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Comment by harold | Hacker News Reader

I’ve also raised a bunch of cash from some of the people I respect most in the industry. This includes: Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Tony Hseih, Zach Nelson, Andrew Anker, Chris Dixon, Saul Klein, Josh Kopelman, Jeff Jordan and Matt Cohler, all investing as individuals. Also investing are a handful of seed funds including the CrunchFund, Greylock Discovery Fund, Accel’s Seed Fund, Menlo Ventures Talent Fund, Lerer Ventures, SV Angels and Ooga Labs.

Is the coverage of any startup funded by these folks off the table? Seems like objectivity will be questioned from the start.

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You're correct. And we will question it, rightfully so.

The days of these people being "independent" media and bloggers are over. They may have been at one point, but these are cash generating vehicles, designed to promote product. And, really, I don't blame them.

But let's be realistic. She started what appears to be a blog. Why is there a laundry list of the who's-who of SV investing in it?

Why is it a bad thing? I think any site doing startup coverage needs to publish the list of its investors as a disclaimer.

It's not the publishing of the list that the commenter's questioning, but the fact that they've invested in it in the first place.

Just look at one of their first posts. One would think they could have waited a while before running a blatant ad for one of their sister companies.

http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/16/wealthfront-the-antidote-to...

On a related note, if she's declared very publicly that selling this venture would be a failure, what's the exit strategy for her investors? Or (conspiracy alert) they're hoping that her coverage will help the exit strategies of their investments...?

I don't know how she is running her show, but I note that there is a place for 'revenue' companies. These are companies that pay a dividend on their stock quarterly.

This 'old school' concept is based on a the notion that the enterprise in question generates X revenue, and then Y gross margin on that revenue, and divides up the net margin as dividends on a per share basis. That has been a very common way for investors to participate in the success of the company they are invested in.

The economic impact is that the share price then moves based on the return compared to other securities in the market (like t-bills, junk bonds, Etc.)

After Thinking about it some more I realized VC's usually don't think this way but angels could.

Personal failure != Economic Failure. Example: Facebook acquires your startup for 20M, shelves the product and tell you they bought the team. Ouch.

Call me cynical, but having all of this disclosure up front leaves me trusting her objectivity a lot more than the seemingly obvious alternative where unknown back room deals leave you wondering.

I don't think cynical is the right word for what you're trying to say.

I think it would be impossible for a new blog to compete with TC/VB/etc. without serious funding.

Sarah did a terrific job at TC and I think she's worth some trust. Moreover since AOL mess TC has become so boring to read ... full of "Company X launch product Y" stories without any wit or insight ...

Personally I don't care who's funding her, I'm confident she'll create a great, trustable blog ... after all trust is the main value for a tech blog and she knows it. Moreover i'm glad to see Paul Carr, MG & Arrington back blogging :)

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