ShapeUp Club is a startup out of Stockholm which has been making waves recently with a lot of under-the-radar growth. Originally built back in 2008 as a side project, it’s morphed into an interactive calorie counter on iPhone, Android, and web. You get a personal weight loss plan, can track nutrition, exercise and weight. Ok, so it might not sound original set against the likes of bigger players… → Read More

Last week we reported that Facebook is in advanced talks to buy Israel-born social traffic and mapping app Waze for up to $1 billion, but that there were still some questions over whether Waze’s R&D efforts would remain in their home country, or move over with the rest of the team, which is in California, to Facebook’s HQ. → Read More

Today in interesting moves comes the news that serial entrepreneur-turned-investor Russell Buckley – who was first employee at AdMob (which sold to Google) is joining the UK government to accelerate its policies around startups, mainly funding. Specifically, he’s joining the UK Government’s Venture Capital Unit. The Unit, launched last year, is designed to help UK companies attract funding from… → Read More

There’s something about soccer (and as a Brit, by that I mean football, puh-lease…) that seems to have captured investors’ imaginations of late. Case in point: FTBpro, a large fan-generated content platform, has now secured $5.8 million from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures to fund global expansion.

The site currently has 20 million monthly page views, over 1,000 contributing fan… → Read More

Facebook’s social graph went missing from yesterday’s update to Path’s smartphone app, and Facebook now confirms it has restricted Path’s API access. Path can no longer look up your Facebook friends, which prevents it from sending them invitations or suggesting you follow them. The damaging blow to Path’s growth may be in response to Path spamming user’s contacts with invites last week. → Read More

Five years after being started as a back-bedroom project by Michael Acton Smith, Mind Candy, the company that came up with the hugely successful Moshi Monsters kids game, has achieved a lot. Unusually for most UK consumer startups, it’s reached across the globe to become a global brand attracting 80 million registered users, up from 50 million in 2011. → Read More

Photo and video apps have rocketed up the app store charts driven by apps like Instagram and Vine, becoming the third largest category in iOS downloads. Most contain casual photo filters and simple editing tools. In contrast with this trend, others are feeding the desire for photo editing with more sophisticated apps. The latest entrant to this market is MasterFX which launches today for iPad and… → Read More

Startups in the UK are upbeat about the future and usually more profitable (comparatively) than their US counterparts (which tend to focus on growth over revenues). But they find raising Series A money difficult, with 90% of entrepreneurs saying the UK fundraising environment is “challenging”. Those are the findings of a survey commissioned by Silicon Valley Bank (its first such) which has set up… → Read More

We’ve been saying for a few months now that Barcelona is shaping up to be an emerging new technology hub in Europe. The ingredients are there: great universities, a young population, affordable living costs and literally a great location and climate. With seed funding on the doorstep in nearby hubs like Madrid and London, you can see a few things starting to happen. It’s why we held a meetup there… → Read More

For the last few years Europe has been emerging as a powerful source of new global startups. Hell, why else would we be doing TechCrunch Disrupt in Berlin this year? And we’ve seen efforts to recognise the heroes of the scene, with a proliferation of startup conferences, as well as awards, such as The Europas (which I chair). Now the venerable European Commission has started to wake up to the… → Read More

Socialising the travel experience – in the way that Airbnb ‘socialised’ apartment rentals – has proved harder than expected. “Hot” Berlin-based startup Gidsy has spent almost two years touting its peer-to-peer booking platform for discovering local experiences and things to do. It attracted $1.2 million in a seed round in January 2012, with Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher participating. But recently… → Read More

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs, said today that Apple’s share price, which hit a 16-month low two days ago, is “disappointing” but that he was confident the tech giant would come out with products which would “surprise and shock us all.” → Read More

Globally-known London-based product and design consultancy Berg has become best known for its work with major tech companies such as Apple and Twitter, as well as it’s now famous “Little Printer” design which captured the collective imagination of the tech world last year. The tiny device that could print out any kind of information you wanted from the web became a physical manifestation of how… → Read More

We’ve seen a lot lately of car companies sidling up the technology world and vice versa. Consider Ford’s Open Developer Program for instance. But today, three big companies get involved in startups, one of them being the huge Mercedes-Benz. It, along with industrial giant Bosch and insurance company HDI, are partnering with tech accelerator Startupbootcamp in Berlin to create a new kind of… → Read More

The hype about the Berlin tech startup scene has continued this year, but as 2013 ebbs into spring, many are asking the same question: When will the hype turn into real results? As many of my contacts said to me on a recent visit: what we need in Berlin for all this hype to be real is a big exit. The most recent evidence that Berlin is capable of producing a decent startup exit is the sale of… → Read More