UK Archives - Serious Startups

[Breaking News] Anonymous Drops UK Home Office From Existence With DOS Attack

As we reported on Thursday, Anonymous was planning to go after the UK Home Office’s website due to actions in which they’ve helped the West prosecute British civilians. As of now, people just can’t connect to the site, no letter or anything has been left yet.

#OpTrialAtHome is Anonymous newest cause. Unlike last Saturdays “attempt” to take down the Net which makes no sense as why would they crash their playground. This one is being reported by all the Anonymous Twitter feeds and people close to it. In a group showing against UK extraditing people to the USA to face crimes, Anonymous is telling its supports to take out the countries home website.

Source: @Anon_Central

With $17 Million In New Funds Hailo May Make It To U.S. Before Uber Gets To London

Private car service app Uber has taken the U.S. by storm in the select markets they are doing business in. You simply download the app and have a car come and get you (in select markets). Across the pond in London there’s another company operating in both London and Dublin, doing the same thing with taxicabs.

We profiled Hailo a few weeks back. The startup came about from three taxi drivers as a way to provide more fares and make the taxi experience in the UK more social. Long gone are the days where a taxi driver needs to wait all day at a cab stand or a passenger needs to stand on the street corner to wave somebody down.

With Hailo (like Uber) a few taps of an app and your taxicab is on the way. They also allow you to pay through the app with a credit or debit card and of course you can pay the cab driver with cash. They’ll also hold the meter off for five minutes.

Hailo has already seen 200,000 downloads from consumers in London and over 3200 taxi drivers have downloaded it. Hailo has about 1700 cabs using the app for fares.

TechCrunch reported yesterday that Hailo had raised $17 million in a series A round led by Accel Partners. The company is looking to bring Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, and New York on rather quickly. Hailo’s CEO Jay Bregman does realize that it will be a hurdle to get over New Yorks stringent taxicab regulations.

As with their London market, Hailo isn’t looking to provide cabbies with full time work but rather supplement their normal amount of fares with extra fares. Hailo has also enlisted the help of drivers that are using the app to take on management roles within the cities they service.

American rival Uber just finished a $32 million dollar round of financing and said that they hope to be operational in London before this summer’s Olympics. The main difference between Uber and Hailo is that Uber uses private car companies while Hailo is striving by working with actual cabs ,a move that could potentially make customers feel safer and more comfortable with the transaction.

source: TC

Google Opening Startup Tech Center In London

We love reporting about Great Britain’s thriving tech scene. We’ve recently reported on Hailo, a taxicab app that could put the squeeze on any potential plans for Uber in the home of the 2012 summer Olympics. We also reported on Culture Label an upscale mesh between Etsy, and Amazon offering access to the world’s finest museum shops and more. DeadSoci.al is also one of our favorite startups in the UK targeting, tackling the issue of mortality and making it more social.

London is heating up as one of Euope’s hot tech epicenters and Google will be there in full force. Bloomberg reported today. The tech center model Google is building rivals that of American centers popping up all over the place. Shared work spaces, access to high speed internet, conference rooms, mentorship and collaboration are all things that will be offered in the London venture, as portfolio.com says is in one of Europe’s “hottest zipcodes for technology”.

Google’s new startup tech center will be close to Amazon’s new tech center, both on London’s east end.

source: Portfolio.com

Hailo Cab Let’s You Hail A Yellow Cab In London With Your iPhone or Android

While hot tech start up Uber is preparing to embark on London before the 2012 Olympic games there is already an app available for iPhone and Android that lets people in England hail a taxicab.

The app called Hailo is a network that matches passengers and licensed taxi drivers. The app makes cabbies days more sociable and allows British taxi drivers to go to destination fairs rather than waiting at taxistands all day.

The app is great because it beats calling a taxi. Instead the user can click a button on their Hailo app and a cab is dispatched to them. Hailo promises you’re never two clicks away from a taxi. Hailo allows you to pay by credit card or debit card in-app or in cash to the driver. Hailo cab drivers will even wait five minutes before starting the meter.

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UK Start Up Spotlight: Dead Soci.al

If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank than you know that one of Shark Kevin O’Leary’s favorite industries is the death industry. He always candidly jokes that everybody dies so it’s a sure market. That’s the market that deadsoci.al is in.

Dead Soci.al was founded by James Norris and unveiled at SXSWi in the UKTI booth at the South By Southwest trade show.

Dead Soci.al is a free tool that allows anyone to create private and scheduled messages. The messages can be distributed through email and across the social web once the user dies. The main purpose for Dead Soci.al is to let users say goodbye the way they want to. Dead Soci.al was prominently featured in the SXSW Startup village as well.

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