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Comment by prayag | Hacker News Reader

>What I don't get is why TechCrunch seems to give YC companies more coverage than 500 Startups companies. I suppose it's nice to have Arrington as the LP of one of your investors (SV Angel).

That's just bull-shit. Just because they covered your competitor doesn't mean you get to talk shit about the coverage.

In addition, I just don't get why are you getting so excited about this. You know who is eating your lunch, not VidYard, it's YouTube and the Sales executive who don't know any better than uploading video on YouTube. You have a common enemy called ignorance. Instead of getting riled up about competition may be you guys should work together.

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maybe i'm mistaken, but i think the comment was made by Jonathan Nelson, who runs the Hackers & Founders meetup, not by anyone at Vidcaster (a 500 company).

also to clarify: 500 Startup is an investor in many YC companies (close to 20 at current count), so altho we may occasionally compete at the incubator level we have tremendous respect for PG & team, as well as their companies, and we would go out of our way to not talk shit about them, as well as taking issue with people who do.

kisses,

dmc

Copy pasted from below: "I happen to know Kieran Farr quite well. http://www.vidcaster.com/ was one of the first companies in our Co-op incubator. And, I have no doubt, that Kieran is going to be far richer than some reporter who still makes his living writing for a company that think that selling yesterday's news written on pieces of dead tree is a viable business model."

Now this is just a mean comment.

Nothing against 500 start-ups. Personally I don't think either YC or any company they fund considers 500start-ups as a competitor. There are tons of incubators in Silicon Valley.

The spirit in which the comment was made was just mean, in a manner that was directly attacking the company for being a competitor to their company(or his friend's company, or however it works).

No comments about Techcrunch's conflict of interest. I am not in the know-how of how the investment tree looks like.

Although the OP didn't phrase it in perhaps the most tactful way, there is a serious issue of undisclosed conflict of interest going on here. Techcrunch's own policy (I suspect general AOL editorial policy as well) requires full disclosure, and it's simply not happening here.

I agree completely. If there is a conflict of interest, it should be disclosed. (I don't know how there is a conflict of interest, I am not aware of how the investment graph looks like.)

Mike Arrington (editor of TC) is a limited partner in SV Angels who offer to invest in every YC startup via a convertible note.

iamelgringo is a customer of VidCaster, not a competitor of Vidyard.

I also don't understand your ignorance comment. Vidcaster and Vidyard are two competing companies.

iamelgringo brings up a salient point I think, YC companies get a disproportionate amount of coverage on TC as compared to other startups.

Customer of VidCaster? I don't think so, check his previous comments:

"I happen to know Kieran Farr quite well. http://www.vidcaster.com/ was one of the first companies in our Co-op incubator. And, I have no doubt, that Kieran is going to be far richer than some reporter who still makes his living writing for a company that think that selling yesterday's news written on pieces of dead tree is a viable business model."

Pardon me, I inferred from the hackersandfounders.tv site that uses VidCaster was an independent venture and not by a co-op incubator or anything.

The main point I have against this article are that

1) It's poor journalism in that little research into competitors was done. Leena Rao doesn't seem to be aware of the many competitors who have been in this space for years (like VidCaster) but only a few like Ooyala and Brightcove (which TechCrunch uses iirc).

2) Lack of disclosure as to the relationship between TechCrunch and YC startups is a problem. There's an inherent bias without full disclosure.

>I also don't understand your ignorance comment. Vidcaster and Vidyard are two competing companies.

Ignorance on the part of Sales executives who upload their videos on youtube.

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