Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups | Hacker News Reader

Michael Arrington’s Dreams of a Blog for True Startups

peterc.org

47 pointspetercooper35 comments

We were going to setup a 'minor league' (Michael kept referring to it as that internally, and it started long before this talk) blog that simply listed every new startup launch. That ended up becoming Crunchbase.

A whole team were hired to enter the data and keep it up to date, and new startups are still go into Crunchbase, just the output is not very good. There was going to be a feed of all new added companies in Crunchbase that would feature on TC.com.

The prob is that as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google etc. The audience for news around those companies is 10x what the audience for startup news is (it is also 10x larger than the audience for more technical writing is)

The large audience traffic spikes that Techcrunch had through its history were all from stories that broke news about Apple, Google, YouTube, Twitter etc.

I think the new blogs can do both, just turn the dial more towards startups and more dev/tech.

I think the new blogs can do both, just turn the dial more towards startups and more dev/tech.

Not unless the founders of the blog make a very explicit decision to pass on financial benefits to continue covering start-ups. Like you said, startup coverage doesn't have much audience relative to Apple etc. and that means money lost.

That is why I am not convinced we can have a popular startup blog like TC ... those that mostly cover start-ups rarely get popular; those get popular tend to have a good mix of startup + big co news which over time becomes big co news.

Thats fair. The issue then is that 80% of tips currently go to TC because everybody wants their startup featured there alongside all the other tech news - even if only 10% of the audience is interested.

For PR companies, TC is still the big 'get', probably ranks just below a NYTimes or WSJ feature. You'd have to do a good job of handling news and new companies to convince a lot of these startups that a good/thorough feature in a startup-focused blog is worth more than being one of 20 stories on a tech blog.

I actually really like Crunchbase, more so than anything else TC-related. It's really useful to have a quick way to see what investors have invested in something, or what kind of portfolio an angel has.

I have an extremely unpopular point of view on this, because, unlike the most vocal of HN, I believe there are some things that can't have a price tag attached to them. But:

> The prob is that as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google etc.

Yes, you can, dammit. If you mean, "as a tech blog you can't ignore Apple, Google, etc. and still make tons of money and eventually sell out to a media empire", then OK, we have some common ground. I'll go along with that.

But for all of the hundreds of thousands of readers you somehow amass by following the same stories that everyone else follows, there are -- admittedly a much smaller number of -- readers like me who are starving for something that isn't like everything else that's already out there.

I don't care what Apple or Google or Verizon is doing, and I especially don't care that you're covering it versus anyone else. It'll show up in my numerous news feeds. It'll show up on HN. It'll show up on Reddit. It'll show up in Google News. Or someone will ask me about it at some point during the day.

What's valuable to me -- and, I think, enough other people -- is getting the information that other people aren't getting. My clients rely on me to keep an eye on the new and the up-and-coming, and it's getting harder and harder for me to gather that kind of information, because there are diminishing reliable sources for it. You guys and Gizmodo and everyone else all compete for page views on the same silly topics and it's not helping anyone.

I'll agree that you probably won't get to drive a fancy car by running a business without compromising principles, but let's not kid ourselves that we can't run businesses without selling out. Hell, that's probably pretty much the only reason that anybody reads anythign written on 37Signals anymore -- because they're constantly reminding everyone that they haven't sold out, and they're successful. (Some of them even get to drive nice cars.)

And for that matter, it would be lovely if, for a change, I'd get to see someone treat the matter of startups like it wasn't a glamorous Silicon Valleywood lifestyle. Y'know, like a little bit of attention towards all those countless shmucks out there that are building products, taking care of customers, making money, and not dressing like rock stars or scheduling interviews every week.

Actually I should have clarified, I didn't mean that it is impossible to ignore the big stories, more that it is difficult to.

Totally agree that it should be possible, but there is a temptation when you start getting press releases etc. to pump the easy stories out.

Funny you should mention this...The Startup Foundry is doing exactly that. A blog focused only on startups. Check it out, we have gained a lot of traction and have a relatively large following for being so new (about two weeks). http://thestartupfoundry.com

You also got a shout-out in the article :)

Is twitter the only way to get in contact with you? I don't see any contact page (or really anything besides the articles themselves).

Yeah for now we are working the majority of our stuff through Twitter. Which goes to show just how good of a tool Twitter is. If you want to talk to me about covering something send me an email at: knowlife@me.com. Cheers!

So... and this is a serious question.

Let's say you cover the next Twitter or Facebook before they become the next Twitter or Facebook. Once they explode in popularity, are you going to stop writing about them? Even though those articles are getting the most traffic on the site? And tons of speciality sites start appearing just about Twitter and Facebook. And you even know people from Twitter and Facebook since you profiled them when they were little, and can get the inside scoop on changes and upcoming features.

A very good question. Will they be really able to resist "Poxxer, who we broke the news on in 2011 here and here" ...pfft always hate that <a><a><a> start to a blog post.

If they really would drop startups that made it big they could make it a feature. Instead of a deadpool, they can add startups to a bigpool, and tease the major sites with it: "we followed them then, you follow them now"

Ha! I like that idea! Thanks for that!

To be honest with you....your question is a good one. And since I am not the editor or the founder of the site I cannot say with 100% certainty that this is correct but my answer would be: yes. The main focus of the site is to cover startups. As far as I know there are no rules for only covering them when they are small. So if something I write about explodes like a Facebook or Twitter I will certainly being following up with them. In my mind that would be a "gold mine" of an article in terms of information both for myself and for our readers. Now would I beat it to death and write twelve articles about it in a five day period just to get the page views? No. That crap drives me crazy. I would like to think that I would only cover them if something significant was happening with them.

How does MacRumors decide when they are going to do another story on something that is hot?

I will check with my boss/editor and see what his thoughts are on the subject...

Well, it's easy with MacRumors since Apple is hot. And that's what we write about. :)

That is a really great, easy-to-read layout. You have at least one new regular reader. :-)

Great! Welcome aboard!

Arrington says that writing about startups would not be the best business decision, and he is probably right - less people interested in startups than Apple, Facebook, etc as well as a reduced # of advertisers.

How would a "startup-only blog" pay the bills? The Startup Foundry guys - would love to hear your thoughts.

It probably wouldn't and that is part of the problem, a lot of things that would be great can't work as a business and shouldn't... I guess they could always go down the paid route, but for it to exist as a free blog and be entirely about true startups I can't see it being a business success like Techcrunch is. They could always try and work out a way to "pray" on the early adopter trend, where every self proclaimed "social media expert" (or whatever they call themselves these days) wants and needs to know about the next big thing before it's arrived and they might be willing to pay for that privilege.

I mostly agree. It couldn't work with the typical free blog business model that's been popular till now (and which worked for TechCrunch initially) because things (advertisers mostly) have moved on.

But.. an organization that went beyond the typical blog role could make money. Consider Chris McCann's Startup Digest. That's building on e-mail right now, but something like Startup Foundry could have fingers in multiple profitable pies: job listings, social events, conferences, angel/VC matching - it just needs the velocity, connections, and brand power to pull it off. (I could be wrong but I don't think it's a coincidence TechCrunch's initial big boom occurred around the time Michael started doing the house parties.)

Paul Hontz here (aka g0atbutt), founder of the startup foundry. The short answer is I don't know...yet. I believe TSF will turn into a profitable business (and based on the investment offers I've received, other people do to). I want TSF to ooze value from every article,video, and pic. After that's taken care of, I believe the perfect revenue model will present itself. Until then we will keep pushing forward.

Paul - Will be good to see what you guys come up with. One branding thought (and take this with a grain of salt as we run one site called ChubbyBrain) is why not lose startup in the name. It gives you room to grow in the future if you decide you do need to change/alter focus. At present, the name The Startup Foundry boxes you in. Just an unsolicited $.02.

just a few quick ideas:

sell tickets to conferences through affiliate programs

allow users to create profiles with a job status field, and collect bounty when referring them to hiring companies

collect sponsorships like mixergy, TWiST, etc

This post reminded me of the early days. There was a time when all you had to do to get Michael to review your app was to add it to delicious with a tag he watched for.

He reviewed my web2.0, vertical search, Google map mashup (so 2005!). I wish I would have kept a screenshot for nostalgia.

Even being an active commenter on his site was enough. It worked for me. (Being the doofus I am, I asked him to hold off till I finished the "new" version of my app which.. never happened ;-))

Nice. If I remember correctly, in his review of my site he said it was as ugly as eBay :)

Arrington will be there for 3 years exactly. I don't really read TechCrunch anymore, but I'll be keeping my eyes peeled on September 28, 2013 for his new thing.

Just because the incentives say so, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of him actually leaving earlier than that date. That said, I'm looking forward to his new adventure, sooner or later.

Wow, if TechCrunch was just about startups (Everyone of them), I might actually come back to as part as my daily reading. Until they clean up their articles and focus on what matters then it is hard to justify spending time on their site.

The thing is that they are focusing on what matters to most people and that's exactly the problem.

Are they? Seems to me that they exist to feed the trolls.

Sadly I believe you'll come to agree that the majority of mis-informed people who read a generalist tech blog like Techcrunch could be considered trolls by the normally informed people who read HN. TC does serve its purpose well - it just saddens me that the blog's purpose and mine as a reader are not aligned.

(disclaimer: I worked with techcrunch for a few years, starting in 05)

This is a great theory, but the problem is that the startup world (especially consumer-focused, silicon valley startups) is so closely tied to the bigger companies (Google, Facebook etc) that ignoring what they do means you are ignoring things that directly affects the other companies you write about.

It would be like the Wall St Journal ignoring US politics because it isn't financial news.

I started working on a side project (now abandoned) about startups:

http://haxiny.appspot.com (just a mockup)

If I get enough feedback I may start working on it again.

I wanted to do something like this and even bought the domain and started it. Finding new startups daily was a huge chore though. Name was alpharadar.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com