Is Michael Arrington About To Sell TechCrunch? | Hacker News Reader

Is Michael Arrington About To Sell TechCrunch?

sfgate.com

43 pointskgermino24 comments

Looks like someone out techcrunched techcrunch. Same citations of questionable sources, same wild speculations.

This is clearly marked as speculation in both the title and the body of the article.

It cites a fact from a totally non-questionable source (Arrington himself says he's moving) and then explores the potential implications, based on tax law and market analysis.

If we're allowed to speculate on HN, why can't SFGate speculate as well?

"One commenter on Y Combinator's Hacker News site makes an interesting point: ..."

Help, I've recursed and I can't get up.

Quick, find a base case.

If TC wrote it:

"There is no indication that Michael Arrington has entertained any actual offers to buy TechCrunch at this time, and in fact we don’t even have direct information that negotiations are taking place. But it’s clear that Michael Arrington is at least considering selling TechCrunch."

+1 for the uber TechCrunch style headline.

On a side note, I hate it when sites, such as SFGate, append the story URL when I copy the title. If a writer is honest they will give credit either way and if they're submitting to say HN the URL just makes problems. <End Rant>

The solution is to block tcr.tynt.com: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1299066

It's interesting that BI quotes our community. I've never seen that for Reddit or Digg in any "serious" publication.

Reddit has been quoted numerous times; the last one I remember was some FoxNews story.

Happy to be wrong :)

Edit: oh wait you said Fox.

Well you did put serious in quotes ;)

"... the last one I remember was some FoxNews story."

He said he's never seen it in a serious publication.

How does the tax thing work if you build the business while in CA, but get the capital gain while a resident of another state?

With US federal taxes, they actually tax you on the unrealized capital gain if you expatriate, but that's a much bigger change than changing state of residency within the US.

it has to do with California state taxes, if his residence moves to another state sale of assets will go to that state. And we know California has high state taxes he may try to avoid.

I dunno... Mike has been complaining for years that TC isn't any fun. I wouldn't blame him for selling.

techcrunch is not a business he can sell. He is too embedded in the site, all his scoops etc are due to his personal contacts. Face it, he is the face of techcrunch.

Pretty much all the scoops get posted by him. The other techcrunch writers tend to just summarize press releases, they don't do any actual investigative journalism.

I think this is just a case of Arrington making a personal choice not to get raped by California high property values.

Sure, I agree with all of that.

But the subtext here is the idea that no one with money in the tech industry makes poor or questionable purchasing decisions, and that's nowhere near true.

Moreover, techncrunch has a reasonably strong brand now, even if the site completely sold out, switched to a staff of faceless worker drones for content, etc, it'd probably still maintain a high level of traffic for several more years, perhaps more than enough to justify the investment of buying it.

Not that I know whether or not techcrunch is being bought, I'm just pointing to a hole in your logic.

Of course Mike can sell if he wants to. I can think of a bunch of media outlets who would love to swallow TC's traffic. The deal would just have to include a transition phase. As the article itself noted, Mike's involvement is already maybe half of what it was two years ago.

Think Microsoft and Bill Gates. 10 years ago, it was inconceivable for Bill Gates to ever leave Microsoft. And it happened without major trauma (meaning you can argue that Microsoft is not as good as they used to be, but it didn't tank overnight).

If Arrington did sell TechCrunch, how would that affect events like TechCrunch50? Would be interesting to see what he would go on to do next...

I wouldn't blame him. He's got a right to take profits.

Right, he didn't benefit at all from running his business in California for years. Why should he give back his fair share when he has the resources to dodge it?

I'll pay $5000 for it

Cool, California doesn't need the tax revenue anyway.

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