Finger-Pointing, Emails, Deleted Tweets, Rage. AngelGate Is Far From Over | Hacker News Reader

Finger-Pointing, Emails, Deleted Tweets, Rage. AngelGate Is Far From Over

techcrunch.com

118 pointsdwynings46 comments

What kind of self-respecting conspiracy that aims to subvert the startup world with collusion among major players discuss their doings over twitter? Someone please buy these guys a copy of Cryptonomicon.

A copy of the Penal Code (or whatever the US equivalent is, you know the big book of laws and especially punishments) is supposedly a much better motivation. Not that I would know.

A Silicon Valley angel conspiracy without Ron Conway isn't really much of a conspiracy.

The opening panel at Techcrunch Disrupt on Monday 27th is going to be a must see:

9:40-10:10 Super Angels To Super VCs: The Changing Face Of Venture Capital: Ron Conway (SV Angel), Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital), Dave McClure (500 Startups), Roelof Botha (Sequoia), Chris Dixon (Founder Collective)

http://disrupt.techcrunch.com/2010-sf/agenda/

Could someone give me the TL,DR; for all of this AngelGate business? I've been trying to find good information on what is going on and what has happened so far but I am finding it hard to listen to the signal through all of the noise.

started with this article.. http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/so-a-blogger-walks-into-a-b...

followed up by this http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/09/fire-in-the-vall...

look through this quora topic you can find out more http://www.quora.com/AngelGate

Arrington and other people involved in venture donations for possibly successful non-businesses are all drama queens.

As always, you're better off if you run a business and don't pursue funding from anybody except profits.

The gist is a few sentences. There really isn't much to the core of the story yet.

TL;DR: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is tipped off a bunch of top Angels are meeting in a bar, but he isn't welcome. He drops by since he knows them, but is met with guilty silence. Upon digging he is told the Angels are meeting to (illegally?) resolve complaints like the growing power of YC, and restraining new Angels/deal competition. Dave McClure is the first Angel to publicly counter Arrington writing that he is off base.

Okay, so everything I found was the whole story.

From the flinging of poop in various directions I take it that Arrington's story may have had some truth to it after all.

Seems like there's at least been some meetings, but I can't help but drench anything Arrington "digs" up with some hoisin sauce.

I wouldn't extrapolate the subjects of the meetings without some hard facts.

Ones that didn't come from TC or people who stand to benefit from "SuperAngels" getting embarrassed/investigated.

I read that as "Tweets of Rage" which I thought summed up the whole impotent fury of the internet beautifully. Make a good band name though

If I could upvote you more than once I would. Thank you. The mention of "deleted tweets" in the article title made me laugh outright.

The silence from Calacanis on this subject is deafening.

EDIT - Per 146's comment below Calacanis already comments & denies. Better educating myself on Twitter search now.

If he had anything to do with it, it'd be the ultimate FAIL for someone who has always claimed to be looking out for that struggling entrepreneur.

Hopefully he's clean.

I'm not important enough to be invited to collaborate on collusion. :-)

Also, these reports were probably all wildly exaggerated or blatantly fabricated by Mike Arrington--which is his best reporting technique!

Calacanis has already publicly denied being at the meeting:

http://twitter.com/#!/Jason/status/25165977135

> No, I was not at the "super angel summit," and I would never be pro collusion. Sounds like @arrington is stirring the pot to get pageviews

JC said he was going to talk about it on This Week in Startups, even discussing it in the intro - but then said nothing. I scanned the transcript and only found the intro bit, there might be something vague elsewhere, but I don't see it.

"Additionally we’ll be talking about Michael Arrington’s ‘AngelGate’, fact or fiction. And we’re going to tell you how you can come to The Launch Conference, that’s my version of TechCrunch 50, on February 23-24, 2011. All this and more on today’s This Week In Startups."

http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/this-week-in-start...

I've gotta say, that tweet does look scripted. You think he'd be a bit careful about that sort of info.

People said that about the iPhone leak over at Gizmodo. A brilliant piece of PR for Apple they said. Then the police got involved...

I don't think the whole thing is 'planned' / scripted, I was referring to just that tweet.

I was referring to just that tweet. It doesn't benefit him in the least and makes him look like a fidiot.

After reading the email, I'm inclined to believe you, sorry about that!

That seems pretty far-fetched. What on earth would he gain from intentionally posting that tweet? Mike cut them some slack by not naming any names, and now he's done just that.

I'm leaning more toward the "not the brightest bulb in the valley" theory.

Yeah, I agree after reading the email. Check this: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/ron-conway-angel-email/ to anyone that hasn't read it.

Considering the way he writes, I don't know. Seems like a fast-talking, shoot-from-the hip kind of guy who could easily make that mistake.

But what do I know.

It's too much of a coincidence that McClure "accidently" tweeted it instead of a DM to someone. If it's that important, one'd call, text or email ... It was tweeted at the right time and deleted within minutes after being sure that it was syndicated.

Brightest bulb or not, he's just trying to play the fiddle here..

The tweet was via text. Most accidental tweets come from responding to the DM text Twitter sends.

It is easy for you to make ridiculous accusations or observations, because you don't have to come back here tomorrow and say 'oh, I was wrong'.

Since I started following this story I have seen all manner of ridiculous commentary, regardless of the evidence presented. Each new day disproves almost every comment made from the previous day.

Your accusation is cheap and is not held to the same standards that you expect from the same blogs and people that you criticize.

I don't think it was too ridiculous before the email was released. I was wrong, and I apologise for that. I made a comment I thought was true, and if everyone held back comments that they thought were true, from fear of being wrong, then no one would post comments at all.

I just realized that I replied to the wrong comment, but it sorta applied to you also :)

I understand that prior to the email a lot of people still had doubt, but there were comments here still trying to string an anti-Techcrunch conspiracy together even after the email was published.

Oh, hah. I'm definitely not trying to insinuate an anti-techcrunch conspiracy! I don't think that's the case :P

If this keeps up much longer, Hacker News will be banned at Valleywag.

For a story with so little actual substance this one is definitely creating a lot of waves.

When someone comes out with a transcript of what was said at the dinner I think we can move to the next phase, until then there is not much more that can either be said or done.

I'm sure that TC will try to keep this (successfully) on the front burner as much as they can but as far as I can see no new newsworthy facts have come out about what this dinner was actually about or who all of the remaining attendants were.

Dave McClure is now berated more for his writing style than for what he actually said, Ron Conway gets involved, it's a true photo opportunity for everybody and their dog to stick their oar in.

Reputations are to be made or broken, but over what, actually?

This seriously doesn't need to be called Angel Gate. It took place in it's own venue - the "Bin38 Scandal" is far more appropriate (and sort of brings into perspective how ridiculous the real Watergate scandal's name is)

Who in the world thinks that deleting a tweet (or blog post, comment, email, vm, memo, letter, etc.) is going to make it disappear? Through out history seemly smart people continue to do this...

Deleting twits works most of the time; you just don't notice it… I do it all the time for typos, or playing with time zones.

who cares? Why are you all upvoting this stuff? This is just eyeballs to techcrunch.

RT: At some point in time a big earthquake will level the bay area. That's a given certainty. It might happen just because of tectonic stuff, or, maybe, it will happen because this place has lost all honor. And god is watching. Maybe. Maybe Not.

(down voting open)

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.

Fair enough. If you can't down vote for the content down vote for the guidelines violation.

I don't understand why TechCrunch tries to emulate a tabloid when they do a lot better as a news site.

It's hard to fault him when the facts of the story are so sensational.

It's hard to know what's fact when it's written like a tabloid.

Facts? A bunch of guys met for dinner and one of the regulars was not invited. That's about all the 'facts' that there are so far, the rest is just so much hot air.

If there is a 'smoking gun' then I'm not aware of it, for all we know they discussed golf and fishing.

Rather than hot air, what we see is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence and some strong allegations from 3rd parties about what was going on at these meetings.

Is it anything conclusive yet? Of course not, but it would be foolish to write this story off as "hot air" at this point.

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