Former London tech journalist Steve O’Hear has died aged 49 after a short illness, his team announced today.
O’Hear worked for TechCrunch for over a decade and covered the rise of many of the UK’s most successful tech businesses, like Monzo and Wise. He left in 2021 to join food delivery scaleup Zapp as SVP of strategy and communications, and then two years ago founded strategic communications firm O’Hear & Co Advisory — its logo a nod to O’Hear’s trademark hat.
When he made the move out of journalism, O’Hear gave Sifted the ‘scoop’. Leaving journalism was “the hardest decision” of his life, he told Sifted, but added that he was also somewhat relieved. “I was always scared I would be fired for my tweets,” he joked. “A decade’s a long time.”
During that decade, he was the first journalist to interview GoCardless cofounder Hiroki Takeuchi after he had an accident which left him in a wheelchair, like O’Hear, who was born with muscular dystrophy and used a wheelchair most of his life. He also covered the launch of Monzo and Starling — and the hijinks the two companies would play on one another.
“He was the preeminent voice in the tech scene,” Monzo founder Tom Blomfield told Sifted in 2021. “He had such credibility. He wasn’t going to write a puff piece.”
Tottenham’s finest
O’Hear was born in Essex, grew up in Tottenham and knew he wanted to be a journalist from a young age. “My dad said something to me like: ‘You’re never going to be able to work in a supermarket, so you better learn to use your brain’,” he told former Sifted reporter Isabel Woodford.
O’Hear’s first role was an internship at The Guardian aged 17, where he got his first byline. He then planned to study journalism at university but was scuppered by the local paper at his preferred institution — Bournemouth — not catering to wheelchair access.
He joined TechCrunch in 2009, a publication he’d work at for over a decade. There, O’Hear developed a penchant for breaking news, admitting that he’d bluff to PRs that other journalists (“the scallywags over at Business Insider”) were chasing the same stories to tease out information, and demanding PRs play by his rules around exclusivity.
He also dabbled in entrepreneurship and investing. In 2011, he left TechCrunch to launch his own startup, Beepl, which helped users seek answers from subject specialists, before returning to journalism a year later after the startup folded. In 2022, he joined VC firm Atomico’s angel investing programme, and also launched his communications firm.
Even once he’d crossed into PR, O’Hear’s love for journalism remained, advising several younger reporters — Sifted included — on how they could sneakily secure scoops.
Without fear or favour
“As many in the tech sector will know, he was a fiercely determined journalist who was never afraid to say it how it was or put founders, operators and investors on the spot with probing questions. He treated his interviewees fairly, respectfully and was an empathetic and understanding champion of those trying to make the world better through technology,” wrote his team at O’Hear & Co today. The firm will continue.
“He was loved for his charm, transparency and good sense of humour. His nose for a story was matched by his network, reputation and passion to help others — through his sage advice and generosity of time and spirit.”
O’Hear was due to take up the mic once again at this month’s Sifted Summit to host a fireside conversation with Starling Bank founder Anne Boden, but pulled out due to ill health. True to form, the questions he’d prepared didn’t pull any punches.
His characteristically to-the-point opener? “Welcome to Sifted Summit. We don’t have a lot of time and there’s plenty I want to get through so I want to start with the elephant in the room. In June 2023 you stepped down as CEO of Starling Bank, the challenger bank you founded almost a decade earlier. Were you pushed or did you jump?”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/steve-ohear/
