of channels in the UK.
Morgan Sowden
Co-Founder & CTO of paydesk
Currently a product-focused CTO at Lendinvest, a VC backed fin-tech disruptor in the mortgage-lending space. Formerly the CTO at the Octopus Group, where I co-founded and built octopuslabs.com, octopuschoice.com and octopuscash.com; built the Octopus digital design team from scratch, as well as their product and (distributed) engineering teams; and initiated the group transformation from waterfall to agile. I am also co-founder and CTO of paydesk.co, a B2B media platform with 6000+ journalists in 165+ countries. Prior to Paydesk, I was interim CEO and CTO of birthdayalarm.com, a very profitable online greeting card site with 55+ million active members. I’ve also been: Entrepreneur in Residence at Monkey Inferno, a San Francisco based startup accelerator; a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded (and sold) two other web businesses, including an early social network (2003); and a board member / NED. Mostly though, I am DJ and love Techno. Search for me on Mixcloud.
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About Facebook AI, paydesk: On-demand workforce platform disrupting the recruitment industry one sector at a time. Starting with media and doing it with payments
