Celebrating the
people

building
THE future.
2025 winners






The future

doesn't just happen.
Someone builds it. The ESEY awards exist to find those people early - founders under four years in, pre-Series A, already bending
an industry toward what

comes next.

2025 shortlist
Technology esey

Atlas Baudelaire Maharaj
Founder, Daedalis
Daedalis is building the AI foundation layer for African enterprise: a platform that unifies, verifies, and maintains the data powering procurement, finance, and operations.

Urav Shah
Founder, Exa Labs Global Inc
Exa Intelligence is creating AI systems tailored to the Global South, focusing on emerging markets often overlooked in global AI data.

Ozgur Ozkan
Founder, Daedalis
Audn.AI develops AI models to identify vulnerabilities in voice AI agents, catering to CISOs in regulated industries.

Daniel Afan-Jones
Founder, Bonsai Smart Wealth
Bonsai Smart Wealth is an AI-native personal money management app, solving the global financial advice crisis.

Femi Kehinde
Founder, Trippa Africa
Trippa helps businesses across Africa manage,track, and simplify last-mile delivery.

Newton Davis
Founder, Janus
Janus builds the liquidity layer for global supply chains, offering small and mid-sized freight forwarders access to instant working capital by transforming verified invoices into tokenized, yield-bearing assets.

Tomasz George
Founder, Freyr Health
Freyr Health is unlocking one of the world’s most valuable yet underused resources, health data, by transforming it into a unified, intelligent, and ethical global asset.

Emile Radyte
Founder, Samphire Neuroscience
Samphire builds neurotechnology that transforms women's everyday lives including the only certified Class IIa medical device for the management of both pain and mood symptoms linked to menstruation.

Jan Heimes
Founder, Needle
Describe the workflow you need in natural language and Needle will automatically build it with proper integrations and logic flow. Get yourAI agents doing the heavy lifting for you.

Cien Solon
Founder, LaunchLemonade
LaunchLemonade is on a mission to close the AI literacy gap by making it easy for anyone to build and benefit from intelligent AI agents, without code or technical barriers.
Female Founders esey

Sarah Baker
Founder, Village
Village transforms parenting by turning parents' time into a valuable asset using agentic AI to handle administrative tasks, giving back their time and mental space.

Mahlodi Letsie
Founder, Bare Mind Holdings
Bare Mind, founded in 2025, is a tech-driven evolution designed to make personalised mental wellness accessible to all.

Savannah Price
Founder, Serene
Serene is an AI-powered platform that helps financial institutions and retailers gain a deeper understanding of their customers.

Ilinca Georgescu
Founder, Trem
Trem is a neuro technology startup focusing on Essential Tremor, impacting over a million people in the UK.

Sarita Stefani
Founder, Amilis
Amilis is an AI-powered software for independent gynaecologists that recovers 30% of lost revenue while training real-time AI models and advancing women’s health worldwide.

Louisa Scholz
Founder, femsure GmbH
femsure is Germany’s first female-focused insurance and benefits platform. It helps women make informed health and financial decisions, starting with a digital comparison and switching service for statutory health insurance (GKV).

Emmanuella Tordman
Founder, DrDoGood (DDG) Ltd
DrDoGood is a Ghana-founded care access platform that simplifies finding, booking, and paying for healthcare, offering virtual, in-facility, and home care services.

Polina Sali
Founder, First Concepts
First Concepts is an AI-native workspace that helps creative teams go from brief to concept 70% faster.

Samantha Rosenberg
Founder, Belong
Belong is pioneering the next generation of wealth management by transforming financial literacy into action for young professionals.

Sofia Hamilton Sambrano
Founder, Souk
Souk makes it unbelievably easy for GTM teams to find, activate, and maintain partnerships that drive pipeline.
Consumer esey

Moenika Chowdhury
Founder, Violet Technologies
Violet is a beauty-tech company addressing the often-overlooked issue of makeup hygiene with Lumi, a patent-pending UV-C beauty station that eliminates 99.9% of bacteria from makeup and brushes in just 2 minutes.

Daren Crowder
Founder, Enbodie
Enbodie is transforming global health, wellness, and beauty by leveraging everyday tech like smartphones and browsers to provide instant, personalized insights into skin, eye, and ingredient health.

Sam Mudie
Founder, Savea
Savea is a FinTech company tokenizing high-value, physical real-world assets (RWA) and creating regulated, scalable investment products on the Ethereum network.

Pietro Allegretti
Founder, YU.SH
YU.SH is a FemTech & HealthTech startup merging luxury design with medical innovation, creating 3D-printed smart insoles with integrated NMES stimulation to activate blood circulation and improve wellness, starting from high-heeled shoes.

Tom Standen
Founder, Sylvi
Sylvi is an innovative language learning app that helps learners practice real-life conversations with personalized AI penpals.

Ndaedzo Madume
Founder, GraceNineteen
GraceNineteen reimagines renting and property ownership for South Africans by offering investment and lending solutions, focusing on rental deposit financing and investment.

Affaan Shaikh
Founder, IntelliDent AI
IntelliDent AI is the UAE’s first AI-powered dental health platform enabling early diagnosis of oral issues through smartphone images and X-rays.

Luke Hemsley
Founder, Wednesday's Domaine
Wednesday’s Domaine is crafting a new kind of drinking culture built for the way we live now - social, switched on and looking for more.

Cameron Shaw
Founder, PANIO
PANIO is an AI-powered digital twin platform that unlocks a dog’s biology, enabling pet parents to make personalised, science-based interventions to extend the healthy lifespan of their best friends.

Vanessa Wachtmeister
Founder, Ausland App
Ausland App is an AI-powered platform, built on a proprietary knowledge base which transforms the most frustrating parts of international job hunting to secure competitive positions for top-tier talent.
Impact esey

Sri Hollema
Founder, Mat Zero
Mat Zero is an impact-first company tackling the overlooked issue of access to safe, sustainable heating.

Vladimir Verbulski
Founder, Argus AI
Argus AI is a MedTech startup transforming surgery using Mixed Reality and AI.

Davide Duranti
Founder, MedWave Group
MedWave Group saves lives and limbs with our photobiomodulation company. Leading the way with innovative, non-invasive and all natural healing technologies.

Jabu Swartbooi
Founder, Navwok
Navwok Technology creates smart assistive devices for the visually impaired, enhancing real-time environmental awareness.

Sandra Nwokeoha
Founder, Ellescope Ltd
Ellescope was built to end the huge health inequalities in maternity care that were responsible for 49% of maternal deaths in the UK and 82% of maternal deaths in US, all of which were entirely preventable.

Ryan Cameron
Ryan Cameron, CleanPlay
CleanPlay is revolutionizing the energy transition by turning gaming into a catalyst for renewable power.

Zeezy Izenman
Founder, Motion Health Ltd
Motion makes care homes places people want their loved ones to go. We do this through a digital platform that delivers outcome-focussed, person-centred activities to care home residents and then shares updates with family members.

Louis Allen
Founder, Youmi Support Ltd.
Youmi revolutionizes mental health support by empowering supporters with practical tools.

Claudine Adeyemi-Adams
Founder, Earlybird
Earlybird is a multi-agent AI system designed to transform frontline citizen services, focusing on welfare, employment, justice, housing, and social care.

Nick Mills
Founder, Community Wolf
Community Wolf is an AI-driven public safety network transforming how 30 million South Africans stay safe through WhatsApp.
Professional Services esey

Anuscha Iqbal
Founder, Qanooni AI
Qanooni is an AI-driven legal platform designed to revolutionize legal document drafting, reviewing, and research for lawyers, law firms, and in-house legal teams.

Jessica Liew
Founder,Intriq
Intriq is reinventing management consulting with autonomous AI agents that convert complex, messy data into sharp insights, empowering firms to deliver client-ready outcomes in record time.

Boaz Valkin
Founder, Falkin
Falkin helps protect people from scams before money leaves their bank accounts.

Nic Nabil Tebogo Rawhani
Founder, Vula Africa Ltd
Vula Africa assists SME funders in Africa by reducing their service costs through SME structured data, process automation, and AI assistance.

Josh Deeks
Founder, Bastion
Bastion AI is a next generation AI powered compliance platform for financial services firms.

Janice Shen
Founder, Malcolm
We're building Maia, the AI toolbox for investors from sourcing to exit.

Dominique Harrison-Bentzen
Founder, Luniate AI Inc.
Luniate revolutionizes content creation for hedge funds, wealth managers, and investment firms with its AI-powered platform, enabling them to produce compliant investor communications in minutes.

Melissa Fasol
Founder, Tulia AI
Tulia is an AI brand intelligence platform that helps companies understand and leverage how artificial intelligence perceives them for growth.

Christo Smit
Founder, Superworker Pty. Ltd
Superworker is a workforce orchestration platform combining two decades of human-capital expertise with advanced AI.

Alexa Booth da Silveira
Founder, Legi Check
Legi Check is an AI-powered compliance orchestration platform that helps businesses of all sizes simplify, verify, and maintain legal and operational readiness.
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