Today, we are soft-launching Pathfounders, a new tech media brand to offer informed reporting, analysis, and opinion on the top tech startups and VC firms across Europe, Silicon Valley, and globally. Pathfounders is based out of Europe, and much of our coverage will be European, but we won’t stick in that ‘box’. It’s time to make the links with Silicon Valley and tech internationally.

To that end, we’ll also look at the wider, under-reported, international tech startup ecosystems, products, and investors. From the Middle East, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Follow us on Whatsapp, LinkedIn, X, BlueSky, Instagram, etc. more links below.)

Tech doesn’t need polite journalism. It needs more fight. More debate. Some corners of the startup world have become safe, LinkedIn back-slapping, and PR-washed. We don’t want to just “cover” the trends. We want to call them.

And what better way to do it than with a startup?

Pathfounders will use its network to tell you what the mood is in London, Paris, Stockholm, Barcelona, and Berlin. From Ireland to Istanbul; from Oslo, to Malta, to MENA.

Pathfounders will profile and interrogate the new wave of startups, products, and services, many of them based on generative AI. Edited by Mike Butcher, it will also feature contributions from a network of European and global journalists, analysts, and guest writers.

If this sounds like a grand vision for a small media startup, well, it is.

We need independent media

All startups need independent media if they are to punch their weight internationally, especially those out of Europe and elsewhere. Lately, those of us in the media have been losing a few of our brethren to the vagaries of the ‘market’. Titles have closed. Journalists have been made redundant. A handful of bean-counters have been stealing our revolution… It’s time to steal it back.

One way is to do things a little differently than before. It’s time to get creative.

So, why “Pathfounders”? It’s a re-working of the word ‘pathfinder’ which describes “a person who goes ahead and discovers or shows others a path or way.” That makes sense in the context of covering founders, investors, startups, and tech.

What will we cover?

Will we cover the news? Right now, we’re a small team, and we’ll do what we can. Our idea is not to provide blanket coverage, but to start asking questions that perhaps others don’t currently ask that often. We aim to have a few more ‘hot takes’ than you might see elsewhere, and some of our coverage might sometimes resemble the early tech blogs of old. (You can pitch us stories at [email protected])

Although Pathfounders is coming out of Europe, we think there’s a job to be done to ‘join the dots’ of how startups emerging from Europe and elsewhere fit into the kinds of things that come out of Silicon Valley, and vice versa. And if we get US readers’ eyeballs here, then we will be doing the right thing.

Indeed, Pathfounders won’t just limit itself to the ‘European’ enclave. Technology is a global industry, and we will be looking at the European and international ramifications (on product, regulation, etc, etc) of the moves made by the major platforms, such as Meta, Alphabet, X, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and others that are now deeply embedded into the industry.

This is an ‘alpha’ launch

Let us be clear: This is a ‘soft launch’ – an ‘Alpha’, if you will. Not everything we want to do is built out on the site yet. We are still, figuratively speaking, assembling the office furniture.

For the next couple of weeks or so, we will start with one newsletter a week, eventually ramping up more frequently. But we will be posting (selected and curated) news stories, opinion, analysis, and the faster, blog-style, ‘hot takes’ as individual posts. To begin with, you’ll have to sign in to the site, and later, we’ll open things up as a ‘free-to-air’ site. For now, Pathfounders will be a work in progress, so if you want to suggest ideas or things we could do, let us know ([email protected]).

Aside from that coverage, we’ll also do events – real-world and virtual – and other kinds of gatherings: dinners for founders, investors, roundtables, mixers, workshops, retreats, you name it.

We’re not just about reporting. We’re also about convening the ecosystem. The commenters on our articles will be our stars. We might be the first to post articles here, but Pathfounders will have a community feel, and we want to encourage that.

Pathfounders will bring you:

• Interviews with key European players

• Charts and data on trends (Dealroom is our launch partner)

• Funding news

• Startup product news

• A VC directory

• Industry surveys

• Contributed essays

• Multiple posts every week, pushed out through social feeds and WhatsApp

• A weekly newsletter (increasing in frequency later)

• Events: Invitations to both open-access events, as well as exclusive, highly curated, invite-only ones; side-events at major tech conferences. Investor-only events, founder-only, a mix of both, events by investment stage events by roles, and vertical topics.

• “Wired Consultancy”-style consultancy for partners

• Mike Butcher will still be available to MC, chair, and moderate conferences etc, but increasingly you’ll see him at Pathfounders-owned-and-run events.

At launch, you are joining 3,500+ investors and tech leaders who get our independent journalism to inform their decision-making.

You can join us on the journey

Pathfounders is already in discussions with some major advertisers, sponsors, and event partners.

We’d love to invite more of you to support the newsletter, events, and our upcoming podcast. In return, you will get access to a high-quality audience that appreciates original journalism and independent voices, plus you’ll get up close and personal with the people who make the biggest decisions in the ecosystem. By associating with Pathfounders, your brand will become a true ecosystem ‘insider’.

We are currently in the market for a freelance sales professional willing to work on this brand from its early stages.

With this support, our content will be Paywall-free through the help of mission-aligned sponsors and partners. Please contact us today to join the ‘full launch’ soon: [email protected]

Where are you based?

Where will you find Pathfounders, the entity? The team is remote, but will be available for meetings at our spaces in London (Clapham, Shoreditch, and Kings Cross, which is currently the centre of AI in London). We’ll also be in Cambridge, Oxford, and Seat C of a lot of flights around Europe.

Who is behind Pathfounders?

Mike Butcher MBE, Founder and Editor, Pathfounders

Mike Butcher MBE, Founder and Editor, Pathfounders
Mike Butcher MBE is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Pathfounders, and was formerly Editor-at-large of TechCrunch for 18 years. He has been named one of the most influential people in tech by Wired UK, The Daily Telegraph, The Evening Standard, British GQ, and The Independent. Mike has written for national newspapers including The Guardian, Financial Times, The Times, and The Irish Times. He has spoken at Slush, Web Summit, DLD, and the World Economic Forum, and is a regular broadcaster, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, Channel 4, CNBC, and Bloomberg. He has also advised previous UK Prime Ministers and Mayors of London on tech startup policy. He is the former co-founder of Startup Coalition, TechHub, The Europas, Techfugees, and TechVets. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list 2016 for services to the UK technology industry and journalism.

Amelia Isaacs, Senior Reporter, Pathfounders

Amelia Isaacs, Senior Reporter, Pathfounders
Amelia Isaacs is an award-winning freelance journalist. She previously wrote about technology and business at Digital Frontier, where she launched Anatomy of a Founder, a newsletter profiling entrepreneurs that now continues on Substack. Prior to that, she was a senior reporter at leading fintech publication AltFi and has spoken at events across Europe including SXSW London, Web Summit and The Next Web.

Chris Stokel-Walker, Columnist, Pathfounders (Platforms)

Chris Stokel-Walker, Columnist, Pathfounders (Platforms)
Chris Stokel-Walker has been a journalist for more than a decade, reporting for the world’s biggest publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Economist, New York Times, WIRED, Guardian, Telegraph, and The Times. A skilled communicator, he frequently appears on the BBC, CNN, ABC, Times Radio, and others to explain the latest developments in the world of technology, and chairs panel discussions and hosts events around the world. He is the author of How AI Ate the World, published in 2024, described by UK Tech News as one of its best technology books of the year and “the ideal primer” to AI, as well as TikTok Boom, YouTubers, and The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks. Alongside his reporting, he teaches journalism at Newcastle University.

Kit Eaton, Columnist, Pathfounders (DeepTech)

Kit Eaton, Columnist, Pathfounders (DeepTech)
Kit Eaton has been a writer for 18 years, from tech blogs like Gizmodo, to a column for the New York Times, and covering business and innovation news for Fast Company, Inc. magazine and host of other publications. A regular on stage at WebSummit, interviewing some of the key entrepreneurs shaking up the tech world, he's also the author of three books: WTF is 5G? WTF is the Cloud and WTF is the Dark Web. His beat? AI, New Space, Robotics, Defence and everything in between. He’s an expert at explaining highly complex topics to the layman. Tech is threaded throughout the fabric of our modern world, and Kit will unravel the trends set to shape tomorrow.