8 ms·

The Real History of TechCrunch

356 points by zastrowm 9y ago

phaed 9y ago
Another scumbag advisor. Seeing that name is now a confimation the ICO is a scam.
huangc10 9y ago
Doing a quick search on the About TechCrunch page and TechCrunch wikipedia page for "Keith Teare" will yield no results. Another reason to do your due diligence when investing in ICOs.
- gojomo 9y ago
  And yet, a search of [site:techcrunch.com "by keith teare"] turns up lots of guest-writing, where the "editor's note" describes him as a "co-founder" of TechCrunch, as well as other news stories by other TC staffers regularly describing Teare with the same boilerplate. Teare may be intending to over-emphasize his role; Arrington may be resentful that Teare is touting his involvement this way. But for a long time, the TechCrunch site itself was happy to describe Teare as a "co-founder". So whatever the cause of the Arrington-Teare spat, it's not outlandish for Teare to be making the same claim in 2018 as appeared repeatedly at TechCrunch itself, since at least 2011 (<https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/12/archimedes-labs-launches-as-an-incubator-for-mobile-startups/> https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/12/archimedes-labs-launches-a...).
erikb 9y ago
This is a very important lesson for Michael Arrington and many people reading this can learn from it without losing too much emotions or money themselves: Someone, who claims this to be a cofounder of your business even once, is not your friend! Don't support their claims, don't pity them. They try to exploit you. This kind of person is really good at keeping you emotionally hooked, and therefore even let you find excuses for their behaviour. Think for yourself: Would you claim ownership over their pet project like that? Probably not. So be strict with yourself and let that person go. The earlier the better. They won't change. Your interpretation is not wrong. It's not your fault. And most importantly: You have earned and will find true friends that support you. And with them together you will make lots of money if you have that in you.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  Based on the comment below yours, it seems like a good way of lying to yourself. Not all situations call for what you are saying. Sometimes they are right and you are in the wrong, and you need to correct it. Not necessarily this situation, but many. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411597 We're really good at justifying our actions. Really, really good. I'd imagine Keith is on the other side of that, and correct or not, has talked himself into believing he's the good guy. But one of them has to be wrong, so the advice that "your interpretation is not wrong" is often wrong. Similar example: what Jobs did to Kottke in refusing to give him any stock, for valid reasons to Steve, certainly, doesn't mean Steve wasn't wrong. Would rather not say these things because it's not going to win friends, but you are encouraging destructive behavior yourself. There's no easy rule.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- gumby 9y ago
  Is the same true of Musk who was an A round investor in a company already founded by Eberhard and Tarpenning?
  - berberous 9y ago
    While not one of the original co-founders, Musk has devoted enormous amounts of time, money and energy into Tesla since nearly the beginning, which I think makes him close enough to a co-founder. If you read Arrington’s post, he even says the same about Heather —- not technically a co-founder but one in practice given the amount of work she put in. The guy he is calling out is alleged to have put zero time or money in — he just grabbed what he could.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      I had no idea until this thread that Elon Musk hadn't been with Tesla from the beginning. I presume reasonable people can disagree, but, no, I don't think leading someone's A round, even if you take an operational role at some point afterwards, makes you a "cofounder".
dpwm 9y ago
It does muddy the waters somewhat and allow for a claim that he is "credited as being part of" that he was listed as an editor on the about page. [0] In fairness to the author, he does point this out. If this individual really did do as is claimed and really did nothing other than try to stop TechCrunch's existence, it may seem to some a strange thing to continue to associate with such an individual. To have provided a link to the website of archimedes ventures [1] on the about page [0] where the author is listed alongside this individual as one of two "general partners" seems like a slightly surprising omission when covering the "real history." It seems that had archimedes ventures been more successful than TechCrunch has been, the author could have been able to have claimed to be a greater part of that than this article would suggest. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcrunch.com:80/?p=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcr... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archimedesventures.com:16080/?page_id=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archim...
- gkoberger 9y ago
  Meh. Put yourself in Arrington's 2005 shoes. When you're starting, nobody cares about you. He agreed to put someone on his crappy un-famous little blog to keep him happy... At the time, getting anyone to care was the hard part, not worrying about if a decade from now they'd use your reputation to scam people. I think Arrington did a great job of showing both sides of the story. Keith clearly was vaguely involved, and Arrington admitted he didn't care until it started being used to scam people. I think that's a fair line to put your foot down and write a blog post.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Regardless of what the legal structure was, it's pretty pathetic to keep calling yourself a "cofounder" when everyone knows you didn't do jack shit for the company. Kind of amusing because that's what that guy seems to be doing on a Twitter thread https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776 https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776
- ronilan 9y ago
  A little off topic but somehow related: Can a jack of all trades do jack shit? Just curious.
- ckastner 9y ago
  He's calling himself a "co-founding shareholder" though, which appears to be undisputed. (Not that weasel-wording is much better than outright lying.)
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
    That's because he's replying directly to Arrington. Would be hilarious if he kept insisting he's a "cofounder" on the same thread. But just do a google search and you'll see that the guy has been really capitalizing on the "TechCrunch Cofounder" brand for almost a decade now.
ktamura 9y ago
>As a final note, I want to add that if anyone was a “cofounder” of TechCrunch it was Heather Harde. She joined in 2006 but she was in the trenches with the team until the very end, working 20 hour days, sacrificing her personal life and giving everything she had to make the company what it was. Heather never sells herself like Keith does, but she should. Unlike Keith, she helped build that company, and gave way more value than she ever took. As someone who's also been an early employee, I totally see why Heather does NOT claim to be a co-founder. When you work your ass off alongside the founders, you learn two things: 1. Building a company is incredibly hard. 2. Nobody takes it harder than the founders. Yes, I have worked hard. In the last six years, I always worked parts of my weekend if not my vacations (which were few and far in between early on). I pulled off all nighters as well as a last minute trip straight from work to close a customer. I fell asleep on my laptop answering support questions. There were many nights of dry tears and waking up in cold sweat from nightmares that were all too real. But what I went through is a fraction of what the real founders went through. And I saw their ups and downs up close. Startups are hard. Incredibly hard, especially for those who has to lead the ship from Day One. Early, dedicated employees see this first hand, thinking to themselves, "Man, I thought I had a good/bad day, but they are probably having it better/worse". That's why we never claim to be the "founders".
- biztos 9y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but I call BS on the OP: 1. 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor. 2. Sacrificing your personal life for your employer is pathological, not heroic.
  - ktamura 9y ago
    I agree on both. Honestly, much of my long hours were due to my inexperience rather than supernatural productivity. If I were to do the same work with what I know now, I'd do it very differently with far fewer hours (probably). That said, the point OP was making is that in a startup origin story, there's a significant perception gap between those who actually moved the needle and those who claim to have done so. Those who actually drove the bus and those who rode it. Time and again, I've seen the latter people take advantage of the relative reticence of the former. It's probably more like, "relative to this guy who tried to kill my company early on and later claimed undue credit for its founding, this dedicated early employee surely seemed like she worked 20+ hour days and sacrificed everything for me."
telltruth 9y ago
This gets played out in all companies every day: You do something interesting in your spare time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit and soon enough he is the visionary leader while you get transformed in to dude doing engineering implementation of his ideas. Lot of big projects where you will see one of the executives or managers attached, the real work - including vision - is many times done by that engineer working away in his/her weekends. I know of at least two Ted talks (one from Google exec) where the real person having the idea and doing the work never ever gets even mentioned. Very recently this is exactly what happened my current job. I hate the guy who is nakedly and blatantly taking all the credit of my work. There is nothing I can do because he is favorite in the upper management chain. I don't even get to present my own work because he has convinced the upper management that I'm just an engineer and not good at executive-level presentations. Unlike Arrington, there is nothing I can do except leave the job but when I try that I get grilled through stupid CS questions. Meanwhile my manager was ironically featured in TechCrunch for all the work I did. The credit stealing by managers in tech world is huge huge huge problem.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > You do something interesting in your space time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit This is unfortunate, but not what happened here. Better analogy: you do something interesting; your roommate takes credit to hock junk securities.
  - telltruth 9y ago
    This is exactly what happened here. Keith Teare had 75% equity in Edgeio. So he was majority shareholder - similar power that managers have. He basically said he wanted to start N number of startups under the umbrella of Archimedes Labs. This meant that when Arrington accepted to become "co-founder" as minority shareholder, he implicitly accepted that whatever he does can be accounted as building new startup under Archimedes Labs. Keith then tries to get credit of all work done by him even though he had no contribution whatsoever. The difference is that Arrington can threaten legal action unlike usual employees. However things could have easily gone other way around. Arrington might have yielded in face of litigation and giving Keith 50% share, making him bonafide co-founder. One of the tactics people like Keith exploit is this: if you ever talked to him about what you are doing, his responses would be counted as "contribution" - even if they are complete nuance. For example, if Keith would have said "I don't think this would be successful, but do it anyway" then it gets counted as participating in vision exercise.
ggm 9y ago
I used to eulogize my role in the early internet because being one of ten thousand felt good. Now I keep quiet about it because I doubt I did much of value and none of it persists. The real work was done by people we all know and me and my fellow nine thousand mainly were early adopters with minor bug reports to our name. Work is work. It feels like some people prefer to mythologize their roots but I think deprecation is safer.
vidarh 9y ago
I won't say a huge deal about this, as I now work with Keith again, and haven't spoken to Mike for years, but I'm extremely surprised to see this version of events, as when I worked on Edgeio (I built the prototype, and managed the dev team for a while and continued to build the system) while Edgeio's and Techcrunch's offices were both in the house Mike rented in Atherton (Edgeio was largely built from the bedroom across from Mike's and the hall outside his room, while Techcrunch's office was his bedroom...), I got a very different impression from Mike in person. E.g. "started hanging out at my house and meetups" is a curious characterisation when Mike's house was literally the shared offices for both for quite a while. Mike at least once described Techcrunch to me as growing out of the work done to do research for Edgeio, and Archimedes Labs as a partnership between the two. Though it is possible for both that and Mike's version now to be true, my impression as someone who was there was always that both companies (Techcrunch and Edgeio) were shared projects, and Mike did nothing to dissuade that impression though it was clear Techcrunch was more Mike's baby than Keith's. Of course I was never privy to whatever discussions the two of them had behind closed doors. EDIT: Here [1] is an archive.org link from 2005, that lists Mike and Keith equally, on a post posted by the web designer who also did a lot of early work on Edgeio, describing them both as editors and Techcrunch as part of the "Archimedes Ventures" family. It was hard from that kind of presentation at the time to not see it as something they co-founded. I don't want to go into it further, as that'd be speculation on my side too (and of course what Mike let someone put on the site does not have to reflect what he thought about it in private) - I looked this up to see if there was anything to change my recollection: [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch.com:80/?page_id=120 https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch...
- dpwm 9y ago
  There's also a profile of Arrington in Wired from 2007 [0]. It also gives the impression that Techcrunch grew out of his personal research for new business models whilst he was working with "Arrington's longtime associate and mentor, Keith Teare." Just in case anyone thinks this was perhaps written without Arrington's knowledge, his blog post would suggest otherwise. [1] [0] https://www.wired.com/2007/06/ff-arrington/ https://www.wired.com/2007/06/ff-arrington/ [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070501222122/http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=386 https://web.archive.org/web/20070501222122/http://www.crunch... EDIT: Removed ambiguity regarding whose research.
swang 9y ago
Arrington deleted a whole bunch of tweets today seemingly about his worry that SEC is going after investors investing in... shady ICOs. anyone know what they said?
majani 9y ago
Two sides to every story. One thing that sticks out here is why Arrington of all people would easily cave and give 10% to someone who did "nothing."
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  TechCrunch was a tech blog which didn't require much "operation". The site was just a wordpress blog and the only work involved was probably blogging and some wordpress maintenance. This Keith guy never blogged, and this guy is no programmer. The best he can claim to be is an "investor", but you really have to be shameless to call yourself a "cofounder" when you really did nothing, and use that reputation everywhere you go, especially in this case to promote scam ICOs. Whether he deserves the 10% or not doesn't really matter. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. But you're not a "cofounder" if you did no work.
  - telltruth 9y ago
    TC is not just WordPress blog. There is a lot of leg work that happens to contact VCs, journalists, founders, conduct interviews, verify details etc. I bet 80% of the work that happens at TC is not-engineering. The fact that Arrington carried this entirely on his shoulder while Keith just stayed on sidelines is enough for him not getting credited for TC. However Keith claims on his LinkedIn profile that he advised Arlington and helped him to be successful even initially he did not believed in TC.
    - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
      Advisor is not a founder. The best he could call himself is a "TechCrunch advisor" or "TechCrunch early investor". There's a huge difference, especially when he's using that fake reputation to deceive naive people to invest in some scam ICOs.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      When techcrunch started it was just a WordPress blog. It quickly grew to much more than that, sure. > However Keith claims on his LinkedIn profile that he advised Arlington and helped him to be successful even initially he did not believed in TC. I've personally been present when Keith gave Mike advice about Techcrunch on more than one occasion (and I was only over about 1 week every 6 or so, so it'd be odd if I caught their only discussions), so while whether or not he did enough to justify calling himself co-founder is something I don't want to wade into as I simply don't know (and is trying to keep my personal opinions out of this when I don't have first hand knowledge), I for one was an eye witness to Keith advising Mike more than once (whether or not Mike took on that advice, or whether or not it was good advice, I don't want to try to assess).
waqasaday 9y ago
When starting a new company (esp without any compelling background), no one cares about their project. So founders often reach out/involve potential employees/advisors/supporters on the side line, and sometimes those name appears on incorporation document/contracts/rent agreement etc because founders were trying to get things off the ground. And they don’t want to screw up the newly built relationship to get going. Situation like these do not make someone a real co-founder.
birken 9y ago
It seems the one fact that nobody is disputing is that the guy in question owned 10% of Techcrunch. Generally people who own 10% of a company had significant involvement in it. Not always, there are always edge cases, but that is a good general rule. Maybe this is one of those edge cases. But claiming somebody who owns 10% of the company had literally nothing to do with the company is an extraordinary claim that I'd say requires extraordinary evidence. This blog post to me doesn't seem like extraordinary evidence. But really the conclusion of this saga is pretty irrelevant. If somebody is investing in any type of business because an advisor to that business may or may not have co-founded a tech blog 12 years ago... well they have bigger problems.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Let's say he really deserves the 10%. That doesn't make him a "cofounder". That only makes him a shareholder. If owning some shares in a company made you a cofounder, by that logic any angel investor or VC is a cofounder of ever single company they funded. And even if the law says you're technically a "cofounder", it's pathetic to call yourself that for a decade and use that false reputation for your personal gains if you didn't really do anything for the company.
  - birken 9y ago
    FWIW I never said anything about the guy deserving the title of co-founder or not. Arrington is claiming the guy had literally nothing to do with Techcrunch, which is directly at odds with the one piece of information we know: the guy owned 10% of Techcrunch. As for the co-founder title, my point is if you are investing in some business because an advisor is either a real co-founder or a fake co-founder of Techcrunch, you are making a stupid investment. And that goes for this guy or Arrington himself. And yes, it is pathetic if somebody is claiming a bunch of credit for something they didn't do. But it is also pathetic to give 10% of your business to somebody who did nothing (assuming the blog post is accurate). As a neutral observer I'm inclined to believe Arrington, but at the same time I don't think he made a very strong case and presented basically no impartial evidence. Frankly I think this blog post makes them both look bad.
dannyw 9y ago
Michael Arrington is named as an advisor to Nexo [1]. Is this connection legitimate? [1]: https://nexo.io/ https://nexo.io/
gumby 9y ago
I don't know anything about what might have actually happened or who said what back when, but FWIW when I first met Keith a few years ago (I only see him socially, not professionally) we talked about what each of us had done in the past and about TC all he said was words to the effect of "..and I was involved a bit when Techcrunch got going. Then I ...". The only reason this even stuck in my mind at all is my GF had earlier described him as having founded TC, so I noted what he said to correct my my understanding. Maybe other times he played his involvement up more, and maybe other times Arrington played it up more (as have been noted in these comments) but literally the only time Keith ever mentioned TC in my presence is completely consistent with what Arrington says in this blog entry "is what really happened".
TheCondor 9y ago
How does this actually matter? Various players either have stock and money from tc or they don’t. I’ve seen maybe a half dozen first hand examples of companies here in Colorado bootstrapping, getting some real funding, going through a big pivot and then having their history effectively rewritten. CEO and maybe a CTO are named “founders” and neither was involved in any capacity for the first 12-18 months. After a pivot and some branding, about the only original equipment is the name of the corporation and some legal paperwork, perhaps a couple employees. Engineers do this too, surely we’ve all witnessed a little “title inflation” on LinkedIn, I think it’s almost a disease with dissolved startups, I just assume someone gave themselves a bump when reading a resume with details from a completely nonexistent startup. “Founder” is funnier though, it’s one thing if you got payed, but it’s not like you’re claiming engineering experience. Seemed like a few years back at defcon and black hat, folks were getting twisted about “credit,” like Apple and MS, etc.. were going to give “Solar Ninja” credit for finding a security flaw they fixed in a service pack.
- zwily 9y ago
  The article explains exactly how it matters. Arrington didn’t care that much until people started asking him about his connections to various crypto ICOs.
  - TheCondor 9y ago
    But he has no connection to them. He can simply say that, he can throw the ico under the bus and recommend against doing business with them. He can do whatever. If the investors talk to the wrong founder, that’s not exactly helping the fundraising process, is it? Ethics matter, truth is real, I’m not justifying any sort of dishonesty but the difference between a real Co-founder that signed some articles of incorporation or something and an early employee that you gave 10% of the company to is kind of academic. If you have to make spurious claims to get your ico off the ground some investors will sniff it out, others won’t, that’s business. People “round up” on their resumes, it’s a known open secret, right?
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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gist 9y ago
> Ultimately Keith knew I could just walk away from it all and TechCrunch would lose all its value, so he relented and I agreed to pay Keith 10% of any value I received in the company eventually to avoid litigation. I know and have done business with Mike. That said the above sounds like Mike may have been using resources [1] of Edgeio and so essentially to avoid litigation Mike had to give Keith a cut of the action. So as a stretch Keith could claim that w/o those resources (pay, reimbursement, guidance and so on) Mike would never have been able to start Techcrunch. That doesn't make Keith a founder for sure. But then again (taking Keith's side of this not that I have any reason to do so at all) it doesn't seem entirely unjust that he got 10% of Techcrunch. He could probably rework the 'techcrunch' connection creatively to reflect this. Also nobody gives up 10% of a company in this circumstance (remember Arrington went to law school) unless they feel the other party has a leg to stand on and they stand to loose more. Generally of course. [1] "He asked me to work with him on Edgeio and possibly other companies he was to start. I agreed and began working with him.".."At the time I was working with Keith Teare on another project called Edgeio, a company that he founded"

356 points by zastrowm 9y ago

Another scumbag advisor. Seeing that name is now a confimation the ICO is a scam.

Doing a quick search on the About TechCrunch page and TechCrunch wikipedia page for "Keith Teare" will yield no results. Another reason to do your due diligence when investing in ICOs.

gojomo 9y ago
And yet, a search of [site:techcrunch.com "by keith teare"] turns up lots of guest-writing, where the "editor's note" describes him as a "co-founder" of TechCrunch, as well as other news stories by other TC staffers regularly describing Teare with the same boilerplate. Teare may be intending to over-emphasize his role; Arrington may be resentful that Teare is touting his involvement this way. But for a long time, the TechCrunch site itself was happy to describe Teare as a "co-founder". So whatever the cause of the Arrington-Teare spat, it's not outlandish for Teare to be making the same claim in 2018 as appeared repeatedly at TechCrunch itself, since at least 2011 (<https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/12/archimedes-labs-launches-as-an-incubator-for-mobile-startups/> https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/12/archimedes-labs-launches-a...).

erikb 9y ago

This is a very important lesson for Michael Arrington and many people reading this can learn from it without losing too much emotions or money themselves: Someone, who claims this to be a cofounder of your business even once, is not your friend! Don't support their claims, don't pity them. They try to exploit you. This kind of person is really good at keeping you emotionally hooked, and therefore even let you find excuses for their behaviour. Think for yourself: Would you claim ownership over their pet project like that? Probably not. So be strict with yourself and let that person go. The earlier the better. They won't change. Your interpretation is not wrong. It's not your fault. And most importantly: You have earned and will find true friends that support you. And with them together you will make lots of money if you have that in you.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
Based on the comment below yours, it seems like a good way of lying to yourself. Not all situations call for what you are saying. Sometimes they are right and you are in the wrong, and you need to correct it. Not necessarily this situation, but many. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16411597 We're really good at justifying our actions. Really, really good. I'd imagine Keith is on the other side of that, and correct or not, has talked himself into believing he's the good guy. But one of them has to be wrong, so the advice that "your interpretation is not wrong" is often wrong. Similar example: what Jobs did to Kottke in refusing to give him any stock, for valid reasons to Steve, certainly, doesn't mean Steve wasn't wrong. Would rather not say these things because it's not going to win friends, but you are encouraging destructive behavior yourself. There's no easy rule.
- deleted 9y ago
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gumby 9y ago
Is the same true of Musk who was an A round investor in a company already founded by Eberhard and Tarpenning?
- berberous 9y ago
  While not one of the original co-founders, Musk has devoted enormous amounts of time, money and energy into Tesla since nearly the beginning, which I think makes him close enough to a co-founder. If you read Arrington’s post, he even says the same about Heather —- not technically a co-founder but one in practice given the amount of work she put in. The guy he is calling out is alleged to have put zero time or money in — he just grabbed what he could.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I had no idea until this thread that Elon Musk hadn't been with Tesla from the beginning. I presume reasonable people can disagree, but, no, I don't think leading someone's A round, even if you take an operational role at some point afterwards, makes you a "cofounder".

dpwm 9y ago

It does muddy the waters somewhat and allow for a claim that he is "credited as being part of" that he was listed as an editor on the about page. [0] In fairness to the author, he does point this out. If this individual really did do as is claimed and really did nothing other than try to stop TechCrunch's existence, it may seem to some a strange thing to continue to associate with such an individual. To have provided a link to the website of archimedes ventures [1] on the about page [0] where the author is listed alongside this individual as one of two "general partners" seems like a slightly surprising omission when covering the "real history." It seems that had archimedes ventures been more successful than TechCrunch has been, the author could have been able to have claimed to be a greater part of that than this article would suggest. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcrunch.com:80/?p=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcr... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archimedesventures.com:16080/?page_id=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archim...

gkoberger 9y ago
Meh. Put yourself in Arrington's 2005 shoes. When you're starting, nobody cares about you. He agreed to put someone on his crappy un-famous little blog to keep him happy... At the time, getting anyone to care was the hard part, not worrying about if a decade from now they'd use your reputation to scam people. I think Arrington did a great job of showing both sides of the story. Keith clearly was vaguely involved, and Arrington admitted he didn't care until it started being used to scam people. I think that's a fair line to put your foot down and write a blog post.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

Regardless of what the legal structure was, it's pretty pathetic to keep calling yourself a "cofounder" when everyone knows you didn't do jack shit for the company. Kind of amusing because that's what that guy seems to be doing on a Twitter thread https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776 https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776

ronilan 9y ago
A little off topic but somehow related: Can a jack of all trades do jack shit? Just curious.
ckastner 9y ago
He's calling himself a "co-founding shareholder" though, which appears to be undisputed. (Not that weasel-wording is much better than outright lying.)
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  That's because he's replying directly to Arrington. Would be hilarious if he kept insisting he's a "cofounder" on the same thread. But just do a google search and you'll see that the guy has been really capitalizing on the "TechCrunch Cofounder" brand for almost a decade now.

ktamura 9y ago

>As a final note, I want to add that if anyone was a “cofounder” of TechCrunch it was Heather Harde. She joined in 2006 but she was in the trenches with the team until the very end, working 20 hour days, sacrificing her personal life and giving everything she had to make the company what it was. Heather never sells herself like Keith does, but she should. Unlike Keith, she helped build that company, and gave way more value than she ever took. As someone who's also been an early employee, I totally see why Heather does NOT claim to be a co-founder. When you work your ass off alongside the founders, you learn two things: 1. Building a company is incredibly hard. 2. Nobody takes it harder than the founders. Yes, I have worked hard. In the last six years, I always worked parts of my weekend if not my vacations (which were few and far in between early on). I pulled off all nighters as well as a last minute trip straight from work to close a customer. I fell asleep on my laptop answering support questions. There were many nights of dry tears and waking up in cold sweat from nightmares that were all too real. But what I went through is a fraction of what the real founders went through. And I saw their ups and downs up close. Startups are hard. Incredibly hard, especially for those who has to lead the ship from Day One. Early, dedicated employees see this first hand, thinking to themselves, "Man, I thought I had a good/bad day, but they are probably having it better/worse". That's why we never claim to be the "founders".

biztos 9y ago
I don't disagree with you, but I call BS on the OP: 1. 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor. 2. Sacrificing your personal life for your employer is pathological, not heroic.
- ktamura 9y ago
  I agree on both. Honestly, much of my long hours were due to my inexperience rather than supernatural productivity. If I were to do the same work with what I know now, I'd do it very differently with far fewer hours (probably). That said, the point OP was making is that in a startup origin story, there's a significant perception gap between those who actually moved the needle and those who claim to have done so. Those who actually drove the bus and those who rode it. Time and again, I've seen the latter people take advantage of the relative reticence of the former. It's probably more like, "relative to this guy who tried to kill my company early on and later claimed undue credit for its founding, this dedicated early employee surely seemed like she worked 20+ hour days and sacrificed everything for me."

telltruth 9y ago

This gets played out in all companies every day: You do something interesting in your spare time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit and soon enough he is the visionary leader while you get transformed in to dude doing engineering implementation of his ideas. Lot of big projects where you will see one of the executives or managers attached, the real work - including vision - is many times done by that engineer working away in his/her weekends. I know of at least two Ted talks (one from Google exec) where the real person having the idea and doing the work never ever gets even mentioned. Very recently this is exactly what happened my current job. I hate the guy who is nakedly and blatantly taking all the credit of my work. There is nothing I can do because he is favorite in the upper management chain. I don't even get to present my own work because he has convinced the upper management that I'm just an engineer and not good at executive-level presentations. Unlike Arrington, there is nothing I can do except leave the job but when I try that I get grilled through stupid CS questions. Meanwhile my manager was ironically featured in TechCrunch for all the work I did. The credit stealing by managers in tech world is huge huge huge problem.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> You do something interesting in your space time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit This is unfortunate, but not what happened here. Better analogy: you do something interesting; your roommate takes credit to hock junk securities.
- telltruth 9y ago
  This is exactly what happened here. Keith Teare had 75% equity in Edgeio. So he was majority shareholder - similar power that managers have. He basically said he wanted to start N number of startups under the umbrella of Archimedes Labs. This meant that when Arrington accepted to become "co-founder" as minority shareholder, he implicitly accepted that whatever he does can be accounted as building new startup under Archimedes Labs. Keith then tries to get credit of all work done by him even though he had no contribution whatsoever. The difference is that Arrington can threaten legal action unlike usual employees. However things could have easily gone other way around. Arrington might have yielded in face of litigation and giving Keith 50% share, making him bonafide co-founder. One of the tactics people like Keith exploit is this: if you ever talked to him about what you are doing, his responses would be counted as "contribution" - even if they are complete nuance. For example, if Keith would have said "I don't think this would be successful, but do it anyway" then it gets counted as participating in vision exercise.

ggm 9y ago

I used to eulogize my role in the early internet because being one of ten thousand felt good. Now I keep quiet about it because I doubt I did much of value and none of it persists. The real work was done by people we all know and me and my fellow nine thousand mainly were early adopters with minor bug reports to our name. Work is work. It feels like some people prefer to mythologize their roots but I think deprecation is safer.

vidarh 9y ago

I won't say a huge deal about this, as I now work with Keith again, and haven't spoken to Mike for years, but I'm extremely surprised to see this version of events, as when I worked on Edgeio (I built the prototype, and managed the dev team for a while and continued to build the system) while Edgeio's and Techcrunch's offices were both in the house Mike rented in Atherton (Edgeio was largely built from the bedroom across from Mike's and the hall outside his room, while Techcrunch's office was his bedroom...), I got a very different impression from Mike in person. E.g. "started hanging out at my house and meetups" is a curious characterisation when Mike's house was literally the shared offices for both for quite a while. Mike at least once described Techcrunch to me as growing out of the work done to do research for Edgeio, and Archimedes Labs as a partnership between the two. Though it is possible for both that and Mike's version now to be true, my impression as someone who was there was always that both companies (Techcrunch and Edgeio) were shared projects, and Mike did nothing to dissuade that impression though it was clear Techcrunch was more Mike's baby than Keith's. Of course I was never privy to whatever discussions the two of them had behind closed doors. EDIT: Here [1] is an archive.org link from 2005, that lists Mike and Keith equally, on a post posted by the web designer who also did a lot of early work on Edgeio, describing them both as editors and Techcrunch as part of the "Archimedes Ventures" family. It was hard from that kind of presentation at the time to not see it as something they co-founded. I don't want to go into it further, as that'd be speculation on my side too (and of course what Mike let someone put on the site does not have to reflect what he thought about it in private) - I looked this up to see if there was anything to change my recollection: [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch.com:80/?page_id=120 https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch...

dpwm 9y ago
There's also a profile of Arrington in Wired from 2007 [0]. It also gives the impression that Techcrunch grew out of his personal research for new business models whilst he was working with "Arrington's longtime associate and mentor, Keith Teare." Just in case anyone thinks this was perhaps written without Arrington's knowledge, his blog post would suggest otherwise. [1] [0] https://www.wired.com/2007/06/ff-arrington/ https://www.wired.com/2007/06/ff-arrington/ [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070501222122/http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=386 https://web.archive.org/web/20070501222122/http://www.crunch... EDIT: Removed ambiguity regarding whose research.

swang 9y ago

Arrington deleted a whole bunch of tweets today seemingly about his worry that SEC is going after investors investing in... shady ICOs. anyone know what they said?

majani 9y ago

Two sides to every story. One thing that sticks out here is why Arrington of all people would easily cave and give 10% to someone who did "nothing."

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
TechCrunch was a tech blog which didn't require much "operation". The site was just a wordpress blog and the only work involved was probably blogging and some wordpress maintenance. This Keith guy never blogged, and this guy is no programmer. The best he can claim to be is an "investor", but you really have to be shameless to call yourself a "cofounder" when you really did nothing, and use that reputation everywhere you go, especially in this case to promote scam ICOs. Whether he deserves the 10% or not doesn't really matter. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. But you're not a "cofounder" if you did no work.
- telltruth 9y ago
  TC is not just WordPress blog. There is a lot of leg work that happens to contact VCs, journalists, founders, conduct interviews, verify details etc. I bet 80% of the work that happens at TC is not-engineering. The fact that Arrington carried this entirely on his shoulder while Keith just stayed on sidelines is enough for him not getting credited for TC. However Keith claims on his LinkedIn profile that he advised Arlington and helped him to be successful even initially he did not believed in TC.
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
    Advisor is not a founder. The best he could call himself is a "TechCrunch advisor" or "TechCrunch early investor". There's a huge difference, especially when he's using that fake reputation to deceive naive people to invest in some scam ICOs.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    When techcrunch started it was just a WordPress blog. It quickly grew to much more than that, sure. > However Keith claims on his LinkedIn profile that he advised Arlington and helped him to be successful even initially he did not believed in TC. I've personally been present when Keith gave Mike advice about Techcrunch on more than one occasion (and I was only over about 1 week every 6 or so, so it'd be odd if I caught their only discussions), so while whether or not he did enough to justify calling himself co-founder is something I don't want to wade into as I simply don't know (and is trying to keep my personal opinions out of this when I don't have first hand knowledge), I for one was an eye witness to Keith advising Mike more than once (whether or not Mike took on that advice, or whether or not it was good advice, I don't want to try to assess).

waqasaday 9y ago

When starting a new company (esp without any compelling background), no one cares about their project. So founders often reach out/involve potential employees/advisors/supporters on the side line, and sometimes those name appears on incorporation document/contracts/rent agreement etc because founders were trying to get things off the ground. And they don’t want to screw up the newly built relationship to get going. Situation like these do not make someone a real co-founder.

birken 9y ago

It seems the one fact that nobody is disputing is that the guy in question owned 10% of Techcrunch. Generally people who own 10% of a company had significant involvement in it. Not always, there are always edge cases, but that is a good general rule. Maybe this is one of those edge cases. But claiming somebody who owns 10% of the company had literally nothing to do with the company is an extraordinary claim that I'd say requires extraordinary evidence. This blog post to me doesn't seem like extraordinary evidence. But really the conclusion of this saga is pretty irrelevant. If somebody is investing in any type of business because an advisor to that business may or may not have co-founded a tech blog 12 years ago... well they have bigger problems.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Let's say he really deserves the 10%. That doesn't make him a "cofounder". That only makes him a shareholder. If owning some shares in a company made you a cofounder, by that logic any angel investor or VC is a cofounder of ever single company they funded. And even if the law says you're technically a "cofounder", it's pathetic to call yourself that for a decade and use that false reputation for your personal gains if you didn't really do anything for the company.
- birken 9y ago
  FWIW I never said anything about the guy deserving the title of co-founder or not. Arrington is claiming the guy had literally nothing to do with Techcrunch, which is directly at odds with the one piece of information we know: the guy owned 10% of Techcrunch. As for the co-founder title, my point is if you are investing in some business because an advisor is either a real co-founder or a fake co-founder of Techcrunch, you are making a stupid investment. And that goes for this guy or Arrington himself. And yes, it is pathetic if somebody is claiming a bunch of credit for something they didn't do. But it is also pathetic to give 10% of your business to somebody who did nothing (assuming the blog post is accurate). As a neutral observer I'm inclined to believe Arrington, but at the same time I don't think he made a very strong case and presented basically no impartial evidence. Frankly I think this blog post makes them both look bad.

dannyw 9y ago

Michael Arrington is named as an advisor to Nexo [1]. Is this connection legitimate? [1]: https://nexo.io/ https://nexo.io/

gumby 9y ago

I don't know anything about what might have actually happened or who said what back when, but FWIW when I first met Keith a few years ago (I only see him socially, not professionally) we talked about what each of us had done in the past and about TC all he said was words to the effect of "..and I was involved a bit when Techcrunch got going. Then I ...". The only reason this even stuck in my mind at all is my GF had earlier described him as having founded TC, so I noted what he said to correct my my understanding. Maybe other times he played his involvement up more, and maybe other times Arrington played it up more (as have been noted in these comments) but literally the only time Keith ever mentioned TC in my presence is completely consistent with what Arrington says in this blog entry "is what really happened".

TheCondor 9y ago

How does this actually matter? Various players either have stock and money from tc or they don’t. I’ve seen maybe a half dozen first hand examples of companies here in Colorado bootstrapping, getting some real funding, going through a big pivot and then having their history effectively rewritten. CEO and maybe a CTO are named “founders” and neither was involved in any capacity for the first 12-18 months. After a pivot and some branding, about the only original equipment is the name of the corporation and some legal paperwork, perhaps a couple employees. Engineers do this too, surely we’ve all witnessed a little “title inflation” on LinkedIn, I think it’s almost a disease with dissolved startups, I just assume someone gave themselves a bump when reading a resume with details from a completely nonexistent startup. “Founder” is funnier though, it’s one thing if you got payed, but it’s not like you’re claiming engineering experience. Seemed like a few years back at defcon and black hat, folks were getting twisted about “credit,” like Apple and MS, etc.. were going to give “Solar Ninja” credit for finding a security flaw they fixed in a service pack.

zwily 9y ago
The article explains exactly how it matters. Arrington didn’t care that much until people started asking him about his connections to various crypto ICOs.
- TheCondor 9y ago
  But he has no connection to them. He can simply say that, he can throw the ico under the bus and recommend against doing business with them. He can do whatever. If the investors talk to the wrong founder, that’s not exactly helping the fundraising process, is it? Ethics matter, truth is real, I’m not justifying any sort of dishonesty but the difference between a real Co-founder that signed some articles of incorporation or something and an early employee that you gave 10% of the company to is kind of academic. If you have to make spurious claims to get your ico off the ground some investors will sniff it out, others won’t, that’s business. People “round up” on their resumes, it’s a known open secret, right?

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gist 9y ago

> Ultimately Keith knew I could just walk away from it all and TechCrunch would lose all its value, so he relented and I agreed to pay Keith 10% of any value I received in the company eventually to avoid litigation. I know and have done business with Mike. That said the above sounds like Mike may have been using resources [1] of Edgeio and so essentially to avoid litigation Mike had to give Keith a cut of the action. So as a stretch Keith could claim that w/o those resources (pay, reimbursement, guidance and so on) Mike would never have been able to start Techcrunch. That doesn't make Keith a founder for sure. But then again (taking Keith's side of this not that I have any reason to do so at all) it doesn't seem entirely unjust that he got 10% of Techcrunch. He could probably rework the 'techcrunch' connection creatively to reflect this. Also nobody gives up 10% of a company in this circumstance (remember Arrington went to law school) unless they feel the other party has a leg to stand on and they stand to loose more. Generally of course. [1] "He asked me to work with him on Edgeio and possibly other companies he was to start. I agreed and began working with him.".."At the time I was working with Keith Teare on another project called Edgeio, a company that he founded"