Sarah Lacy, Mike Arrington to Start TechCrunch Rival | Hacker News Reader

Sarah Lacy, Mike Arrington to Start TechCrunch Rival

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31 pointsfufulabs5 comments

I believe this was inevitable. especially since TC's core team took off. Its usually not pretty there, with more than 50 posts in a couple of days. My reader is usually overblown with TC and i read very few of them. Looking forward to what Mike has in the bag, maybe they can bring other ex-TCers on-board too.. MG and Paul.

The only things that surprise me are:

1. Why AOL thought buying TC would turn out any other way (or was a remotely good idea at all); and

2. Just how big of a jackass Arington is. I mean the whole way it's been Arrington cashing out and just sending big FUs to AOL.

TC succeeded at least in part due to timing. The same team won't recreate it's success just by virtue of being the same team. Just look at Engadget and, well, pretty much every other example.

Arrington has a conflict of interest with his Crunchfund. After years of covering startups the armchair quarterback has decided "hey I can do this too!" and starts another quasi-media outlet to pimp his investments. Shocker.

TC was running fine for a year at AOL until they bought in Huffington, who wanted TC to fall under her org. This was all about Armstrong being weak over Huffigton, and it wasn't just TC employees who have left but many others in the senior ranks at AOL because of it (Garinghouse, Einh)

AOL are the primary investor in the Crunchfund, a bit hard to FU their own investments

This co. is being started by Sarah with Arrington (amongst many others) as a (minor) investor

Arrington has previously started, and sold, startups. Hardly an armchair quarterback.

Just to be clear, you are accusing Arrington of a conflict of interest on a site that he didn't start and doesn't exist yet.

and re: Engadget. The guys who left and started The Verge are on fire. It is already the 8th most linked blog on Technorati and 3rd on TM rank - fastest growing media property I have ever seen. So that works.

I just wish it will cover different startups than the one TC loves to write again and again.

That comes down to the writers, and TC having pretty loose editorial control over content.

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