Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 04.02.2026 
Aaron Gibson, Founder and CEO of Hurree, has been shortlisted for Tech Entrepreneur of the Year at the Global Business Tech Awards 2026. It’s a significant moment for the team – a recognition of how we build: real-world products, honest leadership, and a culture that backs people as much as performance.
Who We Are
Hurree is an AI-powered data and decision-intelligence platform built to help teams stop drowning in spreadsheets and start acting on what the data is telling them. We connect the data you already have, translate complexity into clarity, and make insight usable—fast. Our goal is simple: help people have a conversation with their data, without needing a specialist team to interpret it.
Aaron’s story has shaped that mission from day one. He left school at 16, built and exited two ventures early on, and launched Hurree after repeatedly seeing the same problem in organisations: too many tools, too many exports, and too much time spent building reports instead of making decisions.
This nomination reflects work carried out between August 2024 and December 2025 – a period where Hurree doubled down on two things: building practical agentic AI that improves decision-making, and building a company that people actually want to work in.
What the Award Entry Highlighted
Key achievements from the award submission included:
Product Innovation
Advancing Hurree’s agentic AI assistant, Riva, to turn complex analytics into conversational, actionable insight. Early adopters report saving an average of eight hours per week on manual reporting, accelerating decision-making across departments.
Market Recognition and Momentum
Hurree achieved major ranking gains in G2’s Fall 2025 Reports:
- +88 places in the BI Relationship Index (now #3 of 156)
- +44 in the Data Visualisation Relationship Index (now #3 of 86)
- +71 in Small-Business BI (now #23 of 125)
- 17 G2 badges total, including 7 new badges across Enterprise, Mid-Market, Regional, and Small-Business categories
Leadership Beyond the Product
Aaron’s work extends beyond Hurree. He serves as Special Advisor to SOJA Ventures and LiHT Capital – two investment firms advancing innovation and diversity across Europe’s deep-tech and startup landscape. He’s also an active investor, backing over 50 companies across sustainability, SaaS, and ethical tech.
At Web Summit 2025, Aaron hosted a sold-out masterclass with Ogilvy Consulting on “From Insight to Action: How AI and Behavioural Science Drive Smarter Decision-Making”, participated in Mentor Hour supporting eight startup founders, and recorded a special edition of Hurree’s SaaSy AF podcast with Carl Miller, Research Director at Demos.
Culture and Resilience
A team-first environment built on trust, flexibility, and radical transparency, shaped by lessons learned during Hurree’s toughest moments – including a near-collapse in 2018 that Aaron now commemorates annually as “The Best of Hurree,” celebrating resilience, growth, and continuous reinvention.
Hurree achieved a 92% Flexa score, ranking 8th in the Flexa 100 list of most flexible companies to work for – proof that you can build ambitious technology without burning people out.
From Manual Reporting to Automation, in Minutes
One of the clearest themes in our award entry was removing friction from reporting. Even in teams with modern analytics stacks, reporting often still looks like exporting spreadsheets, pulling screenshots, and rebuilding the same decks every week or month.
That’s the thinking behind Riva – a capability that can take the reports businesses already rely on (spreadsheets, PDFs, even screenshots) and automatically convert them into live dashboards inside Hurree. The point isn’t “more charts.” It’s time-to-value: getting teams from static reporting to something they can explore, share, and act on, without weeks of setup or specialist support.
We’re proud of pioneering an agentic approach to data that puts actionable insights into the hands of decision-makers in real time, freeing up to 40% of the workweek from non-value-added tasks. Riva doesn’t just report on the past, it helps forecast, suggest, and empower forward-thinking decisions – all in a UI that anyone can master within minutes.
Building a Tech Company with a Human-First Culture
Awards can often focus on product alone, but this category also values the person behind it -how they lead, what they stand for, and the environment they create. For us, culture isn’t a perks list. It’s how we make decisions when the pressure is on.
Aaron has built Hurree around trust: flexible working, open feedback loops, and a leadership style that avoids theatre and gets straight to what matters. His approach is grounded in empowerment, empathy, and accountability – building teams where people feel ownership, not oversight, and where ideas are valued as much as results.
That trust has fostered long-term loyalty and growth. Team members have grown from interns to department heads, employees have returned from maternity leave to shape new leadership roles, and former team members have rejoined Hurree, drawn back by a culture that genuinely invests in its people.
Practical examples of culture in action:
- The Hurree Benevolent Fund – During COVID, Aaron personally covered income gaps for employees’ families facing financial hardship
- “Father Quarantine” – A lockdown initiative that brought moments of joy and connection during isolation
- Quarterly anonymous pulse surveys – Leading to real cultural changes based on honest feedback
- Hurree Inspires – Internal forums that cultivate stronger team connection and shared learning
- Radical transparency – Open discussions about what’s working, what isn’t, and what we’re still figuring out
What Being Shortlisted Means to Us
Being recognised in the Tech Entrepreneur of the Year category is significant not just for Aaron personally, but for what it represents: validation that you can build ambitious, innovative technology while maintaining integrity, humanity, and a genuine commitment to the people behind the work.
Aaron Gibson, Founder and CEO, Hurree:
“I’ve always believed the job is to build products that actually do the work, and a team that feels trusted enough to do their best work. Being shortlisted is proper credit to the people behind Hurree and the way they show up every day. This recognition belongs to them as much as it does to me.”
Niamh Tohill, Chief Technology Officer, Hurree:
“What I’m most proud of is that our innovation is practical. We’re not building AI for a demo or chasing hype. We’re building it to remove manual reporting, speed up decisions, and make insight accessible to everyone in the business – regardless of their technical background.”
The Hurree Team:
“Entering awards forces you to pause and take stock. The shortlist is a nice moment to recognise the resilience and the graft behind the scenes, especially for a team building in a fast-changing AI market. It reminds us why we do this work and who we’re doing it for.”
What Makes Aaron’s Leadership Unique
Aaron Gibson isn’t a conventional entrepreneur. He’s a founder who leads by putting people first- not as a tagline, but as an operating principle.
What sets Aaron apart is not just what he’s built with Hurree, but how he’s built it:
- Trust over control – He describes his role as “delegator-in-chief,” surrounding himself with people smarter than him and keeping them inspired and supported
- Transparency over polish – Speaking candidly about challenges, failures, and what the team is still learning
- Values over vanity – Making decisions based on ethics and impact, not ego or status
- Resilience through adversity – Rebuilding Hurree from near-collapse in 2018 into a thriving, profitable business with proprietary technology
- Mission-driven investing – Backing over 50 ventures in climate tech, vertical farming, and ethical AI, chosen based on instinct and values
Aaron’s competitive edge is simple: he’s proven that innovation doesn’t have to come at the cost of culture, and that leadership is about lifting others, not standing above them.
Looking Ahead
Beyond the product roadmap, what we’re most committed to is maintaining the culture and values that got us here. As we scale, we’re determined to stay the kind of company where:
- People feel trusted and empowered to do their best work
- Innovation is grounded in solving real problems, not chasing hype
- Transparency and honesty matter more than polished narratives
- Resilience is celebrated as much as success
The Global Business Tech Awards shortlist is a meaningful validation of that approach. It’s a reminder that building with integrity, investing in people, and staying true to your values isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s also what creates lasting impact.
Find Us Online
We’d love to connect with you:
- Website: www.hurree.co
- Aaron’s Substack: aaronbgibson.substack.com
- YouTube: youtube.com/@Aaronbgibson
- LinkedIn – Hurree: linkedin.com/company/hurree
- Instagram – Hurree Life: instagram.com/hurreelife
- Instagram – Aaron: instagram.com/aaronbgibson
- LinkedIn – Aaron: linkedin.com/in/aaronhurree
Whether we win or not, being shortlisted for Tech Entrepreneur of the Year is a moment to pause, reflect, and celebrate what we’ve built together. Here’s to the team behind Hurree, the customers who trust us with their data, and the journey ahead.
