4 ms·

"He should have INVESTIGATED it further" You mean something like speaking to two people who were at the meeting and confirming it with them prior to publishing

by bl4k 16y ago

"He should have INVESTIGATED it further" You mean something like speaking to two people who were at the meeting and confirming it with them prior to publishing? Good idea..

grovulent 16y ago
And these are competing VCs yeah? Because they would have no interest in making their competitors look bad? Absolutely it required further investigation than two barside chats... certainly before one starts throwing the muck which is pretty hard to wash off - innocent or not. Imagine it hypothetically - you meet with a few of your competitors to discuss some issues and a couple of them immediately turn to a report and lie and say that you're being evil. The reporter goes ahead and publishes these claims without even trying to independently check them, and without even asking you your side first (and Arrington gave no indication in his article that he did either of these things). Now, as per the hypothetical... how would you feel about it? Now I'm not saying these folks were lying - but the point is, how do we know?
- bl4k 16y ago
  You're right that we don't know, but as I mentioned above it was McClure's post that tipped me because it confirmed most of what happen (McClure even said 'it's not that your post is wrong'). I can imagine a scenario where the VCs discussed agreeing not to out-bid each other in deals and to work together without actively knowing that what they were doing could be seen as a problem by others. In the TC article, the issue at the core here only came up because on of the VC's "started feeling uncomftable". So it could turn out that they thought they were innocently discussing some of these points and were so caught up in themselves that nobody took a step back and analyzed the situation (which is why I think it was McClure - a relatively new 'vc' - was the person who tipped Arrington off and was the person who felt uncomfortable).

by bl4k 16y ago

"He should have INVESTIGATED it further" You mean something like speaking to two people who were at the meeting and confirming it with them prior to publishing? Good idea..

grovulent 16y ago

And these are competing VCs yeah? Because they would have no interest in making their competitors look bad? Absolutely it required further investigation than two barside chats... certainly before one starts throwing the muck which is pretty hard to wash off - innocent or not. Imagine it hypothetically - you meet with a few of your competitors to discuss some issues and a couple of them immediately turn to a report and lie and say that you're being evil. The reporter goes ahead and publishes these claims without even trying to independently check them, and without even asking you your side first (and Arrington gave no indication in his article that he did either of these things). Now, as per the hypothetical... how would you feel about it? Now I'm not saying these folks were lying - but the point is, how do we know?

bl4k 16y ago
You're right that we don't know, but as I mentioned above it was McClure's post that tipped me because it confirmed most of what happen (McClure even said 'it's not that your post is wrong'). I can imagine a scenario where the VCs discussed agreeing not to out-bid each other in deals and to work together without actively knowing that what they were doing could be seen as a problem by others. In the TC article, the issue at the core here only came up because on of the VC's "started feeling uncomftable". So it could turn out that they thought they were innocently discussing some of these points and were so caught up in themselves that nobody took a step back and analyzed the situation (which is why I think it was McClure - a relatively new 'vc' - was the person who tipped Arrington off and was the person who felt uncomfortable).