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Arrington has spat in the face of many startups and blogs, metaphorically speaking, and the most successful business people in general are ruthless. This doesn'

Arrington has spat in the face of many startups and blogs, metaphorically speaking, and the most successful business people in general are ruthless. This doesn't excuse the literal spitting behaviour, but Techcrunch is a blog with way too much power, for better or worse depending on the way you look at it.

pclark 18y ago
why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review? There's a perfect example of this THIS WEEK! Arrington has been ripping into Cha Cha for years, and they just got a massive funding round.
- adrianwaj 18y ago
  "why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review?" Who says they're not! When's the last time TC linked to another blog in a post. Hat tips etc.?
  - pclark 18y ago
    they link to venture beat, scobelizer, sillicon alley insider quite a lot, I think.
    - adrianwaj 18y ago
      Arrington thinks he owns the internet. I don't hold it against him, I don't hate him in the slightest. You have to have balls to put up with the stuff he cops.
- froo 18y ago
  Just because ChaCha got funding, doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. I've never used it before, so I decided to give both it, Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Ask.com the same search phrase in response to this comment and see what the results are. What is the speed of light? - I felt a simple enough question. Google took just 0.11 seconds to give me an exact answer. Yahoo took 0.28 seconds Live Search has no timer, but it was much less than 1 second, I assume around the same speed as Yahoo Ask.com no timer, but same perceived speed as both Yahoo and Live Search Finally, I tried asking the question to ChaCha, I asked it around 4:16pm, it asked me to sign up, so I did, went through the signup process, confirmed my email address - now its sending me through an SMS to confirm my mobile.. EDIT - it's now 4:25pm, still no SMS on my mobile phone from ChaCha.. I think its fair to say that comparing 10 minutes to 0.11 seconds is a pretty clear indicator why human search isn't a good idea. Even if you take out the signup stage, human reaction time can't even compete with 0.11 seconds and that doesn't begin to factor in things like time it takes to read the question. EDIT #2 - 5:06pm, still no SMS...
  - pclark 18y ago
    it's a bad idea, it's poorly executed, TC gave it a bad review, and it still got funding. It's so weird for people to base VC investments purely on "the team" -- I've always figured (as I gradully ramp my startup to my full time job) -- its great to have a great team -- and you know what else helps? having a fucking awesome idea.
    - RiderOfGiraffes 18y ago
      I respectfully disagree in the detail of what you say. It's essential to have a great team. It's good to have an awesome idea, but if you have a great team then the ideas will come, and even if this one won't work, the next one probably will. VCs need to work with the team, need to have faith in the team, and need to have a sense that the ideas will come. The current idea is a good start, and an indication, but in the grander scheme of things, it's the team that reall counts. They're the ones that will make things work. A good team with an awesome idea is not investable. An awesome team with a good idea, is.
      - gravitycop 18y ago
        It's good to have an awesome idea, but if you have a great team then the ideas will come David Hornik (August Capital; Ventureblog) basically says this also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwY0ac5XI_0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwY0ac5XI_0 And, the truth is, A teams usually don't have B or C ideas, because they recognize, "Gee. We're looking at this thing. It's an interesting market. We have an idea. A particular approach." And, maybe it's an A-minus idea. Maybe you say, "Well, I'm not sure how that's going to evolve, but it'll probably evolve in an interesting way with this team," then I'm happy to invest and see how it goes, because, historically what's happened is they've figured out that there was some other twist, or there was a better market, or there was a better way to get to a group of people. And so I would always start with the people, first.
      - pclark 18y ago
        of course, sorry - by great I meant "mind blowingly great" :) Maybe I'm biased because I have no previous ventures and VC mildly interests me :)

pclark 18y ago

why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review? There's a perfect example of this THIS WEEK! Arrington has been ripping into Cha Cha for years, and they just got a massive funding round.

adrianwaj 18y ago
"why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review?" Who says they're not! When's the last time TC linked to another blog in a post. Hat tips etc.?
- pclark 18y ago
  they link to venture beat, scobelizer, sillicon alley insider quite a lot, I think.
  - adrianwaj 18y ago
    Arrington thinks he owns the internet. I don't hold it against him, I don't hate him in the slightest. You have to have balls to put up with the stuff he cops.
froo 18y ago
Just because ChaCha got funding, doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. I've never used it before, so I decided to give both it, Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Ask.com the same search phrase in response to this comment and see what the results are. What is the speed of light? - I felt a simple enough question. Google took just 0.11 seconds to give me an exact answer. Yahoo took 0.28 seconds Live Search has no timer, but it was much less than 1 second, I assume around the same speed as Yahoo Ask.com no timer, but same perceived speed as both Yahoo and Live Search Finally, I tried asking the question to ChaCha, I asked it around 4:16pm, it asked me to sign up, so I did, went through the signup process, confirmed my email address - now its sending me through an SMS to confirm my mobile.. EDIT - it's now 4:25pm, still no SMS on my mobile phone from ChaCha.. I think its fair to say that comparing 10 minutes to 0.11 seconds is a pretty clear indicator why human search isn't a good idea. Even if you take out the signup stage, human reaction time can't even compete with 0.11 seconds and that doesn't begin to factor in things like time it takes to read the question. EDIT #2 - 5:06pm, still no SMS...
- pclark 18y ago
  it's a bad idea, it's poorly executed, TC gave it a bad review, and it still got funding. It's so weird for people to base VC investments purely on "the team" -- I've always figured (as I gradully ramp my startup to my full time job) -- its great to have a great team -- and you know what else helps? having a fucking awesome idea.
  - RiderOfGiraffes 18y ago
    I respectfully disagree in the detail of what you say. It's essential to have a great team. It's good to have an awesome idea, but if you have a great team then the ideas will come, and even if this one won't work, the next one probably will. VCs need to work with the team, need to have faith in the team, and need to have a sense that the ideas will come. The current idea is a good start, and an indication, but in the grander scheme of things, it's the team that reall counts. They're the ones that will make things work. A good team with an awesome idea is not investable. An awesome team with a good idea, is.
    - gravitycop 18y ago
      It's good to have an awesome idea, but if you have a great team then the ideas will come David Hornik (August Capital; Ventureblog) basically says this also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwY0ac5XI_0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwY0ac5XI_0 And, the truth is, A teams usually don't have B or C ideas, because they recognize, "Gee. We're looking at this thing. It's an interesting market. We have an idea. A particular approach." And, maybe it's an A-minus idea. Maybe you say, "Well, I'm not sure how that's going to evolve, but it'll probably evolve in an interesting way with this team," then I'm happy to invest and see how it goes, because, historically what's happened is they've figured out that there was some other twist, or there was a better market, or there was a better way to get to a group of people. And so I would always start with the people, first.
    - pclark 18y ago
      of course, sorry - by great I meant "mind blowingly great" :) Maybe I'm biased because I have no previous ventures and VC mildly interests me :)