But let's make a few things clear: I don't have any special relationship with Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, or anyone else who works at CrunchFund. I may see them around socially, in the same way that I see any other investors or entrepreneurs at events where those types of people hang out. But they don't pitch me startups they've invested in, and there's certainly no expectation that I, or anyone else at TechCrunch, be friendly to companies that they've put money into.
I joined Techcrunch more than six months after Arrington was booted, and well after the exodus of employees who worked for him started 'pursuing other interests.' I never worked with him, and besides exchanging pleasantries backstage at TC Disrupt, I frankly don't think he knows who I am. He certainly doesn't whisper secrets in my ear, and I couldn't care less about whether or not his little VC fund is successful.
I first reached out to Mailbox CEO Gentry Underwood in August of last year, because I heard he was working on a cool solution to email overload. (I think I first heard about Mailbox from one of his tweets.) It wasn't until December that I'd gotten a chance to test it out. I think I had it for about a week before I wrote that first article, and I loved it, and still love it. In fact, I have been using it as my default email client ever since I got it.
At the time I worried that the story would be seen as hyperbolic, but I believed in the product and thought more people should know about it. I thought it was an actual useful piece of software that could make people's lives better, so yes, I wrote glowing reviews of it. But at no point did I do so because of any influence from Mike, or CrunchFund, or anyone who had an actual vested interest in seeing Mailbox succeed or profiting from it.
The thing that annoys me about pieces like this are that they vastly overstate the influence that CrunchFund or any other VC have in our coverage. Yes, they frequently clue us in to cool applications they're playing with, but there's no real exchanging of favors that happens. I write about products I like, usually pass on those that don't interest me, but if there's the case where I test something out and it doesn't pass muster, I usually say so.
One final note: The most recent article I wrote was about Uber, which is also a CrunchFund company. That one was not nearly as positive as the stuff I wrote about Mailbox. http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/see-uber-this-is-what-happe...