Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations in Europe.
He is also the founder and on the steering committee of Coadec, the Coalition for a Digital Economy, which works to lobby for legislation that fosters a sustainable and innovative digital economy for the UK. Mike also serve on the Mayor of London’s Smart London Board, advising on Smart Cities and Entrepreneurship.
He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine. Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites and in 2000 he was nominated as NetMedia’s European Internet Journalist of the Year.
In 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 he named as one of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper. In August 2008 TechCrunch’s European coverage was honoured in the the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” category by Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. In 2009 Mike was named one of the Top 10 bloggers on Twitter in the UK. In October 2009 he was named one of the Top 50 most influential Britons in technology by The Daily Telegraph. In April 2010 he was named as one of Britain’s Top 100 “digital power-brokers” by Wired UK magazine. In April 2010 TechCrunch Europe was shortlisted in the Specialist Digital Publisher category of the prestigious UK-based Association of Online Publishers’ Digital Publishing Awards. In November 2010 Mike was named as one of London’s most influential people in New Media and “king of dotcom commentators ” by The Evening Standard Newspaper, and again in 2011.
He has spoken at the prestigious Monaco Media Forum and Le Web, among many other conferences, and is a Davos / World Economic Forum “Media Leader”. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Personal blog: mbites.com. Twitter: @mikebutcher. Facebook.com/mikebutcher. Google+: Gplus.to/mikebutcher
Mike supports and works with:
Apps For Good: A non-profit which aims to ignite a passion for technology and social enterprise in young people in the UK.
TeenTech: Which runs events to help young teenagers see career possibilities in Science, Engineering and Technology.
Coderdojo: Free not-for-profit coding clubs and regular sessions for young people in the UK, Ireland and US.
Young Rewired State: The philanthropic arm of Rewired State – which aims to foster the young children and teenagers who will become tomorrow’s technology stars.
Disclosures (reviewed, approved and signed off by TechCrunch/AOL): I’m a Co-founder and 50% owner of a co-working space in London, TechHub, established because it solved a problem for startups back in 2009, and today (I’m a strategic adviser only – not operational or ‘commercial’). I’m an adviser on content to the “London Web Summit” annual conference. I’m the founder and chair of “The Europas” annual tech startups awards. I’m on the advisory board of The Coalition For A Digital Economy, a UK non-profit which argues for a ‘digital first’ approach to business legislation. I’m an advisor to Seedrs.com, a crowd funding platform, but I maintain journalistically independent views on crowd-funding. I hold 11 shares in BT which makes about $10 a year in dividends and I can’t be bothered to cancel.
Two Italian VC firms and an institutional player, Fondo Italiano di Investimento, have combined to form United Ventures, closing a first round of funding at €30 million ($39M). The new firm has set a fund-raising target of €50 million, with a term of ten years and brings together Annapurna Ventures, a firm founded by Massimiliano Magrini which has specialized in seed investing, and Jupiter… → Read More
We’re live in Berlin at a major announcement due to be made shortly by German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel. I’ll be covering the event which has been rumoured to be a major policy shift by the German government towards technology startups. (We should add that TechCrunch will be coming to Berlin in October). TechCrunch is exclusively live streaming the event below. → Read More
Who’d have thought email would suddenly be the hot app startups were going after, but that appears to be what’s happening. And it’s being driven both by a desire to make email ‘work’ better and by the rise of the touch interface. Consider, if you will, the hype around the new “Mailbox” app from developer Orchestra which is aiming to turn a streamlined Gmail client into an uber to-do list. It’s… → Read More
The arena of social data comparison has become a hot space over the last, say, three years. With the rise of Facebook and Twitter we have concurrently seen the rise of platforms like Klout and PeerIndex, startups which have pushed the envelope on rating both the content of individuals’ expertise and their influence across a wider social circle. If you want a historical perspective, we no longer… → Read More
As if there weren’t enough technology startup accelerators already in Europe, yet another launched today with the hope of attracting ‘cloud’ based startups in the areas of Big Data, Machine Learning and other similarly high-end areas. But unlike some, this one will have some pretty heavyweight serial entrepreneurs involved. SeedCloud is an new London-based incubator which also announces its first… → Read More
In the U.S. startups like TaskRabbit, where anyone can run an errand for anyone else, seem like a novelty even today. But in emerging economies, where the mobile phone rules, it’s become the mainstream lifeblood of almost all businesses. ”Micro-entrepreneurism” has become entirely powered by mobile. To that end tech startup Mila has hit upon the idea of concentrating on emerging markets, in… → Read More
A couple of years ago there was an ambitious startup called Zoombu which concentrated on aggregating transport solution ‘across platforms’ – in other words linking up trains, buses and airline time tables and allowing users to book. Indeed, the search engine – which launched in 2008 – was in much use during the ‘Ash Cloud’ incident in Europe in 2010 as people frantically tried to find… → Read More
A lot of European startup competitions have avoided the ‘pitch on the main stage’ model of startup competition. Instead, to sort the wheat from the chaff, they often have a separate startup stage to the main conference stage, with only the final 4 or 5 to make it rhough a judging process to appear at the end. That’s the model used at the London Web Summit and today we saw those final four do their… → Read More
“Cloud communications” company Twilio and startup accelerator 500 Startups today launched Twilio Fund Europe 2013, a new micro-fund for companies from Europe and surrounding countries being built on the Twilio platform. In addition, the existing US-based 2012 Twilio Fund finalists were announced, closing out last year’s fund.
The new Twilio Fund Europe, announced today on stage at London Web… → Read More
Stripe, the payments startup, has today opened a closed Beta of its platform in the UK. For now it will be limited to an undisclosed number of partners, but will be gradually “trickled out” to the current waiting list of developers and start-ups which apparently run into “thousands.”
According to cofounder Patrick Collison, speaking on stage at London Web Summit, Stripe’s UK launch will… → Read More
The saga of the fight between Hewlett-Packard and Autonomy continued on stage today when Autonomy founder Mike Lynch repeated his allegation that HP has “never made” any formal representation to him or other former directors of the company regarding its controversial write-down of the acquisition.
On 18 August 2011 Hewlett Packard purchase Autonomy for $42.11 per share, around $10.2… → Read More
The bSafe ‘panic alarm’ app and service on iOS and Android by the startup called Bipper launched into the U.S. mid last year. → Read More
It’s with great pleasure that we can now reveal that TechCrunch’s major conference, Disrupt, will be coming to Europe this October.
Since TechCrunch started a European operation in 2007 we’ve been highly conscious of the amazing tech scene developing in this part of the world. Now we’ve headed the call from our fantastic readers and we’re going to create a major, amazing event.
Switftkey — the intuitive typing interface for smartphones which has made its way into some Android phones and is reputedly behind the new BlackBerry touchscreen keyboard (though the company declines to comment or confirm) — is edging closer to the iOS platform. Today it announced exclusively with TechCrunch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, that it is launching an iPad typing app aimed… → Read More
Remember “mobile TV”, whatever that was? No we don’t either, but that’s not about to deter new startup Vinson which is launching their their new mobile OTT (Over The Top) TV app on iOS for broadcasters, content aggregators and content distributors at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Essentially this is watching live TV on a tablet, with the full TV guide, plus PVR/time-shifting, plus “social”… → Read More
We’ve been waiting since Doo closed its significant first funding round of $6.8 million at the end of 2011 for it big play to attack the world of collaboration and documents to appear. Big plays like this can take time, but after quite a long two year beta (oh yes) with Mac and Windows apps, today it launched its onslaught onto the world of paper. Specifically the paper you have to deal with all… → Read More
iZettle — what you might call the ‘Square of Europe’ given it’s also a dongle-based mobile payment service for small merchants — will now launch a new Chip & Pin device alongside its existing solution that currently uses a customer’s signature to interact with the iZettle app. It will also now accept all major cards, including VISA. Until now iZettle has been unable to allow VISA… → Read More
Barcelona is coming alive with preparations for Mobile World Congress and we are pumped about the super-international TechCrunch Mobile Barcelona meetup in the same week. With thanks to our local supporters in the shape of Barcelona.io and Wayra, we’ll be bringing you a healthy round of startups, VCs and TechCrunch writers to while away your evening. The hashtag for the event will be #TCMB. Here’s… → Read More
In yet another an indication that big media powerhouses are starting to refocus their businesses on driving new models like commerce, publishing giant Condé Nast has made what is understood to be its first investment in an e-commerce startup in Europe. Condé Nast Germany has invested in RenéSim, one of Europe’s first online jewellers in the luxury category. The premium publisher, best known… → Read More
You’re a new startup on the tech scene in Europe, perhaps you’re a brand new entrepreneur. One day you get an email saying you’ve been shortlisted as a finalist for a “prestigious” award, putting you in the “Top 200″ in Europe, out of “hundreds of applications”. Of course, hungry for exposure, you jump at the chance only to be told that you’ll be charged $3,820 (€2,900) to pitch to investors… → Read More
This year we want to make it very, very obvious that TechCrunch events are open to all. In the past we’ve had startups appear from everywhere from Tokyo to Russia to Ghana, Africa. And this year we want to see a great turn-out from Europe, so we’re specifically inviting European startups to Disrupt NYC held on April 29-May 1. After-all, there’s a growing European startup scene in New York, so this… → Read More
I’m heading out to India (Bangalore and Delhi) to meet with tech companies. We haven’t had time to put together a formal event, but I do want to meet startups, VCs and entrepreneurs, so to that end I’ll be throwing together a Meetup – probably in a bar – in Bangalore on Tuesday. The details are: → Read More
One of the great things about Twitter is that – unlike email – people are forced to get to the point by the limits on the medium. But unlike email, you can’t CC anyone on a private communication. However, on Moped, a startup based out of Berlin, you can. In fact, Moped’s iPhone and Android app is SO useful for sending private messages to individuals and groups, that I really do wonder why you… → Read More
In October last year “social reading” iPad app Readmill announced support for Adobe DRM-protected ePub and PDF formats, and integrated into the Kobo book store, among others. Prior to these moves Readmill had been locked into a complex method of users needing to get books and documents into the ePub format for them to be able to use the app and make annotations, bookmarks and share content. It’s… → Read More
Way back in November 2011, a little startup called Luluvise raised $1 million to build a platform aimed only at young women networking privately. It was billed as ‘girl time all the time’ and riffed off the fact that Facebook had become too public and involved too many men for young women to shoot the breeze about the guys. Although a U.S. company, Luluvise got great PR in the UK, but essentially… → Read More
After 13 years as a partner at VCs Doughty Hanson, Ivan Farneti says he is “returning my badge and my gun” and moving back into the entrepreneurial life. The move had been doing the rumour mill rounds for the last couple of weeks but was only confirmed today. It’s a slightly unconventional move for a previous Internet VC. In a couple of weeks he will take on the new role of Executive Director… → Read More
Last year Etsy, the marketplace for hand crafted goods, was powering ahead with 22 million members in nearly 200 countries and had passed the $895 million mark for sales in 2012 (compared to $525 million for all of 2011). By the end of the year, over 100 million items had been sold in Etsy’s history. And as she explains in this video shot at the recent DLD conference in Munich, now Europe is a… → Read More
With a simple post on its privacy page, Facebook yesterday announced it had re-enabled its photo Tag Suggestions feature in the US after the feature was temporarily suspended last year, supposedly to allow for some “technical improvements”. The feature means users can use the facial recognition capability of Tag Suggestions to help them “easily identify a friend in a photo and share that content… → Read More
Prezi has come a long way since the days it was a struggling startup in Budapest building a new way for people to create presentations to blow the mind of an audience. Today they have over 100 employees and a San Francisco HQ. It’s become a popular alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote, and the company is even now advised by Jack Dorsey.
At DLD in Munich last week I ran into Peter… → Read More
TechCrunch is returning to Barcelona, this time focusing on Mobile Startups. We will have some keynotes and panels which will be announced shortly on TechCrunch.
A big focus will be the pitch competition of 8 mobile startups. But this time the pitch competition is open to both local and international companies in town for MWC. Our partners are Wayra (@WayraES) and Barcelona.io. Before… → Read More
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
