London Brief #46: Sherpa’s founder disgrace, fake restaurant tops the list, Shazam’s acquisition and business as usual.

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London Brief

2 min readDec 19, 2017

People

Shervin Pishevar exits Sherpa Capital and Virgin Hyperloop One to focus on legal defence following sexual assault allegations. Last month, Bloomberg reported on accusations from five different women, who said that Mr Pishevar had abused his power as an investor and Uber board member. Earlier this year, Mr Pishevar was also detained in relation to a complaint about sexual assault in London.

Oobah Butler, a prankster, has tricked TripAdvisor into recommending his shed as London’s best restaurant, The Shed at Dulwich. Besides the joke, his story is a good example of growth hacking in the world of fake news and reviews.

In the news

If you are looking for the truly best restaurant, Hardens Guide has just published its top 100, with the famously expensive (£300 per person) sushi restaurant, The Araki, taking the top of the list.

Shazam, a music discovery service founded in 1999 in London, will be joining Apple, following the acquisition for (an unconfirmed amount of) £300m. Shazam’s main source of profits were commissions from iTunes and Apple Music purchases made by its 100 million users. For Apple, this is yet another move into music-related services after the acquisition of Beats in 2014.

London Heathrow and Gatwick Airports are now included in Apple Maps Indoor Maps service. Apple is using Wifi hotspots as navigation points, which provides better accuracy than GPS.

Reports and Rankings

Business as usual

Paddle, a startup that offers everything needed to sell software products, has closed a $12.5m Series B led by Notion Capital.
Pace, a startup which leverages machine learning to set the optimal price for hotel rooms, has closed a £2.5m seed round led by InterGlobe, with participation from Seedcamp, Speedinvest and Amadeus Capital Partners.
Amicable, a platform which seeks to make it easier and cheaper for couples to divorce, has raised £473,260 from business angels.

Number of the day

£300m: The price that Apple allegedly paid for Shazam.

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 Zaleski

On behalf of the London Brief Team