Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher

Editor At Large

Mike Butcher MBE is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch.

As a writer, editor, interviewer, moderator and columnist in the tech media world he covers everything the smallest tech startups and the largest tech giants. Lately, he’s been writing a lot about Blockchain and Crypto.

Mike has been named one of the most influential people in European technology by various newspaper and magazines. He founded The Europas Awards, the non-profit Techfugees and has advised the UK government on tech startup policy. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2016 for services to the UK technology industry and journalism.

As well as being a long-time Writer, Broadcaster and Editor Mike is also co-founder of TechHub.com, a project to merge a thriving community with office space for fast-moving startups; co-founder of the UK’s Coadec.com lobbyist for startups; the non-profit TechVets for UK military veterans, and the UK event series ThePathfounder.com.

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.

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 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 in Wired UK’s Top 100 influencer list, in 2011, in 2012, (there was no Top 100 list in 2013), in 2014 and again in 2015. 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 he was named as one of London’s most influential people in New Media and “king of dotcom commentators” by The Evening Standard Newspaper. He has been listed as one of the Top 100 most influential people on Twitter in the UK. He was named in the TechNation200 Almanac. He has been named as one of “The 100 coolest people in UK tech” by Business Insider. He was named in the “Smith & Williamson Power 100”. In 2016 British GQ magazine named him one of the 100 Most Connected Men in the UK. He has spoken at the prestigious World Economic Forum, the Monaco Media Forum, Le Web, Web Summit and DLD among many other conferences. Mike is a regular commentator on the technology business, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg. Mike has advised the UK Prime Minister on tech startups, served on the Mayor of London’s Digital Advisory Board, the ‘Smart London’ Board and been a Technology Ambassador for London. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2016 for services to the UK technology industry and journalism. Mike’s personal blog is mbites.com, while he Tweets as @mikebutcher.

He owns shares in ETFs, shares in Verizon via employee stock grants and small amounts of various cryptocurrencies. More info: http://mbites.com/contact

The Latest from Mike Butcher

Quantum photonics startup Nu Quantum raises £2.1M from Amadeus Capital Partners

Mike Butcher
For quantum cryptography and simulation to become real, the technology requires high-performance light-emitting and light-detecting components that operate at the single-photon level and at ambient te

The Little Black Door app makes luxury wardrobes shareable, resalable and sustainable

Mike Butcher
When Lexi Willetts and Marina Pengilly realized they could make as much as £30,000 a year reselling their luxury clothes and accessories online, they resolved to create a solution for modern women wh

Crowdcube and Seedrs agree to merge, creating a significant private equity marketplace

Mike Butcher
The two main crowd-equity fundraising platforms in the U.K., Crowdcube and Seedrs, have agreed to terms on a long-rumored merger, thus creating one of the world’s largest private equity marketplaces

Propy, a blockchain-verified platform for selling houses, raises funding from Tim Draper

Mike Butcher
For several years, blockchain technology has been touted as a way to verify the sale of property. Any kind of property. And so entrepreneurs busily began the process of trying to create a startup that

Spain’s startup ecosystem: 9 investors on remote work, green shoots and 2020 trends

Mike Butcher
As reported in the first half of our Spain-focused VC survey, the nation’s startup ecosystem continues to grow and is keeping pace with ecosystems in more developed European countries such as U

‘The Real Facebook Oversight Board’ launches to counter Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board’

Mike Butcher
Today a group of academics, researchers and civil rights leaders go live on with ‘The Real Facebook Oversight Board’ which is designed to criticize and discuss the role of the platform in the upco

Dfinity’s valuation soars to $9.5Bn after revealing its governance system and token economics

Mike Butcher
We’ve been tracking one of the few genuinely interesting stories to come out of the blockchain world, ever since Dfinity raised $102M from Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital for a decentralis

With a Warby Parker playbook, SISU raises funding from Greycroft to face off against cosmetic clinics

Mike Butcher
With so many people getting botox and filler treatments to their faces these days (or are they, during the pandemic?), it’s probably no wonder that venture capital has decided to look at the space.

9 VCs in Madrid and Barcelona discuss the COVID-19 era and look to the future

Mike Butcher
Spain’s startup ecosystem has two main hubs: Madrid and Barcelona. Most observers place Barcelona first and Madrid second, but the gap appears to close every year. Barcelona has benefitted from

Crypto exchange Bitpanda closes $52M Series A from Valar Ventures, backed by Peter Thiel

Mike Butcher
Bitpanda, a crypto assets platform, has closed a $52 million Series A funding round from Valar Ventures, a venture capital firm backed by Peter Thiel. Vienna-based VC Speedinvest also participated, al

Mental health startup eQuoo will be distributed by Unilever in new global youth campaign

Mike Butcher
Last December (yes, in the before-times) U.K.-based mental health startup eQuoo had a round of announcements, becoming the NHS-approved mental health game, as well as signing Barmer, the largest insur

Calling VCs in Rome and Milan: Be featured in The Great TechCrunch Survey of European VC

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Rome and Milan will capture how the cities are faring, and what

Calling Helsinki VCs: Be featured in The Great TechCrunch Survey of European VC

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Helsinki will capture how the city is faring, and what changes

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek pledges $1Bn of his wealth to back deeptech startups from Europe

Mike Butcher
At an online event today, Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, said he would invest 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) of his personal fortune in deeptech “moonshot projects”, spread across the next 10

Small business challenger bank Finom raises another $12 million to expand in Europe

Mike Butcher
B2B financial service startup Finom — which provides online financial services for SMEs, freelancers and the self-employed in Europe — has raised an additional $12 million (€10.3 million) to add

New report finds VC investment into climate tech growing five times faster than overall VC

Mike Butcher
VC and corporate investment into climate tech grew at a faster rate than overall VC investment as a whole between 2013-2019, according to a major new report — to the tune of $60 billion of early-sta

New research shows European startups are spending drastically less on a US launch, for the same gains

Mike Butcher
It used to be the case that in order to scale globally, European companies needed to spend big on launching in the U.S. to achieve the kind of growth they wanted. That usually meant relocating large s

Calling VCs in Zurich & Geneva: Be featured in The Great TechCrunch Survey of European VC

Mike Butcher
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Zurich and Geneva will capture how those cities are faring in t

Caroline Brochado and Sophia Bendz on the boom in Europe’s early and growth-stage startups

Mike Butcher
As part of Disrupt 2020 we wanted to look at the contrasting positions of both early and later-stage investing in Europe. Who better to unpack this subject than two highly experienced operators in the

After lockdowns lead to an e-bike boom, VanMoof raises $40M Series B to expand globally

Mike Butcher
E-bike startup VanMoof has raised a $40 million investment from Norwest Venture Partners, Felix Capital and Balderton Capital. The Series B financing comes after a $13.5 million investment in May. The
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