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 Founder operating in the Risk Management 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.
Rusty Johnson
Co-Founder & CTO of SharpCloud Software
Follow Rusty Johnson:
About SharpCloud Software: Data visualization software that transforms business data into engaging visual stories, helping you make smarter strategic decisions.
Flavio Molendini
Co-Founder of B2C2
Follow Flavio Molendini:
About B2C2: B2C2 is the trading firm of choice in the institutional crypto markets.
Max Boonen
Director & Founder of B2C2
Follow Max Boonen:
About B2C2: B2C2 is the trading firm of choice in the institutional crypto markets.
Kabir Barday
Founder, CEO of OneTrust
Barday is Fellow of Information Privacy, a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPM, CIPT), and Chief Executive Officer of OneTrust. Barday oversees all aspects of OneTrust’s product development, operations, and sales, and is the driving force behind the company’s international expansion. Prior to OneTrust, Barday served as Director of Product Management at AirWatch, which was acquired by VMware in 2014 for $1.54B. At AirWatch, Barday received the HPE-IAPP’s Most Innovative Privacy Technology Award after launching the Privacy First program.
Follow Kabir Barday:
About CookiePro, OneTrust: OneTrust helps companies manage privacy, security, and governance requirements in a regulatory environment that constantly changes.
Arnaud Vinciguerra
Founder/CEO of Domos FS
Follow Arnaud Vinciguerra:
About Domos FS, Memnon Archiving Services: Domos FS offers a suite of apps for alternative investment funds including private equity, real estate, debt, and infrastructure.
John Lord
Founder & CEO of Trunarrative
Appointed in 2009, John Lord leads the Group’s growing global capability to provide fraud, risk and compliance solutions to many of the world’s largest commercial organisations, governments, as well as disruptive start-ups. Prior to GBG, John led global sales before heading up the UK business for one of the world’s largest credit rating agencies, Dun & Bradstreet, and also led a major data analytics, outsourcing and contact centre business.
Follow John Lord:
About Trunarrative: Trunarrative is a risk and financial crime management platform that offers fraud prevention, identity, and compliance solutions.
Adam Hildreth
Founder & CEO of Crisp Thinking
Adam Hildreth is one of the foremost global experts on how to keep brands safe from the dangers of user-generated content posted online. He has worked with global brands, governments and law enforcement agencies for the past 12 years on issues around activist and brand attacks, child grooming, suicide threats, bomb threats, adverse events, legal risk and reputational issues. Since starting his first company, Dubit Ltd, Adam has been an advocate for the protection of children online from serious issues such as cyberbullying, child abuse, harassment and grooming, and is involved in several children’s charities. Adam’s current company, Crisp, uses cutting-edge technology to deliver the world’s leading risk detection capabilities. Using advanced AI and a global team of digital risk experts, Crisp provides complete online safety for some of the biggest brands, digital platforms, advertisers and young users to ensure they’re fully protected on social media. Adam’s pioneering thinking not only drives Crisp’s insatiable innovation, it has also won him prestigious awards over the years including: Achievement in Information Technology at the Yorkshire Young Achievers Awards 2003, the CBI’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2006 Growing Business Awards, and Regional Winner for the 2010 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year UK. More recently he featured in the 2017 Maserati 100 list of game-changing entrepreneurs.
Follow Adam Hildreth:
About Crisp Thinking: Crisp is the leading provider of social media brand safety and crisis monitoring services.
Michael Phair
Founder, Director & CEO of REG
REG’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Phair, is a banking veteran with links to World Bank, N M Rothschild and UBS. Michael is a private equity investor with over 40 years’ experience in the financial markets.
Follow Michael Phair:
About REG: REG provides an intelligence, analytics, and risk management software to the global insurance and financial services market.
Jonty Hurwitz
Founder of DAIZY
Follow Jonty Hurwitz:
About DAIZY: Crypto and stock risk, impact, ESG. Transparency. Finally.
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.
Follow Morgan Sowden:
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
Bola Adegbulu
Co-Founder and CEO of Predina Tech
Follow Bola Adegbulu:
About Predina Tech: Building the Location Risk Intelligence platform for the future of Auto Insurance and Mobility
Anthony Siggers
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Archipelago
Anthony Siggers is the Co-Founder and CPO at Archipelago.
Follow Anthony Siggers:
About Archipelago: Archipelago uses AI to digitize risk for large owners of commercial property to increase their resiliency and lower their cost of risk..
David Excell
Founder of Featurespace
Dave is Featurespace’s Founder and CTO,responsible for working directly with our clients. Dave is an experienced technology innovator with over 18 years dedicated to the study of engineering. He has received several accolades in his field, including the ITC Enterprise Award for Young Entrepreneur. Under his leadership, Featurespace has progressed from a concept to a commercial success. Dave currently resides in the U.S. and is managing the Featurespace global expansion from Atlanta, Georgia.
Follow David Excell:
About Featurespace: Featurespace provides an adaptive behavioral analytics technology and automated deep behavioral networks for risk management.
Ben Richmond
Founder & CEO of CUBE
Follow Ben Richmond:
About CUBE, International RegTech Association: CUBE is a global RegTech provider empowering regulated financial institutions to meet compliance challenges head on.
Kimmo Soramaki
Founder & CEO of FNA
Kimmo Soramäki is the Founder and CEO of Financial Network Analytics (FNA) and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Network Theory in Finance. Kimmo started his career as an economist at the Bank of Finland where in 1997, he developed the first simulation model for interbank payment systems. In 2004, while at the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he was among the first to apply methods from network theory to improve our understanding of financial systems. During the financial crisis of 2007-2008, Kimmo advised several central banks, including the Bank of England and European Central Bank, in modeling interconnections and systemic risk. This work led him to found FNA in 2013 to solve important issues around financial risk and for exploring the complex financial networks that play a continually larger role in the world around us. Kimmo holds a Doctor of Science in Operations Research and a Master of Science in Economics (Finance), both from Aalto University in Helsinki.
Follow Kimmo Soramaki:
About FNA: FNA is a deep technology analytics company that offers financial system services.
Haydn Brooks
Co-Founder & CEO of Risk Ledger
Haydn graduated Imperial College London with a degree in Neuroscience and Mental Health. He then joined KPMG’s cyber security team where he specialised in supply chain security and social engineering. Haydn was one of the youngest graduates at a big 4 firm to set up, design, implement, and close, a number of third party assurance projects on behalf of a number of large clients. After a successful consulting career that spanned a number of years at KPMG, Deloitte, and a technology startup, he founded Risk Ledger. Risk Ledger solves the pain around third party assurance and security due diligence. Haydn hopes that Risk Ledger will mean that nobody ever has to experience the pain of running a manual third party assurance programme again.
Follow Haydn Brooks:
About Risk Ledger: Risk Ledger is the world’s most innovative vendor risk management platform, built on the model of a secure social network.
Daniel Saul
Co-Founder & CTO of Risk Ledger
Follow Daniel Saul:
About Risk Ledger: Risk Ledger is the world’s most innovative vendor risk management platform, built on the model of a secure social network.
James Chappell
Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Digital Shadows
James has over twelve years’ experience of technical information security acting as an advisor to large private sector and government organisations.Much of his work has involved counteracting the growth of crime and fraud in computer networks and developing effective ways of measuring and managing the information security big picture.
Follow James Chappell:
About Digital Shadows: Digital Shadows identifies unwanted exposure, protect against external threats, and minimize digital risk.
Christopher El Badaoui
Co-Founder, CEO of LVNDR Health
Chris is responsible for driving LVNDR’s vision, brand, and business strategy as well as building and managing a phenomenal team to revolutionize LGBTQ+ healthcare. They are a 2x founder and have previously built accelerators and investment vehicles for Parsons School of Design, Techstars and the NFL. Prior to that, they led Growth and Strategy at Pillar Tech disrupting legacy industries with Fortune 500 companies.
Follow Christopher El Badaoui:
About LVNDR Health: LVNDR is redesigning sexual and reproductive healthcare services through a mobile-first digital clinic designed for LGBTQIA+ individuals.
Chris Coe
Founder of DCE Partners
Follow Chris Coe:
About DCE Partners: South African based Private Equity firm.
Joshua Wallace
Co-Founder of Cytora
Follow Joshua Wallace:
About Cytora: Cytora is a configurable platform that enables commercial insurers to create digital workflows by digitising, evaluating and routing risks.
Aeneas Wiener
Co-Founder & CTO of Cytora
Aeneas draws on 10+ years of technical experience developing bespoke cloud-driven web applications. He holds masters degrees in Theoretical Physics and Computational Science from Imperial College London. His widely published postgraduate work focused on optical materials used for chemical sensing and invisibility cloaking. In 2011 Aeneas co-founded the Hermes Academy, an innovative nonprofit organisation backed by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Follow Aeneas Wiener:
About Cytora: Cytora is a configurable platform that enables commercial insurers to create digital workflows by digitising, evaluating and routing risks.
Andrew Williams
CEO / Founder of Quantile Technologies
Follow Andrew Williams:
About Quantile Technologies: Quantile helps market participants reduce their counterparty risk.
Stephen O’Connor
Chairman & Founder of Quantile Technologies
Co-founded Quantile in 2015. Previously, during a 20-year career at Morgan Stanley, Stephen, a member of the Fixed Income Management Committee, held a number of senior roles including Global Head of Counterparty Portfolio Management and Global Head of Client Clearing. Stephen has served on numerous industry bodies including as Chairman of ISDA and he was a board member of GE Capital International Holdings Limited. He is currently a board member of the London Stock Exchange Group PLC, where he is Chair of the Risk Committee. He serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the London School of Economics Systemic Risk Centre.
Follow Stephen O’Connor:
About Quantile Technologies: Quantile helps market participants reduce their counterparty risk.
Simon Cullen
Founder and Managing Director of Risksave Technologies
Simon Cullen is a founder of RiskSave, a financial technology and compliance firm. He has a first-class degree in mathematics and a masters in economics from Trinity College Dublin and is a qualified Financial Risk Manager (FRM). Simon worked for over fifteen years in banking and asset management, formerly being Head of Credit for Structured Debt for a large European Asset Manager. Simon has 15 years’ experience dealing with regulatory compliance and risk across banks and asset managers and oversees RiskSave’s compliance platform.
Follow Simon Cullen:
About Risksave Technologies: Risksave Technologies is a fast-growing provider of regulatory hosting services.
Erkin Oksel
CEO & Founder of EyesClear
Erkin Oksel is the founder and CEO of EyesClear.
Follow Erkin Oksel:
About EyesClear: EyesClear supports finance executives in allocating capital while avoiding the traps and risks that online finance inherently brings.
Justin Fitzpatrick
Co-Founder & CEO of DueDil
Justin is co-founder and CEO of DueDil. Prior to DueDil he established the Asian and European operations for two other venture-backed tech companies. Justin is also a founding Non-Executive Director of Innovate Finance, a financial technology industry body.
Follow Justin Fitzpatrick:
About DueDil: DueDil is a company intelligence platform that gives businesses a solution to identify opportunities and manage risk.
Donal Smith
Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Credit Benchmark
Donal Smith Co-founded Credit Benchmark Ltd., in 2012. Donal Smith served as the Chief Executive Officer at Markit Securities Finance Analytics Ltd. from March 2008 to April 2012. He served as the Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Financial’s businesses in Europe and Asia at Thomson Reuters. He joined Data Explorers in March 2008. He served as the Managing Director of Thomson Financial’s banking and brokerage division joined at the end of 2001. He also served as the President and Chief Operating Officer for European and Asia Operations of Thomson Financial, Inc. He worked for the Financial Times Group as Managing Director of Business Information at FT Information and then as Director of Electronic Publishing for the FT Group. Donal Smith was responsible for the integration of Pearson’s portfolio of business and financial information services as well as the expansion of FT Group through acquisition and he was also responsible for the launch of FT.com as a global financial resource which quickly became the number one business website in Europe. He served as Chief Executive Officer of FT.com and member the Financial Times Group’s management board. He Co-founded eCountries.com in 1999 and served as its Chief Executive Officer and also FT Group’s Member of the Management Board. He serves as Non-Executive Chairman of Pirum Systems Limited. He serves as Chairman of BI-SAM Technologies S.A. He served as Chairman of Selerity, Inc. He serves as a Director of Selerity, Inc. He serves as a Non Executive Director of Commodity Vectors Ltd. Donal Smith serves as an Executive Member and Member of the Board at Data Explorers Limited. He served as a Non Executive Director of Trinity Mirror plc from March 1, 2012 to May 7, 2015. He holds a Degree in the History of Art and English Literature from University College Dublin.
Follow Donal Smith:
About Credit Benchmark, Pirum Systems, RIMES Technologies, Web Financial Group: Credit Benchmark is a financial data analytics company.
Mark Faulkner
Co-Founder of Credit Benchmark
Co-Founder of Credit Benchmark.
Follow Mark Faulkner:
About : Credit Benchmark is a financial data analytics company.
Eva Berg-Winters
Founder & CEO of Bewica
Eva Berg-Winters has a background in insurance and management consulting with a focus on digital. Until summer 2017, she was Head of UK&I Claims with a leading insurer. She has since founded Bewica to help SMEs manage cyber risks.
Follow Eva Berg-Winters:
About Bewica: Bewica makes cybersecurity beautifully simple for small organisations with our award-winning SaaS platform
Chris Miller
Founder and CTO of Percentile
With over 20 years of experience as a software engineer and architect, Chris spent 8 years working on the risk technology platform for KBC Financial Products and KBC Investments. He has a wealth of experience in high-performance software and spearheaded the development of RiskMine’s scalable distributed computing architecture.
Follow Chris Miller:
About Percentile: Percentile provides technology to align risk management and front office for better decision making and easier regulatory compliance.
Dapeng Yu
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Previsico
Dapeng Yu is a Professor of River Dynamics at Loughborough University. He is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Previsico.
Follow Dapeng Yu:
About Previsico: Previsico is a global provider of real-time, street level flood prediction, and analytical solutions, building round-the-clock resilience.
Rafael Libardi
Founder & Executive Director of NoLeak Defence
Follow Rafael Libardi:
About NoLeak Defence: Noleak Behavior Recognition is an AI-based system to identify suspicious actions and behaviors from cameras
Dario Crispini
CEO and Founder of Kaizen Reporting
Dario is one of the foremost experts on regulatory reporting in the financial services industry. He founded Kaizen in 2013 following nearly 20 years specialising in regulatory reporting including as a regulator, a consultant, and directly within the industry. After training as an auditor and working in compliance at Deloitte, Dario spent ten years at the Financial Services Authority where he led the Transaction Monitoring Unit (TMU). He managed the transition to MiFID reporting in 2007 and remodelled the TMU’s approach to its industry interaction. In 2010, Dario became Director of Legal and Compliance in the UK’s first retail exchange, LMAX, before joining the compliance team at Barclays where he had advisory responsibility for transaction and EMIR reporting.
Follow Dario Crispini:
About Kaizen Reporting: Kaizen Reporting is a team of regulatory reporting specialists dedicated to improving the quality of regulatory reporting data.
Dario Crispini
CEO and Founder of Kaizen Reporting
Dario is one of the foremost experts on regulatory reporting in the financial services industry. He founded Kaizen in 2013 following nearly 20 years specialising in regulatory reporting including as a regulator, a consultant, and directly within the industry. After training as an auditor and working in compliance at Deloitte, Dario spent ten years at the Financial Services Authority where he led the Transaction Monitoring Unit (TMU). He managed the transition to MiFID reporting in 2007 and remodelled the TMU’s approach to its industry interaction. In 2010, Dario became Director of Legal and Compliance in the UK’s first retail exchange, LMAX, before joining the compliance team at Barclays where he had advisory responsibility for transaction and EMIR reporting.
Follow Dario Crispini:
About Kaizen Reporting: Kaizen Reporting is a team of regulatory reporting specialists dedicated to improving the quality of regulatory reporting data.
David Lawlor
Co-Founder of Enforcd
David is co-founder and COO of Enforcd, and has worked in the financial services industry for over 20 years. He is a senior product manager and content expert, who most recently led Thomson Reuters’ response to Dodd Frank and MiFID 2. As Accountable Product Owner he managed across all work streams to formulate strategy and execute on the firm’s product roadmap and was the key Thomson Reuters regulatory representative at all major industry events and groups. Earlier in his career David worked as an FX broker for ICAP, and an FX and Eurobond trader at UBS. He also spent a period of time running the content business for risk, for Deutsche Bank.
Follow David Lawlor:
About : Enforcd is a global regulatory intelligence platform that helps banks and others stay up to date with regulatory change and identify risks.
Lance Jones
Founder of certaj networks
Follow Lance Jones:
About certaj networks: Focused on delivery of Network Crime Scene Investigation capability, to know How, What, When & the Risk is, across your corporate network
Robin Oldham
Founder and Chief Consultant of Cydea
Robin Oldham is the founder of Cydea, a positive cyber security consultancy, and previously lead BAE Systems’ Security Advisory & Technical Services business, recognised by Forrester as one of the leading information security consultancies. He helps businesses defend themselves from cyber crime and thrive in the digital world and has over fifteen years experience including advising numerous boards on how to manage crises resulting from cyber-attack. Robin works with financial services, energy, telecommunications and transport clients, as well central and secure government departments, to better prepare and protect their interests. By better understanding their cyber threat and risk landscape Robin helps them build resilient, defendable architectures and implement efficient security operations. Previously Robin worked for Multiplay – a world leading esports festival and enterprise game hosting provider – where he regularly built and secured 3000-node, high performance networks within 24 hours. Robin has a first class degree in Digital Forensics from the University of Portsmouth and is mentor to cyber technology startups from the CyLon incubator.
Follow Robin Oldham:
About Cydea: Cybersecurity consultancy
Robin Oldham
Founder and Chief Consultant of Cydea
Robin Oldham is the founder of Cydea, a positive cyber security consultancy, and previously lead BAE Systems’ Security Advisory & Technical Services business, recognised by Forrester as one of the leading information security consultancies. He helps businesses defend themselves from cyber crime and thrive in the digital world and has over fifteen years experience including advising numerous boards on how to manage crises resulting from cyber-attack. Robin works with financial services, energy, telecommunications and transport clients, as well central and secure government departments, to better prepare and protect their interests. By better understanding their cyber threat and risk landscape Robin helps them build resilient, defendable architectures and implement efficient security operations. Previously Robin worked for Multiplay – a world leading esports festival and enterprise game hosting provider – where he regularly built and secured 3000-node, high performance networks within 24 hours. Robin has a first class degree in Digital Forensics from the University of Portsmouth and is mentor to cyber technology startups from the CyLon incubator.
Follow Robin Oldham:
About Cydea: Cybersecurity consultancy
Julie Boyd
Founder & Managing Director of TR Fleet Limited
Follow Julie Boyd:
About TR Fleet Limited: TR Fleet is a fleet management specialist offering consultancy, policy advice, and supply chain management services.
Peter Ward
Co-Founder & MD of WeTrack
After completing an MSc in Biology from Oxford University and turning his back on a life in academia, Peter started his professional career at a $25 billion international mutual fund based in Bermuda. Here, as well as becoming a level 1 chartered financial analyst, he learnt to design and project-manage custom built software for the finance world. Quickly he saw that, regardless of the systems functionality, the end user must always be at the heart of the system if it is to reach its full potential. After 2 years in Bermuda and London, Peter left the finance world to learn Spanish and travel around South America. Peter was involved at The London 2012 Games where he was responsible for tracking ~4000 objectives and tasks across all the departments of the Organising Committee (LOCOG) to ensure London would be ready to host the games. It was in this role that he fused the software development skills of the finance world with the complex project management requirements of the event industry to create WeTrack. Peter has directorships at CSPW Consulting and YouSoft. In his spare time he enjoys golf, cricket, solving the cryptic crossword and was a member of the British Wakeboard Team for a number of years.
Follow Peter Ward:
About WeTrack: WeTrack provides event delivery software for major events, federations, venues and governing bodies
John Mason
Founder of Risk Insights
Follow John Mason:
About Risk Insights: Risk Insights was set up in 2016 to create, visualise and categorise risk information networks.
Steve Colwill
CEO & Founder of Velocimetrics
Steve Colwill has over 25 years of financial services experience. He is a software architect and senior manager, and spent 15 years of his career building high volume, real-time FX, fixed income and equity pricing, risk and trading systems for a number of tier 1 investment banks. For over 4 years he held the position of CTO at Iris Financial, during this time he gained experience of managing R&D and service teams of 60+ people, while driving the complete redevelopment of the product from the bottom up. Prior to which he held positions at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (now Commerzbank), Investment intelligent Systems Corp and Siemens. He has gained extensive software architecture consultancy experience and has a track record in building companies to revenues in excess of $20 million.
Follow Steve Colwill:
About Velocimetrics: Velocimetrics delivers comprehensive, real-time business insight to the global financial community.
Peter Marshall
Co-Founder & Professional Services Director of Commerce Decisions
Peter Marshall is professional services manager, responsible for managing Commerce Decisions consultancy and training services and assisting Commerce Decisions’ clients to deploy best-practice process and tool support on their procurement projects. Peter’s expertise includes procurement strategy, RFX development, requirements management, planning and executing evaluations, negotiation and contractor de-briefing.
Follow Peter Marshall:
About Commerce Decisions: Commerce Decisions delivers proven software, best practice knowledge and expert services to assist in high risk sourcing projects.
Francesco Mancusi
Founder of GoWar
Follow Francesco Mancusi:
About FeedStock Ltd, GoWar: GoWar is a location-based social strategy game for iOS and Android operating systems.
Rory Byrne
CEO and Founder of Security First
Follow Rory Byrne:
About Security First: Securing human rights defenders. Simply. Comprehensively.
