London Brief #45: Jo Bertram in a quest for new Uber, Facebook is hiring, Green Black Cabs are on their way… and business as usual.
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People
Jo Bertram, Uber’s recently-departed UK boss, has joined EQT Ventures. Ms Bertram left shortly after Uber lost its London licence. Now, she will try to buy or build a new Uber-like startup using £500m from the Swedish private equity.
Nolan Hough, formerly responsible for e-commerce at MAG, a Stansted Airport owner is now charged with MAG-O, an internal digital startup. Good luck making Stansted flights a more bearable experience.
In the news
Facebook will create 800 new jobs in London next year, increasing its UK workforce by more than 50%, as it opens the new Frank Gehry-designed office in Rathbone Place, just off Oxford Street. Apart from FB’s developer, marketing, and sales teams, the building will host LDN_LAB, a three-month accelerator programme for tech startups.
Black or green? No, it isn’t about tea this time. The new, green (electric) black cabs from LEVC are now available for £55,599. It is ten grand more than the newest petrol model, but hey, London needs some air, and we have just banned Uber’s fleet of Prius. So it is green and black, please. LEVC claims that the price difference will be recovered in fuel savings after 25 months of driving.
Reports and Rankings
- SyndicateRoom: Top 100: Britain’s Fastest-Growing Businesses
- Stack Overflow: The Developer Ecosystem report
Business as usual
- Anaplan, a business intelligence and modelling company, has closed a $60m Series F round led by Premji Invest.
- WorldRemit, a money transfer service, has raised $40m in Series C funding led by LeapFrog Investments.
- Cytora, a data analytics spinout from Cambridge University, has raised £4.4m from investors including Starr Global Holdings.
- MishiPay, a smart shopping app, has raised more than £1.65m in seed funding led by Nauta Capital.
- Avora has received a £1.5m from investors including Crane Venture Partners
- Chattermill an AI for Customer Experience startup, has raised £600,000 in seed funding from Entrepreneur First, Avonmore Developments and angel investors such us Jeff Kelisky (Seedrs).
Number of the day
2.4m sqft: WeWork’s planned office space in London, which makes it the biggest private tenant around.
Idea
London Brief is a weekly selection of essential information about startups, technology and the business scene in London. Got news? Give us a shout at londonbrief@netguru.co.
Radek Zalewski
On behalf of the London Brief Team
