Mike Butcher
Mike Butcher is TechCrunch’s “Editor At Large”. As such he has a roving brief to write about Startups, Venture Capital, technology trends and emerging markets. 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 service company for startups with several locations in Europe.
Mike is 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. He also serves on the Mayor of London’s “Smart London” Board, advising on Smart Cities and Entrepreneurship.
A former editor of New Media Age magazine and he was also an Executive Editor on the European edition of The Industry Standard magazine. Since 1996 he has launched or re-launched numerous media web sites.
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 his coverage of the European tech scene was honoured in the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” category by Computer Weekly magazine. 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 newspaper. In 2010, 2011 and 2012 he was named as one of Britain’s Top 100 “digital power-brokers” by Wired UK magazine. 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 has been 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 | Linkedin.com/in/mikebutcher | Facebook.com/mikebutcher | Google+: Gplus.to/mikegbutcher
Mike supports:
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. Code Club: A UK nationwide network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11. 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. TeenTechEvent: A non-profit which runs one-day events to help young teenagers see the wide range of career possibilities in Science, Engineering and Technology. YoungRewiredState: A non-profit network of software developers and designers aged 18 and under.
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 the founder and chair of “The Europas” annual tech startups awards for European startups and its associated events. 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.
CrunchBase profile →Featured Picks from Mike Butcher
Latest from Mike Butcher
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Health Startup Healthberry Soft Launches Beta To Measure Patient Feedback
UK-based health startup HealthBerry has soft launched its beta. Pitched as a “better way to engage with patients” the startup uses social media as a way for national health services to measure patient feedback and thus inform improvements to services. It’s trailing with the UK’s National Health Service. The platform engages with patients, monitors programmes, syndicates… Read More
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Watch Out Moves And Human — Now RunKeeper Releases A Movement App
By now may are familiar with the smartphone apps that track your movements via the accelerometer. There are multiple pedometers on all the apps stores for instance. But a more intriguing sector has emerged in the shape of apps like Human and Moves. Both not only track steps but give you feedback on reaching goals, in a very light-touch manner. The beauty of these apps is that they gradually… Read More
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LongAccess Wants To Cold-Store Your Digital Life For 30 Years
Tech people are probably used to the idea that we’ll have our memories and photos stored online. Sure, we have it in the backs of our mind that it’ll all be on some dusty hard drive somewhere we can access in the nursing home – at least we HOPE that’s the case. At the same time, very few people know how to store something in the cloud for a very long time – other than… Read More
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Turnkey Mobile Apps Startup AppsBuilder Raises New Cash From United Ventures
AppsBuilder, which has developed a platform to “easily” (they say) develop mobile apps has taken in a $1.5 million round of funding from United Ventures. The investment brings the company’s funding total to $3.5 million. Previous investors included Annapurna Ventures, Zernike Meta Ventures and Angels. The cash will be used to consolidate growth and build business in the UK and… Read More
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Varsavsky Bets On The Gramofon As A New Take On Social Music
Today, crowd-sourced Wifi network operator Fon launched its new Gramofon device on Kickstarter. This offers a simple Fon-like Wi-Fi sharing functionality via a simple Facebook log-in, can be plugged into any music speakers and comes with a year’s subscription to Spotify. With such a mash-up of services, it’s quite a new concept on the market. The device could be a game-changer for Fon… Read More
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Fon Launches Gramofon, A Router With Facebook And Spotify Built-In
Today, crowd-sourced Wifi network operator Fon launches its rumoured new product, the Gramofon. But unusually for a large tech company with healthy revenues, it’s launched the product with 30-day crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter at a discounted price, starting at $30. This device offers simple Fon-like Wi-Fi sharing functionality after you log in via Facebook, an audio out to speakers… Read More
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Entrepreneur First Thinks It Can Grab The Talent Long Before YC
The world of tech startup accelerators has become an ocean of choices. “Batches”, “programmes”, “mentor networks” are thrown around from one organisation to the other. What sets them apart has become difficult to define. Perhaps it’s geography, such as proximity to investors in a big city? Or perhaps its a programme in a vertical, like fashion or fintech? Read More
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Enterprise File-sharer Egnyte Opens London HQ To Meet Euro Security Demand
Egnyte, the Valley firm specialising in an enterprise file-sharing platform, has expanded in Europe, opening a London HQ. This will compliment its existing Amsterdam data center and design office in Poland. It aims to hire 100 new staff in London over the next 5 years. The company says there is growing customer demand for enterprise-grade file sharing which also addresses data security concerns. Read More
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Landbay Brings The P2P Finance Model To Buy-To-Let In The UK
P2P lenders have sprung up in recent years online. Zopa in the UK pioneered the model, and has raised significant funding. And the P2P finance model has even spread to insurance. Now the model is spreading again, in a rather specific vertical. In the UK, property is no longer mere property. It has morphed into a form of money. This has seen an explosion in the ‘buy to let’ boom where… Read More
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TapTalk Is A New Video Messaging App That Adds Location
My TechCrunch colleague Natasha Lomas recently argued – quite convincingly – that startups should stop trying to make proximity-based social networking “happen” — that most attempts had failed, and even ongoing ventures like Foursquare have had to tone down the idea. And yet these apps still keep appearing. And who can blame them — we might as well do something… Read More
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Prezi Puts On 10M Users Inside 5 Months, Hits 40M
The news today that Dropbox has now hit 275 million users (far higher than the 200 million users it had in November 2013) is further proof that SAAS startups are now fully disrupting the old world. Similarly, old presentation software (hello PowerPoint!) is experiencing something of a gradual encroachment of cloud platforms, as today Prezi announces its hit 40 million users. This is up from the 30… Read More
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Language Learning Giant Busuu Signs Pearson Deal To Disrupt TEFL Market
busuu — the world’s largest social network for language learning at 40 million users — has signed a distribution partnership with Pearson English, a newly formed business unit of the world’s largest education company, Pearson PLC. The deal will be exclusive for the next 4 months, after which Pearson will be free to sign similar deals with other partners, should it choose to… Read More
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Casengo Raises $2M To Accelerate One-Inbox Approach To Customer Service
Casengo is a cloud platform for customer support aimed at online retailers and other small businesses to respond to customer questions faster. It does this by creating one inbox for customer chats, emails and social media posts. In theory, this speeds up response times, especially when customer teams are scrambling around trying to deal with the same single enquiry coming in via different channels… Read More
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Veteran Euro Tech Exec Kate Burns Shifts To SHIFT To Help Its Expansion
Last time we checked in with Kate Burns, the former Director of Google UK and AOL EU, she’d been hired by Drawbridge, a cross-device ad targeting startup backed by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia. Now one of Europe’s most experienced ‘scaling up’ executives has literally shifted over to SHIFT to head its European expansion and focus on driving global adoption for its marketing… Read More
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CareerFoundry Wants To Be The Next General Assembly For Tech Skills
General Assembly was one of the first in the tech space to get that high quality brand name for technology education. But although the company – which won significant backing – has been building out online tools and resources, most of its business remains offline in the real world. Now a startup out of Berlin hopes to repeat GA’s success but using online-only tools, starting with… Read More
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New Transportation And Energy Accelerator To Run In Berlin And SF
Startupbootcamp, which has spread a network of accelerators across Europe is creating a new “cross-continental” program connecting Berlin and San Francisco based on “smart transportation” and energy. Global partners include Bosch, Castrol innoVentures, Cisco, Daimler, EnBW and HERE. The idea is to accelerate startups working in the areas of Smart Mobility and Vehicles… Read More
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MirrorWeb Comes Up With A Simple Site Uptime Solution For SMEs
MirrorWeb is a new startup offering a slightly different take on website uptime. While the main competitors such as DNS Hat simply add hardware and server loading to keep sites up if they go down, MirrorWeb does what it says on the tin: mirrors a site during maintenance or problems with a carbon copy. It’s now launched with multiple currencies, including dollar pricing. You log in, type in… Read More
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Innovative Crowdsource Insurance Startup Friendsurance Raises New Cash
Peer-to-peer insurance startup Friendsurance has announced two new investors: the Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing and his technology focused Horizons Ventures, plus VantageFund from Australia. The funding round was undisclosed but we understand the round is in the 'millions of Euros'. The company already has funding from private investors including e.ventures. Read More
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Photo Startup EyeEm Tempts Flickr’s Head Of Product To Berlin
EyeEm — the photo platform that is on something of a tear lately having done a deal with Getty after raising another $6M last year — has tempted Flickr’s former head of product across the Atlantic to join them in Berlin. Markus Spiering will focus on product development and building on EyeEm’s expansion into the U.S. He was at Flickr from 2011, but this is a big loss for… Read More
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Just Eat IPO Values It At $2.44BN, Company First To Test LSE’s New Tech-Friendly Market
In the biggest UK technology IPO in the last eight years, Just Eat, the online takeaway service, debuted on the London Stock Exchange today. The market valued the company at £1.47 billion ($2.44 billion), at 260 pence per share. This is top of the pricing range the company was after in January and puts its value at over 100 times its EDIITDA and 15 times sales. The float comes as US competitor… Read More
