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He's in a good position to do this. Connections and fame aside, he has the perfect avenue to give exposure to the startups he invests in. I think this is critic

He's in a good position to do this. Connections and fame aside, he has the perfect avenue to give exposure to the startups he invests in. I think this is critical. Part of the reason why many tech startups "go big" is because they're given broad exposure and are shown in a good light from the beginning. For example, Y Combinator has Hacker News to promote their investments. I've said before that without HN you probably wouldn't hear about very many YC companies. (I think I said something along the lines of "you simply don't front-page stories about every YC company on Reddit.") Michael Arrington will have TechCrunch to promote his investments and I think he will be able to give them a good chance for success if he promotes them well. You might also say that Arrington has TechCrunch and Hacker News given how easily TC front-pages around here.

vaksel 15y ago
not really...the new Techcrunch is putting up a ton more stories...so the TC coverage won't be as useful, since it'll hit the 2nd page within a few hours.
- coderdude 15y ago
  It's true that they have a high volume of stories but those stories are: 1) Shown to a huge number of people. Their traffic, I'm sure, dwarfs HN's traffic. 2) They have an enormous amount of people subscribed via RSS who will be able to read the news at their leisure. 3) Their stories are also shared via Facebook, Google+, Twitter, you name it. 4) TC articles make their way to HN and Reddit as well, providing additional exposure. The second page of TechCrunch will still provide you with more than enough eye balls.
  - erikpukinskis 15y ago
    1) Shown to a huge number of people. Their traffic, I'm sure, dwarfs HN's traffic. This is definitely true. My startup was at the top of the front page on HN for a day or so (a year ago), and that sent us something like 1500 visits. The subsequent TechCrunch writeup garnered something around 5000.
    - andrewcooke 15y ago
      i wonder how that's changed since then, though? i guess both have got bigger, but what were the relative rates? i got 9k unique visitors on a front page blog post from hn last week, fwiw.
      - fedd 15y ago
        and i wonder which is the best day of week to post a show hn post? sorry for offtopic.
        andrewcooke 15y ago
        yeah, i wondered the same - that was a weekend, which i suspect is lower.
  - daniel_levine 15y ago
    Actually having worked at TC and gotten the HN numbers from pg, I can assure you this is not true. HN is very similarly sized to TC. I left TC before the Aol homepage which I'm sure is driving much more traffic, but HN has rocket-shipped and all without things like sharing features.
- jmjerlecki 15y ago
  It wouldn't be that difficult if he wanted to sticky a post.
dotBen 15y ago
Sure but that has conflict of interest all over it, and while Arrington can be as conflicted as he likes... ...a) people don't have to read TC and as the level of conflictedness for that site increases more and more people will stop reading it ...b) the conflict is at odds with Aol's wider aspiration to be a respected media outlet (Arriana Huffington, etc). At some point such 'exposure for self interest' will cross a line even Aol won't go - esp if they don't have some/any upside in the CrunchFund venture. The worse situation is that you end up with Arrington as an investor and TC can't write about you because Aol decides it really is too much of a conflict. And other outlets won't write about you or they give you shit because they still perceive Arrington as a competitor. Worst of both worlds.
- coderdude 15y ago
  I agree that he should be careful about the editorial conflict of interest issue. This is assuming he hasn't already cleared it with AOL. I do think that it is a conflict of interest, but in a similar sense that HN is run by YC and an inordinate amount of YC startup news is poured through here. I'm not saying that PG et al are causing this to happen directly, but it is not a coincidence. I think the point I'm trying to make here is that you can't scold Arrington without acknowledging that this already happens -- either directly or indirectly.
  - cube13 15y ago
    >...in a similar sense that HN is run by YC and an inordinate amount of YC startup news is poured through here. The difference being that YC doesn't try to hide it at all on HN. YC ads cannot be commented on, and YC related stories are(generally) noted in the titles. HN is essentially an advertising channel for both YC and YC funded companies. The problem is that Techcrunch has positioned itself as a news reporting site, not Michael Arrington's Super Startup Investment Blog(tm). So it should be held to a higher standard than YC, especially when it comes to investments. At the bare minimum, I think that Arrington should(assuming he doesn't leave TC to work on this) disclose his fund's involvement in anything that TC is covering. This goes not only for his personal articles, but anything that any TC reporter is covering.
immortalbeast 15y ago
Time to kiss Arrington's ass! haha
prostoalex 15y ago
I dunno http://www.chubbybrain.com/investors/jack-michael-arrington/investment-portfolio#axzz1SDBYFPJv http://www.chubbybrain.com/investors/jack-michael-arrington/...
Scrockett 15y ago
Agree/Disagree -- Agree that CrunchFund ("CF") would have a great avenue to promote its investments through TC, but I think doing so is unethical. On the other hand, I think YC operating HN is completely fine. Here's why: 1) YC's primary business is being an accelerator. This business preceded HN. HN compliments YC's primary business, but doesn't undermine or corrupt it. Conversely, TC's primary business is an online tech blog/journal (and is often a launching pad for startups). CF would undermine the primary business (i.e., TC) by calling into question the legitimacy of all pieces written about CF investments. 2) HN is a online community/news aggregator -- i.e., no original pieces (other than comments). TC is a group edited blog/journal that publishes original content. This means that TC can write opinion pieces to promote its investments, while YC can only post links to third party pieces about its investments. 3) TC has a much deeper reach than HN. Although HN is wildly popular in the tech community, people outside the tech community are generally ignorant to its existence. TC on the other hand, is the place that many "normals" go to get their tech news -- so a biased piece about a CF investment would reach a much broader audience than a biased piece posted to HN. When you combine these three factors, I think that TC having CF is unethical, but YC having HN is not.
- ignifero 15y ago
  4) HN doesn't make any money and is not advertised anywhere.
jaredmck 15y ago
Why do people think PR and coverage is so important? It's not at all obvious to me that techcrunch has anything to do with who actually succeeds, they really don't do real coverage of early stage startups- it's just PR Newswire plus trolling authors. Yet so many founders seem to think it's important and even worth hiring a PR firm to get into techcrunch and other similarly thin tech content farm blogs. That techcrunch nofollows all outbound links says enough about how they think about your startup, no matter how cool it may be.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
  PR and Coverage CAN BE very important. Everyone remember the Opera browser? Amazing little browser, fast, secure, first to implement quiet a few features. It was around before Firefox, before Safari, before Chrome, and as the other browsers grew in market share, Opera is still in last place. Why? My guess, lack of PR and coverage?

vaksel 15y ago

not really...the new Techcrunch is putting up a ton more stories...so the TC coverage won't be as useful, since it'll hit the 2nd page within a few hours.

coderdude 15y ago
It's true that they have a high volume of stories but those stories are: 1) Shown to a huge number of people. Their traffic, I'm sure, dwarfs HN's traffic. 2) They have an enormous amount of people subscribed via RSS who will be able to read the news at their leisure. 3) Their stories are also shared via Facebook, Google+, Twitter, you name it. 4) TC articles make their way to HN and Reddit as well, providing additional exposure. The second page of TechCrunch will still provide you with more than enough eye balls.
- erikpukinskis 15y ago
  1) Shown to a huge number of people. Their traffic, I'm sure, dwarfs HN's traffic. This is definitely true. My startup was at the top of the front page on HN for a day or so (a year ago), and that sent us something like 1500 visits. The subsequent TechCrunch writeup garnered something around 5000.
  - andrewcooke 15y ago
    i wonder how that's changed since then, though? i guess both have got bigger, but what were the relative rates? i got 9k unique visitors on a front page blog post from hn last week, fwiw.
    - fedd 15y ago
      and i wonder which is the best day of week to post a show hn post? sorry for offtopic.
      - andrewcooke 15y ago
        yeah, i wondered the same - that was a weekend, which i suspect is lower.
- daniel_levine 15y ago
  Actually having worked at TC and gotten the HN numbers from pg, I can assure you this is not true. HN is very similarly sized to TC. I left TC before the Aol homepage which I'm sure is driving much more traffic, but HN has rocket-shipped and all without things like sharing features.
jmjerlecki 15y ago
It wouldn't be that difficult if he wanted to sticky a post.

dotBen 15y ago

Sure but that has conflict of interest all over it, and while Arrington can be as conflicted as he likes... ...a) people don't have to read TC and as the level of conflictedness for that site increases more and more people will stop reading it ...b) the conflict is at odds with Aol's wider aspiration to be a respected media outlet (Arriana Huffington, etc). At some point such 'exposure for self interest' will cross a line even Aol won't go - esp if they don't have some/any upside in the CrunchFund venture. The worse situation is that you end up with Arrington as an investor and TC can't write about you because Aol decides it really is too much of a conflict. And other outlets won't write about you or they give you shit because they still perceive Arrington as a competitor. Worst of both worlds.

coderdude 15y ago
I agree that he should be careful about the editorial conflict of interest issue. This is assuming he hasn't already cleared it with AOL. I do think that it is a conflict of interest, but in a similar sense that HN is run by YC and an inordinate amount of YC startup news is poured through here. I'm not saying that PG et al are causing this to happen directly, but it is not a coincidence. I think the point I'm trying to make here is that you can't scold Arrington without acknowledging that this already happens -- either directly or indirectly.
- cube13 15y ago
  >...in a similar sense that HN is run by YC and an inordinate amount of YC startup news is poured through here. The difference being that YC doesn't try to hide it at all on HN. YC ads cannot be commented on, and YC related stories are(generally) noted in the titles. HN is essentially an advertising channel for both YC and YC funded companies. The problem is that Techcrunch has positioned itself as a news reporting site, not Michael Arrington's Super Startup Investment Blog(tm). So it should be held to a higher standard than YC, especially when it comes to investments. At the bare minimum, I think that Arrington should(assuming he doesn't leave TC to work on this) disclose his fund's involvement in anything that TC is covering. This goes not only for his personal articles, but anything that any TC reporter is covering.

immortalbeast 15y ago

Time to kiss Arrington's ass! haha

prostoalex 15y ago

I dunno http://www.chubbybrain.com/investors/jack-michael-arrington/investment-portfolio#axzz1SDBYFPJv http://www.chubbybrain.com/investors/jack-michael-arrington/...

Scrockett 15y ago

Agree/Disagree -- Agree that CrunchFund ("CF") would have a great avenue to promote its investments through TC, but I think doing so is unethical. On the other hand, I think YC operating HN is completely fine. Here's why: 1) YC's primary business is being an accelerator. This business preceded HN. HN compliments YC's primary business, but doesn't undermine or corrupt it. Conversely, TC's primary business is an online tech blog/journal (and is often a launching pad for startups). CF would undermine the primary business (i.e., TC) by calling into question the legitimacy of all pieces written about CF investments. 2) HN is a online community/news aggregator -- i.e., no original pieces (other than comments). TC is a group edited blog/journal that publishes original content. This means that TC can write opinion pieces to promote its investments, while YC can only post links to third party pieces about its investments. 3) TC has a much deeper reach than HN. Although HN is wildly popular in the tech community, people outside the tech community are generally ignorant to its existence. TC on the other hand, is the place that many "normals" go to get their tech news -- so a biased piece about a CF investment would reach a much broader audience than a biased piece posted to HN. When you combine these three factors, I think that TC having CF is unethical, but YC having HN is not.

ignifero 15y ago
4) HN doesn't make any money and is not advertised anywhere.

jaredmck 15y ago

Why do people think PR and coverage is so important? It's not at all obvious to me that techcrunch has anything to do with who actually succeeds, they really don't do real coverage of early stage startups- it's just PR Newswire plus trolling authors. Yet so many founders seem to think it's important and even worth hiring a PR firm to get into techcrunch and other similarly thin tech content farm blogs. That techcrunch nofollows all outbound links says enough about how they think about your startup, no matter how cool it may be.

ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
PR and Coverage CAN BE very important. Everyone remember the Opera browser? Amazing little browser, fast, secure, first to implement quiet a few features. It was around before Firefox, before Safari, before Chrome, and as the other browsers grew in market share, Opera is still in last place. Why? My guess, lack of PR and coverage?