Steve O’Hear is probably best known as a technology journalist, currently at TechCrunch where he focuses mainly on European startups, companies and products.
He was previously co-founder and CEO of expertise platform Beepl where he helped the company navigate its first VC round, along with seeing the product through development, private alpha and a high profile public launch. In November 2012, Beepl was acquired by Brand Embassy.
Along with TechCrunch, Steve has written for numerous publications, including ZDNet (where he wrote the blog ‘The Social Web’), The Guardian, Macworld, Mobile Industry Review, TES, Last100 and ReadWriteWeb. Steve also wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Silicon Valley documentary ‘In Search of the Valley’, which was released in September 2006.
In 2002 Steve was made a fellow of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. He’s also one half of ProtoBake Labs, an ‘ideas incubator’ he co-founded with Pete Harris.
Mobile messaging app Spotbros, backed by ex-Nokia President and CEO Olli Pekka Kallasvuo, has announced the launch of an API to enable companies to build mini apps for its messaging client so that they can use the platform to engage with and provide various services to customers — not dissimilar to Kik’s recently announced “Cards” feature. → Read More
PromiseUp, a new iOS app that sees its full launch today, has a simple but rather lofty mission: To make people keep their promises, and ultimately, make the world a better place. It hopes to achieve this with a mixture of social and gamification in which users earn (or lose) virtual currency depending on whether or not they keep the promises they make to one another. → Read More
Tastebuds, the London-based startup that matches people based on their musical tastes, has been kicking around for a while. Now the company looks like it’s finally set to step on the gas. Today it’s announcing a $600,000 seed round from Black Ocean, which will be used to launch mobile apps, grow its developer team, as well as formally launching in the U.S. → Read More
Bitbar, the startup behind cloud-based mobile app testing platform Testdroid, has announced that it has closed a $3 million funding round. The round was led by Creathor Venture, DFJ Esprit, Finnvera Venture Capital, and, interestingly, mobile chipmaker Qualcomm via its venture arm, Qualcomm Ventures. Finland’s TEKES financing also participated. → Read More
Despite its potential, the jury is arguably still out on the best use-case for Augmented Reality. But one startup, Augment, thinks it has the answer: helping to sell products by letting customers see what they might look like in the real world.
A graduate of the Paris-based accelerator Le Camping, today the company is announcing a €220k (~$289k) funding round — capital it will use to take… → Read More
Following expansion into Germany last month, Adzuna, the UK startup that operates what it calls a next generation jobs search engine, is taking its wares even further afield today. The London-based company has rolled out dedicated sites for Brazil, South Africa, Australia and Canada. That’s an interesting mix of countries and territories — the U.S., for now, is still notably missing in action … → Read More
Just a few years ago, e-invoicing was mainly the realm of large companies, with SMEs ruled out by legacy systems that carried prohibitive licensing fees and were expensive to implement. More recently, the cloud has helped to change this with a number of startups offering free e-invoicing for small companies. Today Dublin-based Senddr is throwing its wares into the ring. → Read More
Sorted, the UK startup that originally soft-launched as a reverse marketplace for local jobs akin to TaskRabbit in the U.S. (or a number of local “clones”, such as Sooqini, and TaskPandas), has relaunched today after rejigging its model.
Instead of users having to post what is essentially a classified ad for each job they want done, and then wait for a response, the new site turns the user-path… → Read More
Dust off that cheque book. Teddle, the UK startup that lets you easily find and book a home cleaner, has closed a £255,000 (~$391k) funding round from a group of entrepreneurs-cum-angel investors, including Open Table founder David Pritchard.
In addition, the Springboard alumni has managed to persuade Hailo founder and chairman Ron Zeghibe to join as non-executive chairman, although I’m told… → Read More
Xeneta, which offers a crowdsourced price comparison service for sea freight, has raised a €1.2 million (~$1.6m) seed round led by the Stockholm VC Creandum, with participation from Norwegian private investment firm Alden. The new funding will be used to expand into new markets, specifically adding to the breadth of coverage for its comparisons in terms of the number of “trade lanes” in and out… → Read More
TransferWise, the online currency exchange, has been pitching itself as the preferred method of money transfer for European startups for a while now. And today, born of its co-founder Taavet Hinrikus‘s own experience, the company is putting its money where its mouth is by launching a campaign to waive the fees for a total of $100 million worth of international money transfers for qualifying… → Read More
Well, it looks like the carpooling race in Europe continues. BlaBlaCar, the European carpooling marketplace and competitor to Carpooling.com, has announced that it’s reached the milestone of 3 million members, almost double from this time last year. It’s also expanding to Germany, giving testimony to being a truly pan-European player. → Read More
Lulu (formerly Luluvise), the controversial mobile app that lets girls anonymously review and recommend guys, is seeing some pretty decent traction since it rebooted in February to focus on launching across U.S. college campuses, early Facebook-style. The London/U.S. company, backed by Passion Capital, PROfounders and a host of prominent angels including Yuri Milner and Dave Morin, has garnered… → Read More
OnePageCRM, the cloud-based CRM targeting small businesses or SMEs, has raised €575,000 (~$749k) from unnamed private investors and supported by Enterprise Ireland. The Irish Galway-based startup says it will use the new funds to staff up in engineering, specifically web and mobile developers, along with marketing and customer support — creating a total of 12 new jobs. → Read More
It’s probably hard to get people enthusiastic about another service that lets you build a professional profile online. But that isn’t stopping Enthuse.me from giving it a go. The startup, based in London’s “Silicon Roundabout”, recently launched a public Beta of its one-page profile creator that targets the self-employed, small business owners, and other kinds of individuals who want to… → Read More
9flats, which operates a short rentals marketplace similar to and competing with Airbnb, has flicked the switch on Bitcoin support. The Berlin-headquartered startup now accepts Bitcoin payment, alongside its existing support for various credits cards and PayPal. → Read More
If you can’t beat ‘em, aggregate ‘em. That was my take in late 2010 when a host of daily deal aggregators sprang up at the height of the whole Groupon-clone thing. So you’ll be forgiven if this post reeks of déjà vu for you, too.
Bownty, the Denmark-based daily deal aggregator, which currently targets the UK, France, Spain, Germany and Denmark, has raised $1.1 million in new funding from… → Read More
Arguably, eating healthily takes both motivation and time. And in what’s being billed as “a world first, three-dimensional wellness experience” (presumably with a straight face), the recipe kit subscription service HelloFresh is partnering with weight loss coaching app Noom to tackle the problem from both ends. → Read More
Another Irish startup has thrown its wares into the in-app messaging ring. After working with and developing its product alongside a number of enterprise customers, Dublin-based Converser opens up to mobile developers today with an in-app communication platform that can be incorporated into iOS/Android apps to provide two-way communication with users — real-time chat, marketing messages, polls… → Read More
Flying somewhat under the tech press radar, Toothpick — an ‘OpenTable for dentists’ — has quietly exited Beta, as well as expanding beyond its native UK to the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. The London-based startup is backed by Passion Capital and various angels, including the founders of AdJug.
Interestingly, it comes at a time when U.S.-based ZocDoc, which targets both doctor and… → Read More
Minube, the social travel startup that focuses on inspiration for would-be travellers, has rolled out a nice update to the trip planning feature of its iOS app.
After creating and sharing a list of things to do and see or where to stay or eat — which works like a draft itinerary — any friends or co-travelers who have been granted access to that list can now message each other in real-time… → Read More
It’s approaching three years since I emailed and got a reply from the late Steve Jobs. The topic of my caffeine-fueled missive that sunny day in June 2010 was the industry’s move towards touch-based interfaces and, specifically, Apple’s one-size-fits-all approach regarding the iPhone’s lack of a physical QWERTY keyboard. → Read More
Fortumo, the mobile payments company that puts carrier billing in the hands of developers, has announced that its brought its in-app payments solution to Windows Phone — a move that it claims makes it the only third-party payment provider to offer cross-device integration via a single SDK for payments on Windows 8, Windows RT and (now) Windows Phone. → Read More
Another established hardware startup is turning to Kickstarter to help fund its next wares. This time it’s the turn of Click & Grow, maker of the smart garden that lets you grow a plant indoors with little or no intervention. After selling over 50,000 units of its first device, the Palo Alto, U.S. registered company with an R&D lab in Estonia, is launching a crowdfunding campaign to get… → Read More
Following a soft launch in its native Netherlands back in October, Planspot — described as an all-in-one event marketing tool — is seeing its official International push today, including the U.S., now that it has the needed media partnerships in place.
Competing with the likes of London-based Evently, and indirectly, HootSuite, Sproutsocial and Mailchimp, the web app’s dashboard hooks into… → Read More
The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s 2013, over 20 years since Adobe first released Photoshop for the Macintosh, and here I am writing about a simple, yet seductive, photo editing app. Repix, available for iOS, lets you “remix” photos by painting various effects over the original image, akin to functionality offered by numerous Photoshop plugins over the years. It debuted in… → Read More
Spanish startup, Knok, a holiday home exchange community that competes with the UK’s Love Home Swap and legacy player IHEN, has raised a further €500,000 (~$645k) to help it accelerate international growth and build out its technology. The backing comes from private investors and adds to the company’s initial €250,000 (~$323k) of self-funding. → Read More
The founders of some of Europe’s biggest technology startup hits — Skype, Rovio, Spotify, and Tuenti — along with key planks of the ecosystem, including accelerators SeedCamp and HackFwd, are throwing their weight behind the European Commission’s “Startup Europe” initiative being spearheaded by the out-spoken EC Vice President Neelie Kroes. → Read More
Masabi, which develops and deploys mobile ticketing technology for the transport sector, has raised a further $2.8 million in a new round of funding from Detroit-based Fontinalis Partners, along with London-based MMC Ventures and existing investor m8 Capital. The new capital will be used by the UK company to “accelerate” transit agency deployments in the U.S. → Read More
Today, HotelQuickly, a Hong Kong-headquarted startup whose team is comprised of a number of ex-Rocket Internet executives, launches its last-minute hotel booking app which not only bears more than a little resemblance to San Francisco-based HotelTonight, but appears to borrow heavily from the Samwer brothers’ playbook, too. → Read More
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