Mike Butcher is the editor-at-large of TechCrunch, the world’s largest online source for technology and startup news, while he is also invested in numerous educational initiatives in the UK that teach youth how to code. Attending his third ArabNet in Beirut, Executive caught him at the informal startup pitch-off TechCrunch Meetup (co-hosted by Bader Young Entrepreneurs) where he served on the judging panel. Hosted at Coworking +961, eight startups competed for tickets to attend TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. You’ve been coming to ArabNet in Beirut for a couple of years. What is it about the Lebanese startup scene that is making you come back? Well, I think the enthusiasm, and there’s clearly credible talents coming from this region even under obviously difficult circumstances. There’s an interesting marriage between creativity and design, and technical capability and technical execution. That’s something that’s really Lebanon actually. There’s a long heritage here of media