Ed Beccle

A director record at the UK Companies House gives his full name as Edward Stephen Beccle, his date of birth as April 1999 and his nationality as British. Bloomberg Línea writes that he was born in Hong Kong and moved to the United Kingdom as a child; InfoMoney writes that he grew up in Hong Kong and moved to the United Kingdom at the age of nine.⁠[1][2][3]

In 2018 he and Henry Costa co-founded the workplace mentoring platform Grasp. Hintsa Performance’s press release describes Grasp as a London-based HR technology and software-as-a-service company that lets employees at every level of an organization connect, build engaged communities and foster a culture of inclusion. BusinessCloud calls the company Grasp HR and writes that it recommends which employees in large firms are best suited to connect, creating mentors from existing employees; he said that it gives employers better retention and makes employees happier.⁠[4][5]

TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry writes that the two met at a co-working space in London when Henry Costa was doing angel investing, and that he later asked Henry Costa to co-found his previous company with him. He has called Henry Costa “kind of my big brother, my best friend.”⁠[6][2]

Companies House records show that Grasp Ventures Limited was incorporated on July 26, 2016, with its nature of business registered as ready-made interactive leisure and entertainment software development and business and domestic software development; he and Henry Costa both became directors of the company on September 13, 2018.⁠[7][8]

BusinessCloud wrote in March 2020 that Grasp HR had raised over $5 million, led by FTSE 100 chief executives and angel investors, and had 10 full-time employees in its London office and around 30 people in total.⁠[5]

In 2020 he and Henry Costa founded Glorify, a Christian daily devotional app based in London. CBN News writes that Henry Costa is the son of the veteran investment banker and Christian leader Ken Costa. Bloomberg Línea writes that the two looked at meditation apps such as Calm and Headspace and asked why there was no equivalent for Christians; explaining why he started Glorify, he said that part of it was on “an emotional level and my own beliefs around faith.”⁠[9][10][2][6]

Companies House records show that TUPOE Ltd was incorporated on September 10, 2019, when Henry Costa became its director and secretary; he became a director of the company on March 9, 2020, and Ken Costa on November 2, 2020. Glorify’s terms of service state that TUPOE Ltd is a company incorporated in the United Kingdom that operates the Glorify brand.⁠[11][12][13]

InfoMoney writes that after launching in the United Kingdom and the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, Glorify entered Brazil in January 2021, and that Brazil went on to become its largest market. Bloomberg Línea writes that he had visited Brazil before the COVID-19 pandemic, found the faith there remarkable, and brought in major Brazilian influencers to promote the app.⁠[3][2]

On October 11, 2021 the high-performance coaching company Hintsa Performance announced in London that it had acquired Grasp. The release states that he was joining Hintsa Performance as a co-founder together with Annastiina Hintsa and had been appointed to its board of directors; it adds that he sat on the board of trustees of Reboot the Future and advised Dakia Global, that his apps were used by millions, and that he had raised over $50 million from well-known chief executives and investors. He said: “Bringing these learnings to millions of people around the world is incredibly exciting.”⁠[4]

Companies House records show that on September 24, 2021 he, Henry Costa and the other existing directors resigned as directors of Grasp Ventures Limited, and Annastiina Hintsa and Jyrki Lalla became directors on the same day. TechCrunch wrote in December 2021 that he had recently sold his previous company in what he described as a “multimillion-dollar” exit.⁠[8][6]

On December 2, 2021 Glorify announced a $40 million Series A led by Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z), with participation from SoftBankSoftBank GroupSoftBank Group (SoftBank Group Corp.) is an investment holding company headquartered in Tokyo, founded by Masayoshi Son in 1981. Starting out as a distributor of personal computer software, it moved into the internet, broadband and mobile communications, and has since become an investment group centered on AI-related assets such as Arm, the SoftBank Vision Funds and OpenAI.Open the full entry Latin America Fund and K5 Global and from individual investors including Kris Jenner, Corey Gamble, Michael OvitzMichael OvitzMichael Ovitz is an American Hollywood agent and businessman, a co-founder of the talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which he chaired from 1975 to 1995, and was once regarded as one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. He briefly served as President of The Walt Disney Company from 1995 to 1996, and his severance gave rise to shareholder litigation lasting nearly a decade; he later headed Artists Management Group and turned to technology investing and advisory work.Open the full entry, Michael Bublé, Jason DeruloJason DeruloJason Derulo (born September 21, 1989), born Jason Joel Desrouleaux, is an American singer, songwriter and dancer known for Whatcha Say, In My Head, Talk Dirty and Savage Love. He has also appeared in films, judged music and dance competitions, invested in businesses and supported the Just For You Foundation.Open the full entry and the founders of Candy Crush; BusinessCloud gives the round as £30 million. Connie Chan, a general partner at the lead investor Andreessen Horowitz, said that the Christian community “has historically been underserved by new technologies.” TechCrunch writes that Michael Kives, the founder of K5 Global, helped connect him with the celebrity investors. He said: “We always kept front of mind that we only really wanted to let people in if they shared our values.”⁠[9][14][6][15]

Glorify at this point was a subscription app that did not rely on advertising, offering guided meditations, audio Bible passages, Christian music, daily devotionals and prayers; basic users saw a daily quote, a short Bible passage and a devotional reading, a subscription cost $9.49 a month or $63.99 a year, and the app had 937 reviews on the Apple App Store with an average rating of 4.9. TechCrunch writes that the company was about two years old and had about 60 employees, that he was a co-founder and co-CEO, and that Henry Costa was the other co-CEO; he said that the app averaged at least 250,000 daily users and had about 2.5 million downloads over the past year or so. BusinessCloud put its users at about 1.8 million, and a Glorify post reproduced by CBN News put its community at over 1.8 million users. Asked whether the company was close to break-even, he said: “Definitely not, but it’s very intentional,” adding that it had proven paid conversion.⁠[6][15][14][10]

He said: “we’ve managed to capture lightning in a bottle,” and “I feel like I am constantly pinching myself.” He said the money would go mainly to hiring, user acquisition (including buying ad space) and product development, and that the plan was to make Glorify “a little more viral and shareable,” expand its prayer section so that users could more easily share and request prayers, and build “deep, tight-knit, meaningful communities.” He also said: “We’re trying to create a cultural movement around faith.” TechCrunch writes that he spent up to a third of his time in São Paulo.⁠[14][9][15][10][6]

On January 6, 2022 the Thiel Foundation announced its new class of 23 Thiel Fellows, and Edward Beccle was among them; the announcement lists him as 22 years old and from London, UK, with Glorify, a Christian daily worship app that helps users connect with God and their community, as his project. The announcement states that the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry was launched in 2011 and that each fellow receives $100,000 and mentorship over two years, with the only requirement being to pause college and focus fully on their work.⁠[16][16]

On March 8, 2022 Bloomberg Línea and InfoMoney wrote that Glorify had raised a $40 million Series B led by SoftBank Latin America Fund, bringing its total funding since its 2020 launch to $84.6 million, with no valuation disclosed; the money would go to the team, product development, more content and marketing. By then Glorify had launched in Spanish-speaking Latin America, and he called Brazil “a massive priority.” Forbes Argentina wrote on March 25 that Glorify operated in Mexico, Ecuador and Brazil.⁠[2][3][17]

Figures for the user base differ between sources: Bloomberg Línea writes that Glorify had 3.5 million Christian users, about 60% of them in Brazil, more than 2.2 million downloads in Brazil and almost 600,000 users in the previous 30 days alone; InfoMoney writes that the app had about 4 million downloads, 2.2 million of them from Brazil, with the United States next and the United Kingdom a small share, and that the company hoped to reach about 20 million downloads by the end of 2022, half of them in Brazil; Forbes Argentina writes that Glorify had more than 2.2 million users worldwide.⁠[2][3][17]

He said that Glorify offers subscription-based premium content but that he will never put profit above purpose: “If you can’t afford the app, we will give it to you for free,” and even users who can afford it get the majority of it free; his goal was hundreds of millions of users inside the app. Bloomberg Línea writes that Glorify did not need the money and that the Series B was all investor interest; he described the experience of finding investors as “a complete dream.”⁠[2]

Companies House records show that he resigned as a director of TUPOE Ltd on February 1, 2024; as of November 2026, the company’s registered current directors are Henry Costa, Ken Costa and Rebecca Stewart.⁠[12]

CBN News wrote on May 20, 2026 that Glorify was merging with Confidein, an artificial intelligence hardware and faith technology company, that the combined company would keep the name Glorify, and that its first product was the Glorify Ring, a Christian smart ring; the report states that the Glorify app had more than 25 million users and had been downloaded in more than 192 countries, and calls Henry Costa the founder of Glorify. As of November 2026, the press page of Glorify’s website lists an interview that describes Henry Costa as a co-founder of Glorify.⁠[18][19]

He went to school in Oxford. He has said that he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes while at school, which disrupted his schooling, and that he wanted to catch up through tutoring in the holidays without paying a high price for an older tutor. He recalled: “I had amazing friends at school but I didn’t enjoy the work.”⁠[5][4]

After the diagnosis he came up with the idea of connecting students with online tutors, which became the first version of Grasp; he said: “I didn’t need a 50-year-old professor to come and tutor me.” The Grasp Tutoring he planned was a cheaper secondary marketplace that would connect pupils with third-year university students.⁠[4][5]

He started his first business at 13: a website he built used bots to sell visitors YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry views and Instagram followers, and at its peak it made £100 a day. He said: “Most people my age have pretended to be a different age online,” and “I thought, if I could make a lot of money online, maybe I don’t have to be at school.” InfoMoney writes that he started his first business as a teenager and has kept founding and selling companies ever since.⁠[5][3]

After a few years of work, Grasp Tutoring was licensed to a Chinese edtech firm, and the sale allowed him to leave school. Accounts of his age at the time differ: BusinessCloud writes that he officially left at 18 but had mentally checked out at 16, and that his parents were shocked by his decision but in the end trusted his instinct; TechCrunch writes that he dropped out of high school at 16 to work on his startups; Bloomberg Línea writes that he was about 17 when he sold his first company, that he left school at that time without any high school qualifications, and that he did not go to university.⁠[5][6][2]

From the age of 18 he built a sales enablement platform with a multi-billion-dollar wholesaler, which he says supports hundreds of millions of dollars in sales across Europe. Hintsa Performance’s release lists among the businesses he founded a tutoring platform, sales enablement software and a Christian meditation app; InfoMoney calls Glorify his “quinta ou sexta” (fifth or sixth) company.⁠[5][4][3]

He has said that his faith has risen and fallen: “I’ve been in and out in my faith. It’s been going up and down.” He recalled being made to attend a church as a child whose music did not reach him: “When I was younger I went to a scary church with strange music that didn’t connect to me.” He also said that many forms of religious practice, such as choirs and going to church, did not create a connection for him, and that he wanted faith to be available every day on the phone.⁠[2][3]

He likens faith to a muscle that needs consistency and discipline: “A lot of my thinking started when I looked at my faith as a muscle, you have to give it consistency and discipline,” and argues that consistency is key in business and faith alike.⁠[2][3]

He has said that he already has enough money for anything a 22-year-old could want and that what he wants is to make something that helps people feel better, which he believes technology can do if it is used correctly; success, he says, has given him “the privilege of choosing how I spend my life and my time,” and he decided to build only businesses he is proud of: “I decided that I only wanted to build businesses that I felt I was truly proud of,” adding that too many people feel neutral about their work. He sees social media as negative, fuelling depression and comparison with others, while user experiences make those apps addictive, and wanted to give Christians a dedicated space like a social network without that negativity; he says he does not invest in any company that he does not think aligns with his values.⁠[3][2]

In 2020 he said that by the time he turned 30, a decade later, he hoped to be somewhere “we’ve impacted the entire world,” and that he was still working out whether to scale and run one big business or to start several companies and hand them off.⁠[5]

The Companies House director record under the name Edward Stephen Beccle gives his country of residence as Brazil and lists eight directorships; besides Grasp Ventures Limited and TUPOE Ltd, they are: Snack Chap Ltd and Instakilogram Ltd from May 15, 2017 (both since dissolved); TUPOE Brazil Ltd from November 3, 2020 (since dissolved); CGM ME Limited from April 6, 2023; Ed Squared Ltd from December 23, 2024; and Yhield Limited from May 14, 2025 (the last three companies are active).⁠[1]

Glorify: Official website: https://www.glorify.global/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

Hintsa Performance: Official website: https://www.hintsa.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[22]