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 Rental 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.
Alexander Edward Chesterman
Founder & CEO of Cazoo
Alex Chesterman is the founder and CEO of Cazoo. He was the Founder & CEO of ZPG Plc, a FTSE-250 listed company. Previously Alex co-founded Lovefilm, Europe’s leading digital movie rental business, which was successfully sold to Amazon. Alex is also one of the UK’s most active tech angel investors having backed dozens of early stage digital startups and was awarded an OBE for services to services to digital entrepreneurship in 2016.
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About Cazoo, Zoopla Property Group Plc (ZPG): Cazoo is an online used car marketplace designed to transform the way people buy, finance, or rent used cars.
Owen Turner-Major
Co-Founder & CTO of Fat Llama
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About Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace which allows people to rent spare items to others nearby, fully insured.
Rosie Dallas
Co-Founder & COO of Fat Llama
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About Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace which allows people to rent spare items to others nearby, fully insured.
Chaz Englander
Co-Founder & CEO of Fat Llama
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About Fat Llama: Fat Llama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace which allows people to rent spare items to others nearby, fully insured.
Tom Allason
Founder and CEO of Residently
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About eBay, Residently, Residently: We’re building the world’s home brand with a digital experience that combines the freedom of renting with the rewards of owning.
Sam Phillips
Co-Founder & CTO of Residently
Previously Senior Engineering Manager at eBay, Head of Engineering at Shutl (acquired eBay 2013) and developer #1 at On The Beach Travel (IPO 2015).
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About Residently: We’re building the world’s home brand with a digital experience that combines the freedom of renting with the rewards of owning.
Pep Gomez
Founder of Reby
Pep Gomez is a 25-year-old 3x tech entrepreneur and investor. He is General Partner (Head of Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital) at Mobile World Capital (€8M). He is also board advisor for PRISA and ASICS Corporation. Previously, he founded Fever (www.feverup.com), the leading event discovery platform in the world. He has raised over $75M from Accel Partners, Fidelity and 14W Ventures. He started his first company at the age of 14. Later on, he will become one of the organizers of Campus Party, the largest tech festival in Europe and Latin America. At the age of 16 he moved to Silicon Valley to work in the venture capital industry as an Investment Partner for Solon Ventures. He also co-founded Jóvenes con Futuro, a program backed by Fundación Rafael del Pino and Fundación Banco Sabadell that encourages young engineers to work for startups.
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About Reby: Leading Southern Europe investment bank for mobility infrastructure
Alexander Limpert
Co-Founder and CEO of GuestReady
Before launching GuestReady, Alex was a Country Managing Director in Taiwan and Philippines at Rocket Internet owned foodpanda, a global food delivery company. Prior to this, he was a management consultant at Oliver Wyman in London, where he advised leading companies across a variety of industries including travel and hospitality. He holds an MSc with Distinction from London School of Economics (LSE) and a BA in Business Administration from University of St.Gallen (HSG). Alex has travelled to more than 50 countries for business and leisure, and therefore understands the needs of the modern business traveller and how any property can be turned into a guest-ready Airbnb home.
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About GuestReady: GuestReady is a platform for real estate management with a focus on short-term rentals.
Ines Djelassi
CEO & Co-Founder of AirBetter
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About AirBetter, Lodgeo: AirBetter provides expertise in all travel and hospitality services.
James Jenkins-Yates
Founder & CEO of Houst
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About Houst: Houst (prev. Airsorted) is a short-let management service that increases yields and handles everything including cleaning, laundry and keys.
Tom Jones
Co-Founder & Chief Commercial Officer of Houst
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About Houst: Houst (prev. Airsorted) is a short-let management service that increases yields and handles everything including cleaning, laundry and keys.
David Toplas
Founder and Director of Vesta Property
David has a long track record of innovation in investments which balance social and commercial returns. He has created, built and invested in businesses and run institutional funds as well as established a charity and social enterprise. David enjoys his work, cars and playing hockey.
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About Mill Group, Vesta Property: Vesta (www.vestaproperty.com) is a data-driven marketplace for buying and selling residential investment property.
Guy Westlake
Founder of Lavanda
Guy is an entrepreneur and investor who’s experienced online/technology businesses at pretty much every level – from 1-man startup to global multinational. He is Co-founder & CEO at Lavanda in London. Guy knows what it means to roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty, whilst understanding the need to establish scalable processes that can support rapid growth. He is passionate about culture and working with exceptional people to build innovative businesses that create meaningful value. He speaks Spanish, French and Italian. Studied at the ESCP Europe and University of Bristol. His interests are UX, e-commerce, web 2.0, social media, cloud computing, analytics, ECM, Business process management, web content management, software, business solutions, strategic marketing, consultancy, innovations, cinema, music, literature, current affairs, entrepreneurship, start-ups.
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About Lavanda: Lavanda is an award-winning next generation SaaS platform powering the convergence of residential real estate, hospitality and travel.
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.
Paul Besnainou
Founder & CEO of Sweet Inn
Paul Besnainou is a 31-year old French-Israeli entrepreneur, who is entirely self-taught. After his high school diploma, he opted to pursue his studies at the Mir Yeshiva rather than attend a prominent business school. Following his seven years of Talmudic studies, he emerged filled with intellectual curiosity, discipline, and an analytical spirit – characteristics that would lead him to found and direct, only a year later, Sweet Inn. In just 5 years since its founding, Sweet Inn is already located in 13 cities around Europe and in Israel, totaling over 700 apartments and employ more than 200 employees.
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About Sweet Inn: Sweet Inn is a booking platform intended for hotel services for tourists and business travelers.
Matt Ovenden
CEO & Founder of Borrow A Boat
Matt is an entrepreneur who is passionate about building teams and successful businesses to meet market opportunities on the forefront of technological or consumer trends. A Chartered Mechanical Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with MSc in Innovation & Design for Sustainability, Matt established leading energy & sustainability company Bright Green Shoots in 2009 to help organisations embrace sustainable “green” innovation as the UK makes the transition to a low carbon economy. Bright Green Shoots has acted as a focus point for activity in this industry for 7 years during which Matt has spun out two more companies, Free Wind Ltd in 2011 a prominent UK wind development company and Free Island Energy in 2014 a pioneer of remote renewables, eco-island and microgrid projects. Matt’s latest project is launching the new online peer-to-peer boat charter marketplace www.borrowaboat.com
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About Borrow A Boat, British Marine, Department for International Trade, Helm, Institution of Mechanical Engineers: Borrow A Boat is a Peer-to-peer boat charter and charter aggregator site.
Paul Bennett
Co-Founder & CEO of PerchPeek
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About PerchPeek: PerchPeek uses AI to guide people through every stage of their relocation from search to settling in.
Oliver Markham
Co-Founder of PerchPeek
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About PerchPeek: PerchPeek uses AI to guide people through every stage of their relocation from search to settling in.
Darius Bradbury
Co-Founder of OpenRent
Darius Bradbury is a Founder at OpenRent.
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About OpenRent: OpenRent turns renting a property into a streamlined, online process offering drastically lower costs.
Adam Hyslop
Co-Founder of OpenRent
Adam Hyslop is a Founder at OpenRent.
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About OpenRent: OpenRent turns renting a property into a streamlined, online process offering drastically lower costs.
Alexander Badalyan
CFO and Co-Founder of Mashroom
Alexander Badalyan is the CFO and Co-Founder at Mashroom.
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About Mashroom: Mashroom is a proptech startup that provides end-to-end property letting services to landlords and tenants.
Stepan Dobrovolskiy
CEO and Co-Founder of Mashroom
Stepan Dobrovolskiy is the CEO and Co-Founder at Mashroom.
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About Mashroom: Mashroom is a proptech startup that provides end-to-end property letting services to landlords and tenants.
Founder & CEO of Home Made
Asaf Navot is the Founder and CEO of Home Made. He has extensive experience in strategy and operations, having previously advised multi-billion corporations as a strategy consultant with Bain & Company and Wilson Perumal. Asaf holds an MBA from INSEAD.
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About Home Made: Home Made is a London-based property tech rental agency, focusing on mid to high end rentals. It is London’s largest hybrid agency.
Silvano Geranio
Founder Director of Prestige
Silvano Geranio joined Prestige Homeseeker Park & Leisure Homes as Founder Director in 2007.
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About Prestige: Prestige is a UK-based manufacturers of high quality park homes and lodges for the residential and leisure market.
Karin Cabili
Founder & CEO of Dropit Shopping
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About Dropit Shopping: Dropit provides a digital handsfree shopping solution for malls and central shopping districts, delivering bags from store to door.
Rebecca Kelly
Founder & CEO of VenueScanner
Combined experience across economics (1st class MA Edinburgh), investment management (CFA level 1), digital marketing (M&S, Naked Wines, Majestic Wines). Passionate about using data and analytics to drive business growth, obsessed with customer insight, understanding big problems and trying to solve them. Launched VenueScanner in 2016 after experiencing so many problems in trying to book event spaces for team offsites, parties, meetings etc at M&S. Now relentlessly trying to address the problem of matching under-utilised supply to demand in the venue and events industry. In the spare time that I used to have before I launched a company I loved travelling adventures (Richshaw Run…), micro-finance projects (Grameen Bank) and outdoor sports (mainly extreme or including at least a mild risk of life!)
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About VenueScanner: VenueScanner is a self-serve marketplace platform for event organisers to discover and book venues online.
Doug Stephenson
Founder and CEO of TravelNest
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About TravelNest: TravelNest is an advertising optimisation platform for holiday rental owners.
Doron Meyassed
Co-Founder & CEO of Plum Guide
In 2008 Doron founded Promise Communities (now C Space): a company specializing in solving brand, innovation and insight challenges through mass online collaboration. In eight years, he grew it into a 140+ person leading innovation agency delivering programs for the likes of Twitter, Spotify, Samsung, British Airways, Hilton, EE, and Diageo. Having sold the business to Omnicom, Doron now lives and breathes travel. Having moved country every few years and having a total undetectable accent, no one is really sure where Doron is from. He is also into some seriously bizarre music no one can quite understand, but that won’t stop him trying to explain.
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About Plum Guide: Plum Guide is the definitive list of the world’s best vacation rentals.
Arif Meharali
Co Founder of Plum Guide
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About Plum Guide: Plum Guide is the definitive list of the world’s best vacation rentals.
Imran Arshed
Co-Founder and Head of Technology of Plum Guide
Imran has built and led development of large scale platforms of e-commerce and e-CRM systems for the likes BBC, Bacardi, Berghaus Laphroaig and Russian Standard. A problem solver at heart, Imran was writing code in his teens on an Amiga 500. From there, he went on to work with consulting firms, agencies and startups and held the notable leadership positions of Director and CTO. When not coding, you can find Imran at Cafe OTO listening to white noise.
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About Plum Guide: Plum Guide is the definitive list of the world’s best vacation rentals.
Calum Brannan
CEO & Founder of Howsy
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About Howsy: Howsy is a real estate management platform that provides repairs management and renewal services for landlords and tenants.
Robert Imonikhe
Co-Founder of Ideal Flatmate
Rob has worked in publishing and has had stints at a number of media outlets. A positive bundle of energy, he is the ideas man and provides some philosophical insights to the team, having completed a BA in philosophy.
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About Ideal Flatmate: Ideal Flatmate is the first UK website dedicated to helping its users find the right flatmates.
Thomas Gatzen
Co-Founder of Ideal Flatmate
Tom has spent time working in politics and financial PR and loves getting things done. He enjoys travelling and is a sports nut, playing cricket for Middlesex Youth, and being found most weekends following Watford FC.
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About Ideal Flatmate: Ideal Flatmate is the first UK website dedicated to helping its users find the right flatmates.
Rosie de Malmanche
Founder of o|urmoire.
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About o|urmoire.: The Brighter way to Buy & Borrow
Franz Dörr
Founder & CEO of flatfair
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About flatfair: Secure your rental with flatfair’s flexible solutions
Daniel Jeczmien
Founder & COO of flatfair
Daniel Jeczmien is the founder and COO of Flatfair.
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About flatfair: Secure your rental with flatfair’s flexible solutions
Bartosz Alksnin
CTO, Co-Founder of flatfair
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About flatfair: Secure your rental with flatfair’s flexible solutions
Camran Khan
Founder & CEO of brightLET
My passion for technology has featured me among the top 10 best CTO’s in the Country, with awards and recognition from Barclays, NatWest, and KPMG to name a few. In 2017, I was scouted by the University of Cambridge as one of the top 20 disruptive CEO’s in the UK to join Judge Business School (JBS). I have a very strong interest in Machine Learning (ML), AI solutions, Blockchain, and clever automation to reduce huge operational overheads. I have successfully worked closely with brands such as; Microsoft, Intel, EA Games, Coca-Cola, Virgin Media, Mo Farah, Microsoft, Intel, Dabs.com, and Amazon.
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About brightLET: brightLET is a UK based multi-award winning automated property rental technology for landlords, tenants, and tradesmen!
Paul Munday
Co-Founder of RentProfile
Paul looks after product development, partnerships and planning. He was previously one of the early product managers at Skype and later Betfair where he managed account sections of the website.
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About RentProfile: Powering trust for the rental market
David Munday
Co-Founder – CTO of RentProfile
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About RentProfile: Powering trust for the rental market
Dario Favoino
Co-Founder and VP of Property of Lyvly
Dario Favoino is Co-Founder and VP of Property at Lyvly.
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About Lyvly: Lyvly is a shared living and rental service that connects and helps renters find accommodation, and connect with other like minded people.
Matthew Daines
Co-Founder & COO of LettingaProperty.com
Matthew Daines is the Co-Founder & COO at LettingaProperty.com.
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About LettingaProperty.com: The UK tech-based lettings & property management platform that makes renting simple, secure & affordable.
Jonathan Daines
Founder and CE0 of LettingaProperty.com
As a pioneer, founder and company director, Jonathan prides himself on being truly hands-on, putting his many years of industry and personal experience into good use. His relationships with industry peers, his customer service philosophy and his knowledge of systems upon which his business is built, has propelled Lettingaproperty.com to the forefront of Online Lettings in the UK
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About LettingaProperty.com: The UK tech-based lettings & property management platform that makes renting simple, secure & affordable.
Sebastien Goldenberg
CEO and Co-Founder of TheHouseShop.com
Seb is co-founder and CEO at TheHouseShop.com, UK’s largest property marketplace. It offers free property advertising for private landlords, private sellers and estate agents. TheHouseShop is disrupting the whole property ecosystem, using technology to make rental transactions fully-digitized, safe, secure and cost-effective. TheHouseShop is also the only fully secure property website, where every private advertiser is verified. Seb is the also chair of the start-up and SME club at the French Chamber of Commerce in the UK.
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About TheHouseShop.com: The House Shop is the UK’s number 1 place for property, working with homeowners, landlords, estate agents.
Nick Marr
Co Founder of TheHouseShop.com
Nick Marr is an Entrepreneur, Digital Marketing Expert, Managment executive for several disruptive digital start-ups, leadership coach and founder of several real estate businesses. Nick primary role and passion is that of Chief Marketing Officer at the disruptive property marketing platform TheHouseShop.com a UK based property website that assists homeowners and agents with real estate marketing. He has helped introduce Online property marketing to the UK’s by owing the first ‘for sale by owner’ platform. International real estate marketing as founder of an overseas property platform Content marketing to UK publishers as European Sales Director at MGID Europe Video personalisation as Vice President of International Sales of disruptive platform IRIS.TV Claims to fame – Key advisor to the British government representing the newly emerging online property sector. The government subsequently introduced new legislation allowing for new online real estate business models to operate see Business Owner Nick is behind the following real estate sector websites: Overseas property portal at HomesGoFast.Com Europe’s No.1 European real estate portal at EuropeanProperty.com Business Consultant Advisor and business consultant for start-ups, digital businesses and investment funds understand the complexities of the UK online property sector. Coach Leadership coach at the Leadership Academy for Senior Officers and Detectives for The Metropolitan Police London and for commercial Senior Management Teams
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About TheHouseShop.com: The House Shop is the UK’s number 1 place for property, working with homeowners, landlords, estate agents.
Lucy Sharp
Co-Founder & Chief Communications Officer of Dot Residential
Over 15 years’ experience managing the PR strategies of major tech, finance and fashion companies, most recently Lucy was Head of PR at the early stage equity fundraising platform Seedrs. Prior to that Lucy was the UK PR Manager for Amazon Marketplace, where she also lead the UK launches of Amazon Lending, Launchpad and Tickets.
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About Dot Residential: Turnkey investment properties optimised for short-term rentals
Gray Stern
Founder & CEO of Dot Residential
A New Zealand native with a banking background, Stern founded Dot in 2018. Frustrated with the innate inefficiencies of the property market, Dot’s mission is to decouple housing from bureaucracy using intelligent processes. Gray previously co-founded Landbay, a fast-growing marketplace lender that provides mortgage finance to the UK’s private rented sector.
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About Dot Residential, LANDBAY: Turnkey investment properties optimised for short-term rentals
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.
Henry Bennett
Co-Founder / CEO of YourWelcome
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About YourWelcome: YourWelcome is a SaaS platform enabling short term rental managers to add a service layer to their business.
Dennis Helderman
Co-Founder & Director of RENTUU
A resourceful VC backed serial entrepreneur leading teams to design the future for hiring event equipment through technology.
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About RENTUU: Cloud-based technology platform and franchise network for the multi-billion pound sterling equipment hire industry.
Andrea Guzzoni
CEO & Co-Founder of RENTUU
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About easyHire, RENTUU: Cloud-based technology platform and franchise network for the multi-billion pound sterling equipment hire industry.
Elmar Gasimov
Founder and CEO of Rentoo
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About Rentoo: Rentoo offers apartments with all-inclusive comforts that you can instantly rent online for medium to long-term stays.
Stephan Gasteyger
Co-Founder of Wonego
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About Wonego: Wonego is a flatmate matching platform that matches professionals based on credibility, compatibility, lifestyle and property needs.
Stuart Atkinson
Co-Founder of Wonego
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About Wonego: Wonego is a flatmate matching platform that matches professionals based on credibility, compatibility, lifestyle and property needs.
Andy Hibbert
CEO and Founder of Car & Away
An experienced senior executive of the travel sector who has led, grown and sold travel-related businesses that were private equity backed. Most recently led Reed & Mackay through 9 years of EBITDA growth +20% CAGR. Led the sale of the business from Living Bridge to ECI Partners returning 4.8x returns. Grew the business for 4 further years resulting in the sale of the business from ECI to Inflexion at 3.4x returns. Previous experience as Head of Ancillary for easyJet, Online / Commercial Director for STA Travel and a combination of Management, Commercial, Pricing, and Aircraft trading roles at British Airways.
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About Car & Away, Karshare: Car & Away offers peer-to-peer car lending and renting.
Jude Greer
Co-Founder & Non-Executive Director of Reposit
Jude Greer is a Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director at Reposit.
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About Guardian Angel, Reposit: The tenancy deposit alternative. A new way of renting without the hassle of a deposit
Brendan Short
Co-Founder & Non-Executive Director of Reposit
Brendan Short is the Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director at Reposit.
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About Atom Learning, Reposit: The tenancy deposit alternative. A new way of renting without the hassle of a deposit
James Rafferty
Founder of T.O.M. Vehicle Rental
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About T.O.M. Vehicle Rental: A UK company that provides vehicle rental and sales services.
Solomia Boretska
Co-Founder, CEO of LendoBox
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About LendoBox: Matching product rental demand with supply
Matthew Whitaker
Founder and CEO of Gkhouses
Matthew is a student of the book Good To Great and is passionate about building gkhouses to become the best property management company on the planet; and maybe even the universe if Elon Musk will hurry up. To do that, he spent the first seven years of gkhouses in the trenches but now focuses most of his time facilitating growth in other markets. Entrepreneurship runs in the family. His wife runs a successful business called Engaged. You can usually find Matthew at the baseball field with his son, at a dance recital with his daughter or at his favorite restaurant with his wife, when he’s not in the office. And if you can’t find him any of those places, it probably means he’s traveling.
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About Gkhouses: Gkhouses is a professional property management services company, managing single family homes.
Nikhil Adwalpalkar
Founder of ShareDining
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About ShareDining: ShareDining is a commercial kitchen sourcing platform.
Tauri Karson
Founder of Autolevi
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About Autolevi, Patchstack: Autolevi is a Peer to Peer car sharing platform.
Dean Shepherd
Co-Founder and Head of Product of Evo
Dean Shepherd is the Co-founder and Head of Product at Evo.
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About Evo: A fusion of property professionals, skilled trades and simple technology that makes rental property maintenance hassle free.
Mark Iandoli
Co-Founder and Head of Service of Evo
Mark Iandoli is the Co-Founder and Head of Service at Evo.
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About Evo: A fusion of property professionals, skilled trades and simple technology that makes rental property maintenance hassle free.
Richard Cook
Co-Founder & Director of Lets Rent
Richard Cook is a Co-Founder at Lets Rent.
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About Lets Rent: Lets Rent provides property letting service.
