Mike Butcher
TechCrunch
United Kingdom
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Recent articles by Mike:
A 12 year journey ends as Skimlinks is acquired by retail marketing platform Connexity –
Connexity, a lead-gen platform for online retailers, has acquired Skimlinks, a UK platform for publishers to make money through affiliate links. Terms of the deal were undisclosed. According to Crunchbase, Skimlinks had raised a total of $25.5M and reached a late a Series C stage of funding, the final round coming from Frog Capital which […] → Read More
Light-weight ‘banking via messaging’ services are getting Gen-Z buzz –
More evidence that Gen-Z is switching to chat platforms for just about everything, including banking emerges today in the news that Zelf, a FinTech startup offering neobank-style services, is generating buzz amongst Gen-Zers in Spain and France. Its ability for users to interact solely via messaging has seen the startup hit over 260,000 pre-card orders […] → Read More
Spectrm raises $3M Series A from Runa Capital for its conversational marketing platform –
In the ‘Age of Corona’ – as some like to call it, the roboticization of industry and business has been super-charged by the pandemic. So while companies using messaging platforms to drive customers towards purchases was always on a long term trend, the sheer volume of people staying online 24/7 during global lockdowns has led […] → Read More
Thriva raises £4M from Target in an era when at-home blood testing is more crucial than ever –
Thriva emerged in 2016 as an at-home blood-testing startup allowing people to check, for instance, cholesterol levels. In the era of a pandemic, however, at-home blood testing is about to become quite a big deal, alongside the general trend towards people pro-actively taking control of their health. It’s now has secured a £4 million extension to its Series […] → Read More
Study launched into how startups will return to offices — will WFH continue? –
A comprehensive study into how startups will work in the future, in the wake of the global COVID-9 pandemic, has been launched by UK non-profit Founders Forum. The initiative comes in the wake of a number of organizations announcing extended offices closures and ‘Work From Home’ policies. The group hopes the COVID-19 Workplace Survey will […] → Read More
UK Angels still active during Lockdown — but startups need to be quick –
A survey of UK Angel investors regarding their investment strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic has found that over 65% of Angels investors are continuing to invest in startups during Lockdown, but with predominantly new deals. Many are completing more deals and increasing their cheque size by as much as 18%. However, the pandemic has reduced […] → Read More
Workvivo, a platform for employee culture, raises a $16M Series A from Tiger Global –
Workvivo, an employee communications platform founded only three years ago, has raised $16 million in a Series A funding, in a round led by Tiger Global which is best know for large growth-oriented rounds. Also participating is Frontline Ventures and Enterprise Ireland, previous investors. The Series A round follows on from a seed round late […] → Read More
Emteria, maker of industrial version of Android, raises cash from HTG and Runa Capital –
Emteria, is a startup that emerged out of the limitations of the official Android Open Source Project. AOSP just isn’t good enough to be used in industrial applications which means if industry wants to use it, the platform must be extended and customized. Some industries still use outdated platforms like Windows CE to power things […] → Read More
VanMoof raises $13.5M to capitalize on e-bike boom in wake of COVID-19 –
VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike startup which launched in 2009, is now officially a “scale-up” after attracting a €12.5M / $13.5M investment from London VC Balderton Capital and SINBON Electronics, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer which is its bike assembly partner. The funds will be used for international expansion, following the launch of the new electric VanMoof […] → Read More
How will coronavirus change the world? — Parlia launches to help you find out –
“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web”, today there is only the […] → Read More
Cuckoo Internet closes Seed funding to disrupt UK broadband market –
Cuckoo Internet is a new UK start-up that aims to disrupt the UK broadband market. It has now raised £425,000 in seed funding, which includes funding from a new Silicon Valley fund operator fund led by Bart Macdonald (Sapling Founder). Other investors include the founders of Betterment, Second Home and energy challenger Bulb. The key […] → Read More
Runa Capital closes Fund III at $157M, with an added focus on Quantum computing –
VC fund Runa Capital was launched with $135M in 2010 and is perhaps best known for its investment into NGINX which powers many web sites today. In more recent years it’s participated or led investments into startups such as Zipdrug ($10.8M); Rollbar this year ($11M); and Monedo (for €20M). HQ’d in San Francisco, it’s now […] → Read More
Vote for Europe’s hottest startups in The Europas Awards + workshops, pitches, networking –
The Europas Awards — which have been recognising the hottest European tech startups in since 2009 — are now open for the public voting stage, prior to the formal judging process. The entries have been sorted and sifted by journalists to compile an editorially-driven ‘long list’ of some of Europe’s most exciting startups and investors. […] → Read More
UK investors band together to survey Angels on their strategy during COVID-19 –
A number of UK entrepreneurs have banded together to survey Angels about their investment strategy. The initiative comes in the wake of the UK government’s “Future Fund” for startups, which has been criticized as being inadequate for the needs of Angel and Seed-stage startups. The group hopes the survey will give the UK early-stage investment […] → Read More
As Europe slowly unlocks, E-scooter startups, like Helbiz, are wooing with offers –
At the start of the year, it looked like Europe would be in a for the ‘Summer E-Scooters / E-Bike Wars’ as both regional startups and US-backed unicorns vied for the pockets of city commuters. Consolidation came when German startup Circ was taken over by US competitor Bird at the start of the year. Still […] → Read More
Instabug raises $5M Series A round led by Accel, as mobile app usage surges –
There are some startups that behave like sprinters, and others that run a marathon. I came across Instabug when I was in Cairo in 2013. Born during the chaotic era of the Arab Spring, this plucky startup managed to make it to TechCrunch Disrupt, then Y Combinator in 2016, then a $1.7M in Seed round […] → Read More
NEAR Protocol raises $21.6M from A16Z and launches its MainNet, beating Ethereum 2.0 –
It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515m. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable blockchains […] → Read More
JetBrains Academy for learning code launches for free during COVID-19 pandemic –
During this pandemic, many organizations are offering free or drastically cheaper courses to help people skill-up for when we eventually get out of lock-down. There are numerous outlets if you want to learn to code from, for instance, Freecodecamp or the ‘Free Fridays‘ scheme form General Assembly. And for gamers, Gamedev.tv has taken 80% off […] → Read More
How this startup built and exited to Twitter in 1,219 days –
By the summer of 2016, Marie Outtier had spent eight years as a consultant advising media agencies and martech companies on marketing growth strategy. Pierre-Jean “PJ” Camillieri started as a music software engineer before joining one of Apple’s consumer electronics divisions. Inspired by Siri, he left to start Timista, a smart lifestyle assistant. When the […] → Read More
B2B challenger bank Finom raises $7M Seed from Target Global and General Catalyst –
Just as challenger banks have appeared in the B2C space, so to have B2B startup banks aimed small businesses, among them startups like Qonto (Fr), Tide (UK), Penta (GER) and CountingUp (UK). Today another such firm, Finom, has closed a €6.5m ($7M) seed funding round led by Target Global, with participation from General Catalyst. Further […] → Read More