Techcrunch empire to expand into seed-stage financing | Hacker News Reader

Techcrunch empire to expand into seed-stage financing

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6 pointsrms6 comments

Hmm, I don't know. How could they get into funding and have any pretense of journalistic objectivity? And if they stopped being a good source of startup info, readers would go elsewhere, and they'd lose the original source of their power.

O'Reilly can go into venture funding without compromsing the original source of their cred, which is technical books. It would be much harder for a journalist covering startups.

From the link: "What's in store for TechCrunch? Perhaps a new branch - TechCrunch Ventures?"

This is just speculative news. Though, it isn't inconceivable for Mike to take this path. He has, in the past, funded several startups (often unsuccessfully). Moreover, he is a well connected and recognizable individual in this industry; so his background in technology as well as law will certaninly assist him in this respective.

Michael's strength in the online world, however, is also his weakness; TC might risk losing credibility as an unbiased startup blog. It will be like expecting Fox television to provide "fair and unbiased" news :D

But right now there's no pretense of journalistic objectivity. Arrington plugs his investments whenever it is appropriate now.

I don't see Techcrunch becoming an irrelevant source of startup news just because they have more of their own investments to plug. The bottom line is that Arrington does not need to be objective to remain a good source of news, he just needs to continue doing what he does.

If TechCrunch were funding startups as well as reporting on them, no competitor or potential competitor of any startup they'd funded would feel comfortable talking to them. And since no one would know exactly who they were funding or about to fund, no one would feel safe telling them anything except already public information. That would eliminate the scoops that make TechCrunch what it is.

No one seems to care, there's such a dire need for his site and no clear alternative.

Read his disclosure at the bottom of http://www.techcrunch.com/about-techcrunch/

He's gotten involved with a lot of startups he has profiled and heavily leverages his position to push his investments.

Arrington has previously declared CNet his Goliath. I think things like Crunchgear is what he has in mind for expansion.

My take is that he finally realized no one can take over writing Techcrunch for him and maintain the quality that makes it so great. So he's hired Harde to work on all the details of implementing his Grand Media Empire Strategy while he's busy feeding the cash cow.

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