Mike Butcher
Mike Butcher is currently Editor of TechCrunch Europe. In addition he is involved in a project to bring European technology entrepreneurs and investors together in a club environment called TechHub (@TechHub), in London initially. A long time journalist, Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. 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 was put at No. 47 out of the Top 100 people in London’s creative industry by The Independent newspaper and The Hospital Club.
In August 2008 TechCrunch Europe was awarded the best “Web 2.0 and business blog” in the UK, by the readers of Computer Weekly magazine. In 2009 it was named as one of the Top 10 blogs out of the UK. Also in 2009 he 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. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. Mike’s personal blog is mbites, while he Twitters as @mikebutcher.
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Latest from Mike Butcher
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Amid a tough field, Vyking.io wins the TechCrunch London Pitch-Off
Well the TechCrunch London Meetup + Pitch-Off in London is over for another year, and this one was arguably the best vintage ever in terms of quality of startups and the sheer enthusiasm from the attendees! Hundreds of startups entered the competition, creating a very competitive field. We packed out the Old Truman Brewery in East London with over 500 people, to hear the pitches of the… Read More
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Leading VC Tim Draper invests in Gravity’s ‘Iron Man’ flight suit, on a $100 bill
You’re a bored former finance guy who decides one day to strap on some micro-jet engines and see if you can become Iron Man. Hey it happens all the time. Or maybe not. But that’s what British entrepreneur Richard Browning decided to do and just this year found himself demoing his ‘flight suit’ to venture capitalist Tim Draper in the parking lot of Boost VC. Moments… Read More
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Zego raises £1M to give gig-economy drivers a pay-as-you-go insurance platform
The gig economy, as we know, is big and just getting bigger. But companies like Uber and Deliveroo have a huge problem and it’s called insurance. How do you insure all these workers and how do the workers cover themselves in the gig economy? Step in Zego. This London startup has just raised just over £1 million in seed funding from investors, including LocalGlobe, with FTSE 100… Read More
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Mangrove raises $170M for its new fund to invest in Europe and Israeli startups
Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners, one of Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital firms, has raised $170 million for its latest fund. Mangrove V will be used to invest across Europe and Israel. The amount matches that of its previous funds, and was completed inside two months with 90 percent coming from returning investors, said the firm. Read More
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Rajeeb Dey’s new career platform Learnerbly secures £1.6M led by Frontline Ventures
Professional development is one of the hot areas for big corporates grappling with their millennials influx who are hungry to learn, so it makes sense that new platforms are now appearing to service this need. Today, Learnerbly, a “curated professional development SaaS platform” based in London announces that it has raised £1.6 million in seed financing to create a so-called… Read More
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Meet the judges for the TechCrunch London Meetup + Pitch-off
On July 19 we’re hosting the London TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off — it’s our chance to formally connect with the UK’s great entrepreneurs and showcase some new up-and-coming startups. We have a great lineup of judges who are going to listen to the startup pitches and crown the winner of the London Pitch-Off. Tickets are now sold out. In addition to a few onstage… Read More
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Butternut Box raises £1M for its algorithm-driven natural dog food startup
You’ve probably heard of HelloFresh-style businesses where you are given tailored ingredients for your meals. Well now the concept has come, literally, to dog food. Butternut Box is a London startup now bringing tailored, delivered meals to British dogs. It’s aiming at dog owners who want high-quality ingredients put into meals for their precious pooches. The company is led by… Read More
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After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is now to ‘take back control’
SoundCloud co-founder Alex Ljung gave his first major public interview to me today at Tech Open Air Berlin. He batted back claims that SoundCloud is facing tough times, insisting that by cutting headcount by 173 people and closing two major offices, it is on its way to “taking back control” of its destiny and remaining a major independent force in the music and tech industry. Read More
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TechCrunch London Pitch-Off: Here are the startups who’ll pitch!
On 19 July we’re hosting the TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off in London, in partnership with Unbound. — and it’s going to be great! Tickets are still available, so grab yours today. You’ll get to see 10 companies pitching and fiercely competing for first place. These startups will have exactly one minute to pitch their product (with no slides) to a panel of local VC… Read More
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Blowing up the re-location industry, Move Guides raises $48M Series C
Whatever any country leader says about banning travel or shutting down the movement of people, the world is accelerating its globalisation and that means people move around. Duh. Talent is now global, and the industry that helps that talent move is huge. Thus it is that Move Guides — a SaaS platform for employee relocation which launched in London but has grown internationally —… Read More
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Code-teaching app SoloLearn wins FbStart Apps of the Year competition
Facebook has announced its “FbStart Apps of the Year”, which is an event which recognizes the most successful apps from the global FbStart program. This year’s Grand Prize winner is
SoloLearn (iOS/Android] which is a free mobile-first app for anyone who wants to learn how to code. SoloLearn’s CTO and Co-founder Davit Kocharyan came up with the idea for the app in his… Read More -
What it’s like to drive a car while it’s being hacked
Ever been driving a car when both the brake and the gas pedal failed, and the dashboard go nuts? I just have, and it isn’t fun. What are we going to do when our cars are targets for hackers? The problem with most modern cars is that to offer many more kinds of services (live traffic data for sat navs, etc.) they need to be connected. Once that happens then they are, by definition, hackable. Read More
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Diabetes platform mySugr exits to Roche for as much as $100M
mySugr, a popular digital diabetes management platform which emerged from Austria a few years ago, has been acquired by health giant Roche. It now becomes the heart of Roche Diabetes Care’s new patient-centered digital health services. Roche plans to maintain its acquisition as an open and independent platform for health insurance companies, medical technology companies, and… Read More
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TechCrunch Pitch-Off rocked Tel Aviv, winner OlfaGuard now heads to Disrupt
Last Wednesday TechCrunch hosted the TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-Off in Tel Aviv, and a good time was had by all! Over 700 people packed into the Trask venue to see on-stage interviews and 10 companies pitching to win tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt. The startups had only one minute to pitch their product (with no slides) to a panel of local VC judges and TechCrunch editors. The winner of the… Read More
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Harver raises $8.1M to replace the tedious trawl through résumés with an AI
The problem of dealing with CVs during the hiring process is a perennial one. There are a number of approaches and there are various assessment companies and recruitment companies providing human services to do so. But it’s tough to get around the fact that having to read a lot of CVs is often just pure grunt work. Imagine instead if you could apply machine-learning and a platform… Read More
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Acquired.io launches with $2M funding to take the grunt work out of user acquisition
Acquired.io launches today with a funding round of $2M. Founded by the team behind AppScotch (acquired by App Annie), they claim to be taking the grunt work out of user acquisition. It allows publishers to manage user acquisition channels from a single place and also help them discover new ones. The investors include Jonathan Zweig, founder of AdColony (acquired by Opera), and John… Read More
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PromoRepublic raises $1.2M for AI which creates social media for small businesses
As AI slowly seeps into various sectors, it was fairly inevitable that we would start to see the “AI for X” startups begin to appear. Thus “AI for small business social media” is now a thing, in the shape of PromoRepublic, a US/Finnish/Ukrainian startup which has now raised a $1.2M investment round. More specifically, they bill themselves as a “WIX for a small… Read More
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TechCrunch London Meetup + Pitch-off applications close in one week!
London! If you missed the news, here’s your reminder that we’re returning for a TechCrunch Meetup + Pitch-off on 19 July, in conjunction with the incredibly fun conference, Unbound. Looking to pitch your startup to the TechCrunch team, local VCs and the local tech community? This is the moment you’ve been waiting for, but hurry because applications close in one week. Ten… Read More
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Startup veteran founder/investor Wendy Tan White joins BGF Ventures
If there are some noticeable gaps in the European venture scene, the first is there is still a small number of European entrepreneurs who have built products and scaled and exited and then went on to become investors, relative to the size of the market. The second is the dearth of VCs genuinely obsessed with product over “the growth numbers” as they are in Silicon Valley. The third… Read More
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Yoyo Wallet raises £12M Series B led by Metro Group to expand in Europe
The race to digitise the loyalty card just got a shot in the arm with the news that Yoyo Wallet, the European-based mobile payment and customer loyalty platform, has raised a £12 million Series B round, led by the US wholesale and food retail giant Metro Group. The round is joined by the UK-based Woodford Investment Management and Touchstone Innovations. The deal is subject to FCA… Read More
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