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 Founder operating in the Sustainability space. If you think a Founder 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.
Steven Novick
CEO & Founder of Farmstand
Previously built 2 billion-dollar businesses and climbed the 7 Summits including Everest. Beating cancer made him passionate about health + the environment and growing up working class has made him appreciate affordability + convenience.
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About Farmstand: Farmstand is the Earth’s first meal delivery service focused on the Future of Work. We feed your team in the office and at home.
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Jessi Baker
Founder & CEO of Provenance
Jessi Baker is the founder of Provenance, building the future of supply chain transparency and product trust on the blockchain. She is an Art and Science hybrid, with Master’s degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge and Design from the Royal College of Art. She has worked with brands on technology strategy across the US and Europe, including Adidas, The Four Seasons, The Guggenheim Museum, British Airways and Will.I.Am. She is an associate researcher at the Intel Institute for Sustainable Cities and a regular speaker on technology and social business.
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About Intel, Provenance: Provenance is the leading software solution for sustainability communications
Antoine Argouges
Founder & CEO of tulipshare
Antoine Argouges is the Founder and CEO at Tulipshare.
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About tulipshare: Tulipshare is the first activist investment platform, with a focus on impactful project to make this planet better.
Hasna Kourda
Co-Founder & CEO of Save Your Wardrobe
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About Save Your Wardrobe: FashionTech startup using AI to make Fashion more digital and sustainable
Mehdi Doghri
Co-Founder & CTO of Save Your Wardrobe
Entrepreneur, Investor, Advisor. Interested in the Fintech, Fashion Tech, Retail Tech and consumer mobile apps.
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About Save Your Wardrobe: FashionTech startup using AI to make Fashion more digital and sustainable
May Al-Karooni
Founder & CEO of Globechain
May Al-Karooni is the founder of Globechain – an award winning British reuse marketplace that connects corporates to charities and smes to redistribute free unwanted items, creating social impact data to its members. May previously worked within the investment banking and asset management industry, fundraising monies for venture capital, property and hedge funds for the last 10 years totaling over £120 million in funds raised. In 2013 May set up Globechain after seeing a demand for a new online circular economy within the waste management industry after her own employer expressed a need to reuse items in a more collaborative way. Globechain has gained huge momentum growing to 10,000 members with eBay as its mentors and securing contracts with some of the world’s largest brands as well as growing a large network of charities nationally and internationally. Globechain works within the retail, commercial and construction industry and last year diverted 5,100,000 kilos from landfill with items being re distributed within the UK as well as abroad as far as Sierra Leone, Guinea, Kenya, Libya and the Ukraine providing savings of over £1,500,000 to charitable causes.
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About Globechain: Globechain is a B2B reuse marketplace connecting businesses to charities, creating social impact data.
Matthew Scanlan
CEO & Co-Founder of Naadam
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About Naadam, Something Navy, Thakoon: Naadam is an American clothing company specializing in affordable, luxury cashmere products.
Eshita Kabra
Founder of By Rotation
Founder By Rotation – UK’s fashion rental app • Worked at various large buy and sell side firms as an investment analyst • Singaporean Indian living in London
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About By Rotation: The World’s First Social Fashion Rental App.
Molawa Adesuyi
CoFounder & CTO of Recyclan
Tech entrepreneur passionate about building products and business that change lives
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About Recyclan: Tech Enabled Plastic Recycling Company
Duncan Grierson
CEO and Founder of Clim8 Invest
Duncan Grierson is a Entrepreneur with VC experience in Paris, London, Silicon Valley & Chicago. He is a Founder CEO of 2 ventures backed by over £50m from likes of Goldman Sachs, Fidelity et al.
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About Clim8: Clim8 is a pioneering green Fintech company.
Jonty Hurwitz
Founder of DAIZY
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About DAIZY: Crypto and stock risk, impact, ESG. Transparency. Finally.
Jamie Cox
Co-Founder & CEO of TreeCard
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About Flare, TreeCard: Treecard is a fullstack green finance platform, allowing consumers to spend, save and invest responsibly.
Mankaran Ahluwalia
Co-Founder and CEO of YAYZY
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About YAYZY: Yayzy is an application for carbon footprint calculator.
Cristian Dan
Co-Founder and CTO of YAYZY
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About YAYZY: Yayzy is an application for carbon footprint calculator.
Cristian Parrino
CEO and Co-Founder of Greengame
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About Greengame, OpenUK: Working with organisations to incentivise sustainable behaviour using automated activity detection, gamification and behavioural economics
Peter Hopton
Founder & Various Roles of Iceotope
I’m an Entrepreneur, with skills in market strategy, ideas, innovation and technology. I’m an ideas persons and I’m one for spotting inefficiencies within systems, which has led me into the realms of “GreenIT” I invented Iceotope, a server cooling technology that has had millions of pounds of investment and I believe will change the data center and server industry forever. I’m now the CEO of this promising technology company that encapsulated electronics inside of liquid filled blades. I’m the founder and now a non-exec at Very Innovative Group, a group of multi-award winning companies: VeryPC – manufacturing energy efficient desktops for education BothRealities – providing all-inclusive IT services Serverous.net – providing bespoke server and storage products to cloud and hosting I regularly speak about sustainability and technology at regional, national and international conferences. (Global Forum, UKCEED, BETT, NAACE, Digital 2020 Yorkshire, etc.) I was also part of the foreign office Green IT mission to Tokyo. I’m on the Green IT and Data Centre Strategy committees at the BCS (British Computer Society – the Chartered Institute for IT) and reasonably regularly speak about Green IT on behalf of the society. For my work I’ve been made a Freeman of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire and received several awards for the companies that I’ve started. Specialties: Computer system design, energy consumption reduction, Green IT, Network design, negotiation, ideas and innovation, problem solving, crisis management, leadership, Green Computing, energy efficiency
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About Iceotope, VeryPC: Engineered to cool the whole IT stack, in every use case, from Hyperscale to the Extreme Edge
Zac Gazit
Founder, CEO & Managing Director of ALVATECH
Zac Gazit is the founder, CEO & Managing Director of ALVATECH & he attended The College of Management Academic Studies in 1997.
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About ALVATECH: ALVATECH develops water treatment solutions and technology for effective farming productivity.
Richard Ballard
Co-Founder & COO of Zero Carbon Farms
Richard Ballard is the Co-Founder and COO at Zero Carbon Farms.
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About Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Growing Underground, University College London (UCL), Zero Carbon Farms: Shaping the future of the growing industry to accelerate the world’s transition to carbon negative farming.
Terence Chung
Founder of FRUU
Biochemist, former medical researcher and now a cosmetic scientist. It’s safe to say that, for Terence, life is like a box of chocolates. He loves all things science and making awesome new skincare products using natural ingredients. If you find a guy looking at the ingredients list in the skincare aisle for hours, that’s him.
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About FRUU: FRUU is a cosmetics company that specializes in turning fruit by-products into sustainable cosmetics.
Charles Paumelle
Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Microshare
Currently heading Global Alliances and International operations for Point.io (www.Point.io), a leading Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform and application programming interface (API) – designed to help enterprises access and share even their most sensitive information with absolute security. You can reach me at cpaumelle@point.io I also head up the International expansion for Savana, a FIS partner with CRM solutions for banks. With experience both on the corporate and vendor side in selling and implementing Enterprise innovation in the European market for the last two decades I founded EroundIT in 2013. EroundIT is a European distributor for emerging technology such as Point.io and Savana. Prior to that, I started the European arm of Knowledge Rules Inc., a boutique consulting practice specialised on BPMS leader Pegasystems. We established a presence in the UK, France, Spain and Bulgaria. Knowledge Rules was acquired by Accenture in Nov 2010. Specialties: European Business Development, Entreprise Content Management, Marketing Technology products, Financial Services industry, Oil & Gas industry, Computer Hardware industry, Business Process Management (BPM), Pegasystems PRPC
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About Microshare: Microshare® provides Smart Facilities data solutions at scale that bring safety, cost savings and sustainability to the Built World.
Alison Wedgwood
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of eWATERservices
Alison Wedgwood is CEO and co-founder of eWATERservices, a tech start-up which is revolutionising the delivery of water in Sub-Saharan Africa. Under Alison’s leadership, a growing global team has developed and deployed a technology and service enabling 265,000 people to access affordable, reliable and clean water near their homes. 660,000,000 litres of water have been dispensed- increasing by the second.
eWATER harnesses the ‘Internet of Things’ to monitor the water systems it installs, and manages the revenue which is generated from users paying affordable fees. The team of locally recruited and trained engineers are then able to maintain the systems resulting in over 90% reliability.
This approach is a consequence of Alison’s years of experience as an economist in the water sector and her visionary leadership to deliver a credible solution which is genuinely game-changing. The service ensures that if a dispenser fails, there is the technical expertise and capital necessary to fix it quickly, making the system sustainable for the future. Using local engineers also provides employment and development.
eWATER’s 24/7 service means improved health, education and economic prosperity for the communities it serves. Young girls don’t miss out on education walking for hours to collect water, as taps are nearby. This drastically improves their prospects and earning potential for their whole lives. Families are sick less often, meaning children are in school more and parents are able to work regularly and earn more income, improving their living standards. Midwives have told us they can now deliver babies safely at any hour as taps aren’t locked at night.
eWATER is also delivering a real impact in the battle with climate change. As communities can access clean water, they no longer need to burn wood or charcoal to boil their water to clean it. This dramatically reduces emissions produced. Finally, when communities pay for their water, it also means that far less water is wasted than at free taps.
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About eWATERservices: Using mobile technology for the accountable collection of user fees to pay for the maintenance of water supply systems forever.
Nick Wakefield
Founder & Managing Director of inAsia Media
Nick has over 18 years of experience in technology, media and finance. He started his first tech business in 1999 building an e-commerce platform. He spent 7 years in London focusing on financial sales in the risk management and derivatives market, before moving to Asia to help build Euromoney’s portfolio of conferences across emerging markets. Over this period he ran teams in New York, London and Hong Kong. In 2010 he setup inAsia Media and in 2013 launched Regulation Asia, the leading regulatory information service. He still plays an advisory role in the business. His passion for technology and experience working within the financial markets partner well for Bambu in the role expanding into Europe. He holds a Diploma in Economics and is currently studying a Software Engineering MicroMasters at University of British Columbia.
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About : Online publisher headquartered in Singapore. Publishes market leading titles Regulation Asia & ESG Investor
Aisling Byrne
Founder & CEO of Nuw (The Nu Wardrobe LTD)
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About Nuw (The Nu Wardrobe LTD): Nuw is the app to swap preloved fashion. ‘Spend your money anywhere, spend your clothes on Nuw’.
Ryan Tindall
Co-Founder of AmoThreads
Ryan Tindall is the Co-founder of AmoCentury.
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About AmoThreads: An online marketplace connecting designers to deadstock fabrics
Kiran Bhagotra
CEO and Founder of ProtectBox
Kiran Bhagotra raised £30m for (East) London food village as COO, government chose to do themselves. As consultant helped raise inaugural 3i Indian Infrastructure Fund & Big Issue Social Investment Fund, both on 2nd funds of £20m+. Commercialisation of Nyrstar, securing 3x investment & Top20 country status. In the UK government’s National Archives she worked on machine learning & digital sensitivity review. For the Cabinet Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office in cyber-crime, operational engagement (public/private) and strategic bi-/multi-lateral partnerships. This included the #WeProtect (Children Online) Summit in which 50+ countries attended, committed to a Statement of Action, new legislation and a new fund led by Unicef were launched. As well as a Ministerial (Letwin) Review of critical infrastructure’s resilience to coastal flooding.
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About ProtectBox: NetZero cybersecurity marketplace
Chris Webb
CEO & Founder of GreenGrowth
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About GreenGrowth: GreenGrowth is a sustainable retail investments platform, bringing transparency and personalisation to retail investing
Dan Simmons
Founder and Director of Quensus
Dr Dan Simmons has a Masters + PhD in Electrical Engineering, and is an expert in water sustainability, software development and wireless technologies. Based on this skill set, he founded Quensus in 2015, which shaped a step-change in the water-saving industry.
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About Quensus: Water management system to monitor and control water infrastructure
Rishi Chowdhury
Co Founder of Incube
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About Incube, Momentum London, Your Hidden Potential: Incube specializes in the fields of commercial real estate, proptech, and smart buildings.
William Gambier
Co-Founder & CTO of WASE
William Gambier currently works as the Co-Founder and CTO for WASE.
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About WASE: WASE provides a decentralized sanitation system with the goal of accelerating the global adoption of circular waste treatment.
Mike Saville
Founder of Gydeline
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About Gydeline: Sustainability and Social Responsibility Consulting
Chris Forbes
Co-Founder & Director of The Cheeky Panda
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About The Cheeky Panda: Cheeky Panda is a sustainable bamboo tissue manufacturer.
Joanna Dai
Founder of Dai
Joanna Dai is the founder and CEO of womenswear company, Dai. Dai is performance wear for women who mean business, balancing eco-certified technical fabrics with elegant tailoring. The brand advocates for sustainability and social impact that empowers women. Since launch, Dai’s innovative approach has been spotlighted by the industry and media as a pioneer in the global women’s workwear market, including features from The Times, Financial Times, The Economist and Fast Company. Joanna is a US expat based in London and was previously an investment banker for 8 years at J.P.Morgan in New York and London. She graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and grew up in Orange County, California.
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About Dai: Dai is an innovative womenswear brand designing sustainable tailored performance wear.
Kaushal Shah
Founder and CEO of envoPAP
Trying to turn Ideas into Reality!
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About envoPAP, Inwius: envoPAP is a Sustainable Materials Company utilizing green technology to provide agricultural waste with a second life.
Douglas Heidergren
CEO and Founder of Hyber
Founder of Hyber.
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About Hyber: Hyber is Sweden’s largest subscription rental platform for clothes and baby products for parents and children.
Sabrina Nascimbeni
Co-Founder of Safi
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About Safi: Sustainable clothing start-up brand inspired by vintage trends with a modern twist
Gavin Jones
Co-Founder & Director of Urban Change
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About Urban Change: Urban Change provides consultation solutions and services for the built environment industry.
Mike Miner
Founder of GoLocate
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About GoLocate: GoLocate provides multi-modal fleet management and real-time visibility over their fleets, helping companies save time and money.
Martyn Lucas
Founder, MD of Carapace Slate
Forever inspired by Scrapheap Challenge, Martyn is the founder/MD of Carapace. Jack of all trades and master of one (Robotics), Martyn started the company in his bedroom, overseeing everything from business strategies and raising funds to building machinery-on-a-shoestring and product development. Since then, with Martyn at the helm, the company has grown from strength to strength and there doesn’t seem to be a mutiny in the pipeline….yet!
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About Carapace Slate: Carapace Slate is a revolutionary, snap-fit roof tile set to make huge waves within the construction sector.
Steve Taylor
Founder of Celbius
Steve Taylor is the founder of Celbius.
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About Celbius: Celbius is a specialist technology company that develops ultrasonic technology for the bioprocessing industries.
Steve Taylor
Founder of Celbius
Steve Taylor is the founder of Celbius.
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About Celbius: Celbius is a specialist technology company that develops ultrasonic technology for the bioprocessing industries.
