WITTC50?: Want me to ignore the ridiculous conflict of interest and write a glowing review of TC50? There’s an app for that

Huzzah! It’s that time again! Time for TechCrunch 50: where thousands of struggling entrepreneurs spend three grand they can barely afford to watch fifty of their peers dancing like malnourished bears for the approbation of Jason Calacanis! It’s like Christians and lions meets Satan’s own version of speed dating, with added Scoble! What’s not to love?

I’m sorry – you’ll have to forgive my cynicism, it’s just that I have to prove to you that I haven’t gone native.

You see, one of the main reasons I was hired by TechCrunch was for my traffic-driving habit of hurling faeces at unsuspecting industry conferences. Conferences like Jeff Pulver’s inexorably ill-planned 140 Characters in New York or Loic LeMeur’s très froidLe‘ in Paris – both of which saw the sharp end of my tongue when I was at the Guardian. I learned there that no-one cares when I talk about interesting start-ups or noteworthy trends – but when I textually assault a hard-working event organiser, the page impressions flow like gravy.

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