Former Techcrunch editor-at-large Mike Butcher is launching a new title on newsletter-based platform Beehiiv covering tech startups and investment around the world.
Pathfounders launches with two full-time staff, and two weekly columnists, and will publish content on its website and email newsletter, with a podcast and events also planned.
Editor Butcher told Press Gazette: “There is a need for a technology-focused title which marries up technology entrepreneurship with venture capital.”
Much of its coverage will be European, the site said, but “we won’t stick in that ‘box’. It’s time to make the links with Silicon Valley and tech internationally”.
“We’ll be talking about a startup that’s doing AI …defence or… energy,” he said, adding, “Quite a lot of output will actually be more curiosity about what’s going on in the markets.”
In terms of filling a gap in the market, Butcher said: “It’s almost like there isn’t really…a gap.
“There’s a huge opportunity, because there’s an explosion of technology companies going on around the world right now … because of the steroids that have been injected to this system via generative AI.”
The site’s audience will include “technology startup entrepreneurs and C-level staff inside those tech companies”.
Elephant versus gnat: Techcrunch comparison
Butcher became founding editor-at-large of Techcrunch in 2007, covering tech startups and venture capital globally there. He was made redundant along with around nine others in June 2025, when Techcrunch made the decision to pull out of the UK and Europe. The move followed private equity firm Regent LP buying Techcrunch from Yahoo Inc in March 2025.
Butcher said there would be similar “elements” to Pathfounders and Techcrunch’s editorial approach, but “for a different part of the world”.
“Techcrunch is much, much bigger than us, and so it’d be like comparing an elephant with a gnat.”
Other former Techcrunch staffers have launched Resilience Media, co-founded by ex-Techcrunch director of international events Leslie Hitchcock. Resilience covers the defence tech industry and just expanded after a successful fundraising round.
Comparing the two projects, Butcher said: “Pathfounders is not designed to be a niche product in one vertical. We’re interested in high-growth startups and technologies across any horizontal subjects…not defence as a specialism.”
Tech publishing ‘increasingly content marketing based’
There have been extensive cutbacks in the world of technology journalism this year – in addition to the cutbacks at Techcrunch which saw Butcher and his European colleagues leave. These have included extensive redundancies at Business Insider (including on its specialist technology reporting team).
In July, 19 staff were cut at tech news and reviews site CNET. UK-based technology newsbrand Digital Frontier closed in the same month with 16 staff made redundant.
Informa Techtarget announced plans to cut 10% of its workforce the same month.
“The way that technology companies have been getting their story out has increasingly become content marketing based,” Butcher said when asked about challenges in the industry.
“Paying influencers, paying content marketing companies, boosting the profiles of the CEOs on social media, things like that… there’s a deep lack of credibility in all of that, because it’s all self-serving, and what the market wants is a filter on who’s actually doing something interesting, which entrepreneurs are credible, [venture capitalists] and investors are crying out for that kind of product, and that’s what we aim to deliver.”
Butcher said Pathfounders has a network of “deep and long-lasting investor relationships”, and hears of company investments “first a lot of the time”.
The company will “use its network” and publish “underreported stories” by “getting writers from other parts of the world… That’s going to be happening towards the end of this year and beginning of next.”
“The capability to publish online is available to anybody… But not everybody has the depth and breadth of contacts assembled.”
Two full-timers, two weekly columnists
The publication’s editorial team is made up of two full-timers – editor Butcher and senior reporter Amelia Isaacs – and two weekly columnists. Isaacs previously worked as a reporter at Digital Frontier. Columnist Chris Stokel-Walker has previously written for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and columnist Kit Eaton has written for tech blog Gizmodo and the New York Times.
“Those guys all represent what’s going on in the hardcore technology space,” said Butcher, adding there are “far more in the pipeline”.
“I have 100% intention to bring on board more freelances, take pitches, get, maybe correspondents from other parts of the world… [I’m] definitely building that into the plan.”
Content ‘accessible to all’
Pathfounders is based on a model of “free-to-air journalism, accessible to all, backed by sponsors and advertising partners”.
“There’s been such a move towards paywalls and logins to read content that I think that people are tired of that,” Butcher said. “And we’ll also be doing events and other kinds of multimedia products, like podcasts.”
While ad revenue will be display and direct sold – “not programmatic” – Butcher said he will “be looking for long-term sponsorship as opposed to traffic-based advertising”.
Launch on Beehiiv
The site is part of publishing platform Beehiiv’s invite-only Media Collective, which provides benefits such as legal support, access to tools like Perplexity Pro and Getty Images, and extra platform support.
The Nerve, the new publication launched by former Observer journalists including Carole Cadwalladr, is understood to be one of the most successful launches on newsletter platform Beehiiv so far.
The Pathfounders podcast will launch “in the next month or so, and it will have regular cadence… probably weekly to begin with”.
“I’ll be hosting. I also bring on some of the team…on hosting as well. And I’ll also have guest posts, and we’re looking to leave making it quite news based…what’s actually happening in the industry that week.”
Opportunity for ‘smaller, fast-moving publishers’
Looking to the future of tech publishing, Butcher said: “You have to adapt to the platforms that are out there.”
“People have gone from newspapers to print magazines to websites to newsletters to podcasts and videos … what we’re not really fully aware of is how generative AI platforms are going to have an effect on publishers.
“I think we’ve just got to engage and…see what we can do. I think there’s an opportunity for smaller, fast-moving publishers like us: new media titles that know what they’re doing and at very low overheads, who work remotely and understand their sector.”
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