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Crunch Time at AOL

cringely.com

22 pointsgvb13 comments

And based on the price Cuban was willing to pay and the relative traffic stats of our two enterprises, I’d say TechCrunch in the current market is worth about $7.5 million.

And in one fell swoop he completely and utterly fails to take into account the difference in brand exposure.

TC are a household name for almost everyone in tech.

(I'm sorry but I really think cringely.com is prime material to be banned from HN, literally every post that I get sucked into clicking through to read has me rolling my eyes in the first paragraph, the guy doesn't have a clue!)

Funny I never thought about Google buying a media company. But I disagree with Cringly on one point. Buying Time Warner actually would, in some ways, be a better deal for Google then buying the media arm (AOL). The upside in buying Time Warner is that Google would get control of the cable pipes of the second largest cable company in the US (and the 3rd largest ISP). That's a lot of bandwidth to peoples homes the could get control of. It would give them a ton of leverage in the Net Neutrality argument. As well as tie nicely into their existing plans with YouTube and Google TV. I haven't looked into the AOL/Time Warner financials but if I had to guess TW is also the more profitable arm.

Time Warner and Time Warner Cable are not the same company. TWC was spun-off last year, and Aol is also no longer a part of Time Warner.

doh

Would the regulators permit such a thing?

The real point of this article is not Marc Cuban, or Tech Crunch's valuation.

Mainly he's saying that Google wants to buy a media company. Personally, I don't see that happening.

This guy is an absolute moron. TechCrunch is going to sell for LESS THAN 1x REVENUES??? Based on this idiot's shitty wannabe banker comp model?

I agree with you: it's completely nonsense to sell a company for anything less than 5x annual revenue. However, I'm not so sure about the TC annual revenues you refer to (>7.5MM/year). The only source I could find is a Wired article back from 2007 (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07/ff_arring...), where Arrington says revenues are about 200k/month = 2.4MM/year.

Arrington supposedly said it's around $10 million revenue.

http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-techcrunch-price-25-milli...

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20101001/the-way-i-work-michael-...

This article is non sense. Techcrunch $7.5m ?? The only goal of Cringely here is to brag that Mark Cuban was interest to buy a part of his business...

Even Calacanis said that Techcrunch worth around $25m...

Even Calacanis said that Techcrunch worth around $25m...

Of course he did - that's what he sold Weblogs Inc to them for...

I so wanna make a pun on his name in regards to this article. The whole conceit is silly. It's like he's crying over spilled milk in regards to perceived relevance vs. actual relevance.

He answers his own question - AOL paid a higher multiple for the TechCrunch brand's goodwill value.

That's not unusual whatsoever.

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