Techcrunch's Michael Arrington lures startups into his money pit | Hacker News Reader

Techcrunch's Michael Arrington lures startups into his money pit

valleywag.com

20 pointstransburgh16 comments

The business practices in the web 2.0 space are becoming less and less honorable. In addition to this, I was reading recently about companies who were using Facebook apps to advertise, you guessed it, other Facebook apps. So funded startups pay these funded startups to advertise to Facebook users, who then start using the advertised app. Would be perfectly acceptable, only to date this seems to be the only proven model for generating money from Facebook apps. This is being described by investment circles in the midwest as a new age multi level marketing scheme. That is, if the group you are talking to is gentlemanly. The less gentlemanly circles are calling it a Ponzi scheme.

This was a huge part, perhaps the majority, of Yahoo's revenue in 1999.

You mean the $30 CPM banner ads?

But there is a there there. Some apps are useful. People like them. The facebook app users get something they want, and a tiny minority click-through to ads (for facebook apps or other services), and a smaller minority actually spend money.

That makes it dissimilar to a Ponzi scheme: there is input into the system from people outside the pyramid.

We made it to the finals of techcrunch20 (100 out of 700 entries) with streamfocus.com, but we passed on buying the demopit ticket just in case we didn't make the final 20. (The deal is that if you get into the final 20, they give you your money back). It seems like a bad value for precious dollars to be in the pit. Back to coding (demo for tc20 is this Friday at 1PM - wish us luck :)

Good luck. You have a unique idea, and I hope you make it. Please keep us posted.

gibsonf1, i took a shot at one of your previous posts because i thought it was a little off but your site looks alot better. nice job on the improvements... it's coming together.

Good luck with your demo gibsonf1. Let us know if you make it.

Good job! Good to see you improved your web site once again.

Sooo... lemme get this straight: I'm going to pay you over a grand of my own cash to sit in an empty room with a bunch of the other also-rans during the middle of a conference with an agenda so finely orchestrated that I'm surprised they haven't budgeted for bathroom breaks. There better be some seriously sweet sandwiches on offer for lunch........

The tech space 'leaders' are starting to look more and more like the blood sucking snakes in the record business.

Even if TC were as bad as Valleywag suggests (which is unlikely considering VW's tendency to exaggerate), it would still be nothing compared to the record business.

As a former artist with a demo and a dream, Sir Paul, I concur.

That's not what Arrington is doing at all! Why, he's helping the little guy! Those startups that didn't make it obviously needed help with running their startups, and here he is - helping them by giving them the opportunity to learn a valuable lesson on how people will take their money if they aren't careful. This way, those startups that didn't make the top 20 will be better prepared for the future!

/sarcasm

This man has little in the way of ethical practices. Even if I were in the top 20 and didn't have to pay, I would be hesitant to work with this man in any type of situation.

If this is the way he treats the groups that tried to get into the top 20, how does he treat those actual top 20? Is he presenting only his privileged investors to the startups who present, reducing real funding competition? What about any agreements that the startups have signed in the program? Have they fully checked those out?

When an organizer of an event practices little ethical credibility, the entire event must come into question.

Hate to say it but this "demo pit" feels more like a "loser pit" :(

(please, no offense meant!)

Love the image they have. Whoever made it should get a bonus.

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