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Mark & Mary Devlin

Mark & Mary Devlin42 posts

Mark and Mary Devlin are media entrepreneurs. After studying engineering in Scotland, they moved to Japan in 1989. In 1993 they started handing out a four-page classified ads sheet on Tokyo streets. Over 14 years that sheet grew into Metropolis, Japan’s No 1 English Magazine. In 2000 they founded japantoday.com, the No. 1 news and discussion site about Japan in English. In 2007 Mark & Mary sold their businesses and moved to the United States where they opened Kroaky’s, a private karaoke room business. In 2014 they launched Newslines, an innovative news timeline site, which was followed by NewsBlocks, a blockchain-based marketplace for news data. In June 2020 they launched The Majority to fight back against Nationalism in Scotland. They have two children and live in Glasgow.

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19 Sep, 2019

NewsBlocks reaches Great British Entrepreneur Contest finals

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NewsBlocks is a finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Challenge. The contest, run by Andy Yates and promoted by The Daily Mail, offers £50,000 investment and mentoring as a prize, and aims to find:

great start-ups and early-stage firms and to find passionate entrepreneurs who want to disrupt and change their market for the better, and change their lives at the same time.

Mark meets with Andy, who is a former journalist, in London to talk about NewsBlocks. Mark:

In the end we didn’t win, but it was great to meet with Andy, and hear his enthusiasm for helping innovative project. We look forward to keeping him updated as we build NewsBlocks in the future.

1 Aug, 2016

Wins #DellScotIgnite contest

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Newslines is chosen as one of two winners to enter Dell’s Entrepreneurial Growth Programme for Scottish Scale Ups Newslines and Ibis Vision, a company that has a new way to detect glaucoma, receive technology, training, mentorship and access to Dell events. Newslines CEO, Mark Devlin:

After many years overseas running successful media businesses, we recently came back to settle in Scotland. We know that we can unlock the potential in the new media landscape but need to tap into skills and networks within Scotland and beyond.  Dell’s brand and scope gives us that additional ‘clout’ that we can’t achieve as a small scale-up.

Dell Scotland site lead, Mark White:

When we launched this programme we were confident that the Scottish scale-up environment was thriving.  We were still pleasantly surprised at the quality and breadth of the entries, a testament to the future of Scottish industry. IbisVision and Newslines are very different companies but both are working in areas that are ready for disruption.  We knew when we met with them that we could partner with them to help them thrive and I’m looking forward to working with them through the next year on our DellScotIgnite journey.