Damnit, a sad day at TechCrunch – we’ve lost one of our own, drawn by the allure of a startup to call his own. TechCrunch research analyst Dan Levine will be leaving us to start his own company as part of the next batch of Y Combinator startups. You’ll hear more about the company, which he is founding with David Fowler, in the coming months.
I’m horribly disappointed in Dan, and I feel betrayed that he’d leave TechCrunch. Our standard policies when someone resigns apply, of course, So I sent Levine an email telling him to not to come back to the office and not to email the team. We’ll have his stuff sent to him. He’s dead to me.
Oh wait, that’s not our policy, it’s that other guy’s. No, we’re sad that Dan is leaving TechCrunch, but we’re also excited about this next step in his life. And we know that many of the exceptional people that make TechCrunch so special will eventually move on to other things.
A few former TechCrunchers who’ve gone on to great things: Natali Del Conte is a senior editor at CNET and co-hosts the technology news podcast Buzz Out Loud. Marshall Kirkpatrick is the lead writer at ReadWriteWeb. Ben Meyer is a presumably happy and soon to be wealthy Facebook employee, and my only disappointment is that he won’t send me confidential information about the company. Ouriel Ohayon, who launched TechCrunch France and grew it to the largest blog in that country, is now a founder of AppsFire. Mark Hendrickson is busy growing Plancast. I still can’t figure out what Henry Work, who ran our tech group, is doing. I think he works at Disneyland.
And that’s not counting the many TechCrunch interns who have gone on to do great things as well.
We’ll miss Dan, who’s brilliant, passionate and one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. But I can’t wait to watch his career as it careens through cycles of success, failure, and more success. Just remember to drop by the office every once in a while and say hi.
Apologies to Jason Calacanis about the somewhat unfair jab in the early paragraphs above. We have different styles, but to each his own. I’ll always love you, Serpico, for making the world a more colorful place.
You can keep up to date with Dan on Twitter at @daniel_levine.