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 COO’ operating in the SaaS space. If you think a COO’ 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.
Gloria Baeuerlein
Chief Operating Officer of Back
Gloria primarily focuses on growth stage investments across all sectors in Europe and Australia. Prior to Index, Gloria worked at Technology Crossover Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based growth equity fund, evaluating investment opportunities in the DACH region and in software and fintech companies across Europe. Gloria started her career at Morgan Stanley where she advised technology and telco clients across Europe and the U.S. on financing rounds, IPOs and M&A transactions. Gloria graduated with a master’s degree in management from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management
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About Back: Back Technologies is a software company that organizes and automates employee requests on one intuitive platform.
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Kate Toumazi
Chief Operating Officer of Privitar
As Chief Operating Officer, Kate is responsible for driving an execution focus across the organisation and ensuring day-to-day operation of the business is efficient. Prior to joining Privitar, Kate held several global leadership positions in businesses geared for transformation or growth at Thomson Reuters, and has extensive experience in pricing and commercial strategy. She balances operational excellence with practical delivery and is passionate that the customer perspective is core to all initiatives. Kate started her career qualifying as a UK Chartered Accountant in professional practice at Andersen. Kate has a BSc in Economics from the University of Nottingham.
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About Privitar: Privitar offers a data privacy platform that protect their customers’ sensitive personal data and to deliver comprehensive data privacy.
Filip Coen
COO of Force Over Mass Capital
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About Force Over Mass Capital: Force Over Mass Capital is a London based venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology investments.
Elizabeth Swanton
Co-Founder and COO of Feedr
Elizabeth Swanton is the founder and COO of Feedr, a scalable technology platform empowering healthy and artisan food vendors to produce and supply meals for the workplace.
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About Feedr: Feedr is an enterprise food technology platform that gives corporate customers software to support healthier daily eating in workplaces
Alexander Jevons
COO of Hummingbird Technologies
Alexander Jevons is the COO at Hummingbird Technologies.
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About Hummingbird Technologies: Hummingbird is a drone and satellite enabled imagery analytics business for precision agriculture.
Daisy Hill
Chief Operating Officer of Zzish
8 years in high-growth tech ventures after creating her own music education startup. Organises chaos at Zzish. History geek, wannabe boxer.
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About Zzish: Zzish is a valuable classroom digital teaching tool for teachers that provides real-time feedback on the progress of their students.
Lee Hudson
Chief Operating Officer of AppyWay
Lee has spent 20 years bringing cutting edge technology and services to consumers in retail, online and app sectors, leading operational strategy for turnaround and growth. At AppyWay, Lee is responsible for developing strategic IOT and Connected City partnerships and scaling operations for global expansion.
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About AppyWay: AppyWay is a kerbside management & technology firm enabling intelligent mobility for cities.
Tom Mundy
Co-Founder and COO of Goodlord
Tom co-founded Goodlord as a renter in 2014 after becoming frustrated with the inefficiencies in the tenancy process and discovering letting agents were fed up with it, too. Now Goodlord is a leading player in the UK Proptech community and with over £18m of funding they are on mission to make renting simple and transparent for all.
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About Goodlord: Goodlord offers a cloud-based software to help estate agents, landlords, and tenants manage the rental process.
David Anderson
Chief Operating Officer of Hubble
David Anderson is Chief Operating Officer at HubbleHQ. He is also with Pi Labs Property Innovation as mentor. Prior to this, he was head of finance at Thread.com and COO at Silicon Milkroundabout.
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About Hubble: A platform to search, set up, and manage your hybrid workplace
Jamie Powell-Tuck
Chief Operating Officer of ZigZag Global
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About Dolphin Finance Corporation, ZigZag Global: ZigZag Global is a software platform that helps retailers manage their returns globally.
Uzair Bawany
Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder of Traydstream
Founder of a boutique search firm, Fairway Search Partners which predominantly focuses on retained mandates in the front office within three distinct areas. They are Global Transaction Banking, Private Wealth / Asset Management and Equities Capital Markets – Sales & Sales Trading. Chairman of the Contact Recruitment Group. In Jan 2003, he initiated an MBO and acquired the company and then sold this business in November 2011. He was Vice Chair of an industry trade body which is the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo). APSCo provides a powerful unified voice for the Professional Recruitment market and is proud to represent, promote and support such vibrant and innovative sectors of the recruitment industry. Board Director of the National Advisory Board and Chair the London Regional Group of Mosaic which is a Prince’s trust Charity. It focuses on mentoring and developing under privileged school children.
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About Traydstream: Traydstream automates the most critical aspects of converting, checking and managing trade finance documents.
Amrit Dhangal
Co-Founder and COO of Tagove
Amrit Dhangal is COO & co-founder at Tagove.
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About Acquire, Clutch, RudderStack, Tagove, The Bricks: Tagove is a live chat software for website and mobile apps with Video chat, Remote co browsing, Chatbots, and Profile management tools.
Kevin Piersialla
Chief Operating Office of Faria Education Group
Responsible for global sales, customer success, and operations.
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About Faria Education Group: Enhancing Efficiency in Education Globally
Ben Gateley
COO & Co-Founder of Charlie
Ben Gateley works as Co-founder for The Eleven.
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About Charlie, The Eleven: Charlie is the HR software for small teams with big ideas.
Derek Hill
COO and Co-Founder of Instanda
Derek Hill have experience spanning several eras of technology advancement, Derek’s insights into provisioning and global deployment of online solutions and leveraging the latest ecosystem of solutions is second to none. An industry thought leader in MS Azure and architect of INSTANDA’s rapid scaling capabilities in multiple countries, Derek has worked extensively with Boards to unravel the complexity of technology-enabled change. As COO of INSTANDA, he has a simple mission: unparalleled customer service combined with unrivalled platform value and quality.
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About Instanda: Instanda is a SaaS insurance software platform that allows insurance companies to build, configure, and launch products online.
Jason Pinto
Co-founder & COO of Pace Revenue
Jason is a co-founder at Pace. Pace has built the first solution that gives hotels real-time forecasting, price sensitivity analysis and automation. We use machine learning and statistics to turn pricing into a real-time exploration how to optimally match supply and demand. Our algorithms are proprietary and actively worked on by our science team. Prior to co-founding Pace Jason was a Partner at Amadeus Capital where he focused on opportunities in online services and fintech. Since joining the firm as an associate in 2007, he has worked closely with several Amadeus companies including Edgeware and Liquavista, helping Edgeware to a public listing on the NASDAQ Stockholm market and Liquavista to a sale to Samsung. He was also an active observer on the board of Unruly helping it exit to News Corp. Jason started his tech career as a lead member of a technology and product development team at E Ink Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he worked on commercialisation of the world’s first electronic ink display. The technology has been widely deployed in a range of consumer products most notably Amazon’s Kindle electronic book. Jason holds Engineering and Science degrees from MIT, Stanford University and Cambridge University. Jason is mostly Trinidadian with a bit of Jamaican and American added in for good measure.
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About Amadeus Capital Partners, Pace Revenue: Pace is revolutionising revenue management with a suite of tools to deliver science, real-time and automation.
Andrey Dokuchaev
Founder & COO of ClauseMatch
Andrey is the COO of ClauseMatch. He has been with the company since March 2014. He also works as director for StickerRide. Earlier in life, he worked for Financial Advisory as audit manager. He has been with KPMG Moscow as senior auditor. Andrey attended The University of Texas at Dallas and studied bachelor of science and master of science in accounting.
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About ClauseMatch: ClauseMatch is a financial technology company that provides software-as-a-service platform for smart document management.
Pravina Pindoria
COO & Co-Founder of Tallyfy
Pravina Pindoria is the Co-founder & COO at Tallyfy
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About Tallyfy: Tallyfy is beautiful workflow software that lets you document, track and improve all your repeatable processes
Aditya Joshi
COO, Co-Founder of Greendeck
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About Greendeck: Greendeck uses AI to help brands and retailers with pricing optimisation and competitor intelligence.
Guy Willans
COO of PrimaDollar
Guy has extensive experience across all sizes & sectors of business, having worked with start-ups – £20bn T/O businesses, and having worked in organisations with 2 to 300,000+ employees. An experienced Financial Services professional he has lent > $1,000m to all size businesses including FTSE 100/250. He has led businesses & worked on boards in London & SE and has worked globally across EU, US, Asia, ME, and Australasia. Guy’s love of both technology and challenge saw him working in an AIM listed Dot-com in the noughties and now his second COO role in a growing FinTech in the twenty-tens.
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About PrimaDollar: PrimaDollar is an ESGTech and Fintech for international supply chains.(real-time ESG data and Trade Finance)
David Duckworth
Co-founder & COO of Ben
David Duckworth is the co-founder and COO of Ben.
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About Ben: Supercharge your benefits, save time and money
Pat Caldwell
COO of FundApps
A self-confessed people geek from Australia, Pat has spent most of his career in the Australian mining industry before packing his bags for the tech industry in London and New York. Pat is now building People Operations at FundApps, a high-growth bootstrapped software company. He has a passion for D&I, leadership development and bringing HR kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Outside of work, you’ll find him on the tennis court, exploring (that’s Aussie-speak for judging) local coffee shops or taking a board game too seriously.
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About FundApps: We help investment managers harness the power of community and technology to automate regulatory compliance.
Jeremy Phillips
COO of KITE EDGE LTD
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About StrategyEye: Customisable Search Platform for Asset Managers/Banks
Gareth Cadwallader
Interim COO of Akkroo
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About Akkroo: A universal, customisable lead capture solution that helps businesses maximise their return on exhibiting at events.
George Thomas
Chief Operating Officer of Xeneta
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About Xeneta: Xeneta is the leading ocean freight rate benchmarking and market intelligence platform and index.
Steve Denner
Founder and COO of Adestra
Steve is highly experienced in developing and delivering email solutions, having led teams responsible for bringing five email applications to market. Since co-founding Adestra, Steve is focused on ensuring Adestra’s platform continues to be today’s best email marketing system and that Adestra’s clients receive the best support.
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About Adestra: Adestra is a trusted provider of First-Person Marketing solutions for global and growing brands.
Pablo Vergara
COO of HUBX
Pablo Vergara is the COO at HUBX.
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About HUBX: The premier capital raising and private placement solution for professionals.
Tom Blah
COO of Codec
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About Codec: We help brands to discover and tap in to the pockets of culture that drive growth. Powered by award-winning AI.
Brad van Leeuwen
Co-Founder and COO of Cledara
Brad van Leeuwen is the Co-Founder and COO at Cledara.
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About Cledara, Cledara, Railsbank: Cledara helps teams understand, manage and control the SaaS they use so they can scale operations, comply with regulations and save money.
Paul Fellows
COO of Partnerize
Paul brings more than 10 years of top-level product management experience to Performance Horizon Group and is driven by client success. He was one of the co-founders of the buy.at Affiliate Network in 2002 and helped lead the company through the sale to AOL, while focusing on the platform’s technical development and customized client solutions. Paul also previously served as Global Product Director for AOL, where he formed part of its Global Leadership Team.
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About Partnerize: Partnerize is the only partnership management solution for marketers seeking high quality, scalable subsidies to primary channels.
Adrian King
Founder, CTO & COO of Q9 Elements
Adrian King is the Founder and CTO at Q9 Elements.
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About Q9 Elements: Q9 Elements is a document hub that helps in cleaning up, document, and drive adoption of Salesforce.
Chris Cater
COO of YunoJuno
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About Stride, YunoJuno: Online platform connecting freelancers and clients in the creative and technology sectors
Joshua Scotton
COO & Co-Founder of Personify XP
Josh is the brains behind Personify XP. With a PhD from the Intelligent Systems group at the University of Warwick, he has worked with some of the world’s largest companies across Retail, Finance, CPG and Travel. Josh has spent the last 10 years living out his passion for personalization, researching customer analytics, marketing and customer engagement modelling.
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About Personify XP: Personify XP uses AI and automation personalization SAAS technology to help retailers understand what their customers are shopping for.
Adrian Maseda
Co-Founder & COO of Cheerfy
Adrian has worked for many years for large corporations like Nortel and Aricent Group in various Business Management and Sales roles. Adrian then became an entrepreneur: Co-Founder @ We2 (Social Wifi), Founder @ Protos (an advisory firm). Adrian is now focused is his latest project, Cheerfy. Adrian believes in using technology to solve problems and reshape how things work. In particular, he sees opportunity in the intersection between social and hyper-localised interactions in a mobile world.
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About Cheerfy, Protos Global Services: The new way restaurants sell post-COVID
Paul Loram
Co-Founder / COO of YourWelcome
With over 10 ten years experience working in media and mobile, Paul Loram raised VC funding to start a cross platform social gaming company that is run with his business partner Henry Bennett. Paul Loram also oversees a joint venture mobile apps agency that he founded with the global post production company Deluxe Digital Studios. Clients range from BBC WorldWide / 2Entertain, ITV, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, The History Channel, Random House Books and various advertising agencies. Winner of the “BT Entrepreneur of the Year Award” 2009.
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About Island Wall Entertainment, The Question Company, YourWelcome: YourWelcome is a SaaS platform enabling short term rental managers to add a service layer to their business.
Mark Jameson
COO of BlueVenn
As CTO Mark has over 17 years’ experience in Solution and Application Development. Since 2000 Mark has presided over the development of Blue Sheep’s Extraction Transform and Load applications along with the creation of the UK Business Universe and its matching technologies. A veteran of multiple Marketing, Analysis and Modelling applications with Client Project Delivery also within his remit. Notably Mark has personal involvement with some of Blue Sheep’s largest clients and has overseen the delivery of the UK wide Public Sector B2B data environment.
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About Blue Sheep, BlueVenn: BlueVenn’s software provides real-time analysis of customer data that create highly personalized and relevant marketing campaigns.
Bill Scott
COO of Easel TV
Bill Scott is one of the founders of Easel TV – the multi-screen video software company – with a vision to enable broadcasters, content owners and brands to build high quality televisual experiences using low-cost web components, fast; helping to shape the future of television. Easel TV’s clients include NBCUniversal, Virgin Media, All3Media, Curzon Cinemas and TiVo. Prior to starting Easel TV, Bill created and led the IBM Digital Media Consulting & Systems Integration practice, which delivered a variety of interactive TV, IPTV and Digital Media projects over 9 years. Bill has 25 years’ experience of managing IT projects to deliver business value, working at end-user organisations delivering internal applications, for software houses delivering commercial products and for professional services firms delivering client projects.
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About : The complete B2B SaaS streaming media (OTT) service for the Media, Entertainment and Brands.
Bill Scott
COO of Easel TV
Bill Scott is one of the founders of Easel TV – the multi-screen video software company – with a vision to enable broadcasters, content owners and brands to build high quality televisual experiences using low-cost web components, fast; helping to shape the future of television. Easel TV’s clients include NBCUniversal, Virgin Media, All3Media, Curzon Cinemas and TiVo. Prior to starting Easel TV, Bill created and led the IBM Digital Media Consulting & Systems Integration practice, which delivered a variety of interactive TV, IPTV and Digital Media projects over 9 years. Bill has 25 years’ experience of managing IT projects to deliver business value, working at end-user organisations delivering internal applications, for software houses delivering commercial products and for professional services firms delivering client projects.
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About : The complete B2B SaaS streaming media (OTT) service for the Media, Entertainment and Brands.
James Serjeant
COO & CFO of ContactEngine
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About ContactEngine: ContactEngine is a proactive Conversational AI technology that automates conversations between corporates and their customers
Pete Shannon
Chief Operating Officer of HelloDone
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About HelloDone: Automating social messaging for online retail brands
Matt Bradbeer
COO & Co-Founder of Indie Media Labs
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About Indie Media Labs: SaaS digital publishing and distribution service for book publishers and direct to consumer whitelabel all-in-one publishing platform
Matt Bradbeer
COO & Co-Founder of Indie Media Labs
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About Indie Media Labs: SaaS digital publishing and distribution service for book publishers and direct to consumer whitelabel all-in-one publishing platform
Helen Cockle
Chief Operating Officer of Futrli
Helen has entrepreneurialism in her veins. Prior to joining Futrli, she founded two thriving retail businesses, both of which she led to successful sale. With this experience under her belt, Helen is now proud to be at the forefront of global change in the small business economy. She is a huge advocate for equality and diversity in the workplace and believes the glass ceiling is there to be broken. Prior to this, Helen held senior management roles within the recruitment industry, spearheading expansion projects across the UK and working for some of the best known brands in the accounting and finance sectors. Helen is Futrli’s Chief Operating Officer. Previously Chief Revenue Officer, she has transitioned into this expansive role which covers core operations in both EMEA and APAC.
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About Futrli: Futrli is on a quest to move the needle on the small business economy.
Agata Boczkowska
COO and Co-Founder of RAIS
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About RAIS: The Customer Intelligence Business – helping D2C brands grow the value of their customers faster.
Mark Ellison
COO of Leadfamly
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About Leadfamly, Tall Cedar Consulting Ltd: Leadfamly is the marketing gamification platform that empowers ambitious marketers to get, keep and grow more customers.
Marla Shapiro
Co-Founder & COO of Readear
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About Readear: ReadEar builds affordable audible products for businesses
Pete Lee
COO of Purple
Pete is a qualified finance professional with in excess of 20 years experience. He has been responsible for leading various teams across finance, IT, administration, HR and professional services in a number of early stage software companies.
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About Purple: Purple is a WiFi analytics and marketing platform.
Pete Lee
COO of Purple
Pete is a qualified finance professional with in excess of 20 years experience. He has been responsible for leading various teams across finance, IT, administration, HR and professional services in a number of early stage software companies.
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About Purple: Purple is a WiFi analytics and marketing platform.
Joe Mathewson
Co-Founder & COO of Firefly Learning
Joe Mathewson is the Founder and COO at Firefly Learning.
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About Firefly Learning: Firefly Learning is an edtech company that develops a SaaS learning and teaching support platform for schools.
Roxanna Zea
Chief Operating Officer of Origami
Roxanna brings more than 20 years of experience in business operations, partnerships, strategic planning and scaling businesses. She has worked across the Technology and Telecoms industries, both within global corporations and heading up fast-growing new business. Roxanna has held various senior leadership roles at Google, and more recently has held executive roles at Tele2 Group and two-sided marketplace technology company, Rentify. She has an MBA in Entrepreneurship from London Business School, is a Chartered Accountant, and is currently studying for a Masters in Executive Coaching at Ashridge.
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About Origami: Intelligent trading and automation software for short term power trading. SaaS.
Ben Clark
COO, Board member of iPresent
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About : iPresent offers businesses with content creation and distribution services for their marketing campaigns.
Simon Checkley
COO of Kykloud
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About Kykloud: SaaS property and real estate asset management – capture the condition of your estate and plan future maintenance spend.
Annabel Dickson
COO of Makerble
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About Makerble: Makerble enables charities to track, review and share their impact
Howard Pritchard
COO of AVORD
Howard Pritchard is the chief operating officer at AVORD.
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About AVORD: AVORD is a penetration testing platform that provides a DBS checking for cyber-security testers.
Simon Hagger
COO – The Pirean Group of Companies of Pirean
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About Pirean: Consumer and Workforce Identity as a Service, Pirean simplifies how customer’s deliver IAM capabilities for enterprise web and mobile apps.
Justin Bowser
Chief Operating Officer of HTK
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About HTK: HTK Horizon is a SaaS platform for loyalty program management and CRM
