would like to invite Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL on stage. Tim just flew out last night to come up and meet with us. Tim? How are you doing?

Have a seat. Thank you. So, Tim, there are these rumors flying yesterday and what we just wanna know from the sources are did you buy Brizzly or not?

Well, I know the Brizzly guys really well. I used to work with a bunch of them and, I think they're a great company, but I don't have any comment at this point.

You flew all the way out here not to comment on this at all? Actually I flew out here for a different reason, which is I've been a big fan of TechCrunch, I've been to many of the events also.

Through the years?

Yeah.

Are you a fan of TechCrunch?

Love it. You should be.

I'm a big fan of your team, of Heather's. And I flew out here 'cause actually the company I'm most interested in is TechCrunch and I would love it if you let me partner with TechCrunch, with AOL and see if we can build a very substantial company together.

I remember we first started talking about an acquisition in New York at Disrupt there. You had gone off stage, we just spoken and we went into into this back room, it's from the speaker room, and you said, "Hey, so how are things going in general? Are you, you know, enjoying yourself?" And I said, "Yeah, and I'm so tired." I'm like, "I moved to Seattle. I'm, basically, half retired, you know like..." And you said, "Oh, it's too bad because I'd really like to buy you, but you'd have to stick around." And, I think, without even a pause, I said, "You know, everything's great. It's like I love everything about this job. I'm excited."

Seattle didn't look so good at that point.

Yeah so... but, I think the second time we spoke in New York, you know, when we're doing acquisitions at AOL, there's three things that we look at. One is, you know, the financial attributes to the acquisition and on whether that makes sense for you and for us.

But personally, I have two things I ask every entrepreneur that I meet with, one is you have to be twice as passionate about the space you're in than anybody on our management team is and, two is, you have to stick around. So if we're gonna consummate a transaction between us, you have to give me a 'Yes' to those two answers. So, 'yes' is the answer.

Good answer.

I know that we've been rushed, you know, this wasn't supposed to happen today. This was supposed to happen later. We're gonna focus on the companies here and then Om Malik, my, sort of, nemesis screwed everything up yesterday, so we have to rush through this and and I know we haven't really had time to deal with the agreement.

I'm just gonna recommend we use the Bebo agreement and all the terms in it, to just, sort of, speed things up. Is that something that works for you?

Probably the less for me than you, I think. Okay.

Well, so actually, we're, there's a little bit we're gonna sign this on stage, if you're okay with that.

And I need my lawyer, Liore  to come out and also Heather our CEO, who's gonna sign if they could come out as well as just have a seat.

So, I also, TechCrunch is also all about the readers from the audience and I'm gonna flat out ask you guys, you know, what you think and if we should do this. And if you say no.

I'll think of my sales pitch first.

Tim's gonna give a short sales pitch, with putting a forward looking statements and then if you say no, I'm gonna do what Robert Scoble said. I'm gonna rip this up dramatically or we're gonna have Tim thrown out by security.

If you say yes, we're gonna go ahead and sign it. So, do you have any?  You just don't even wanna be up here anymore, do you?

Yeah, this was a long flight. No sleep for Mike Arrington.

So if we should sign this deal, say yay.

Yay.

And if you think we shouldn't, say absolutely not. I think that was clear.

I think it was 60, 40 plus. That was clear. I think was unanimous.

Yeah.

That were that were gonna still and the voters of the readers of TechCrunch have voted. So do you want me to sign first? Or do you sign first? I'd love to have you sign first. So there's no other. Heather should sign.

Heather go ahead.

So, I don't know. The camera's can't really see this but this is actually the merger agreement which I hope Heather at least has read. Well I've just signed. It's feels like selling my company. All right, Tim. So I will show you it's the real agreement. I don't know if you can see it or not but congratulations guys.

Thank you. We have a We have, and by the way. No one seemed to notice yesterday when Liore, our Attorney was pulled off stage, sort of, dramatically to deal with an issue. So it's kinda funny, we thought the investigative journalist in the audience would better that but...

Are there any questions? We're gonna take 5 minutes or so and then Tim has to fly right back to New York. So if you have questions... do we have microphones or are we just yelling questions out? There are stand mics. There are stand mics right there. There are stand mics. Right here. Yeah, right here in the middle. So just walk up to these mics and we can take 2 or 3 questions.

We are not going to be disclosing the terms of the deal but we are happy to talk about, you know, what this means for TechCrunch moving forward. Meanwhile, while we are waiting to...

Tim, could you hit Post here? You're actually writing a guest post for us.

Sure. My first TechCrunch post. Just hit the publish button.

That's right. so you just wanna mouse over and hit the publish button right there.

Right here.

Yeah.

Okay. No problem. You didn't read that, did you?

No. I'm reading it as it's posting.

Never a good idea with you, Mike. But it's perfect. That's what I like to hear in my new boss.

Good. Yeah, I know.

So

Can you see if you can published it?

All right. Thank you. I just wanna say one thing before the first question is I wanted to, first of all thank this guys and Mike's entire team. I think, you know, AOL is really dedicated to building future brands and content.

In TechCrunch is something that we've been interest for a long time period, you know purely do the work here. I think, two is since TechCrunch represents entrepreneurial spirits. I think we want these guys to run as entrepreneurs and give them more capital and more resources and I'm very proud of what they accomplished and 3 years this deal came together because of the entrepreneurial network. And Ron Conway other people in this room were influential and putting us together and I that I grew up kinda in Silicon Valley in New York split.

And this is a big day for AOL and I'm really happy for entrepreneurs who, you know, get a good grade outcome I hope. And, you know, even a bigger outcome in the future with us. So... outcome I hope. And, you know, even a bigger outcome in the future with us. So... Question? What does this mean for competing properties that AOL already has, sort of, like in gadget crunch carrier. Are you are gonna be merging with some of the existing content on AOL or, are you gonna continue as independent brands? I think they're gonna be shutting all of those down, focusing entirely on TechCrunch for now.

You know who's in charge now? No but we talked a lot about this as we went through the deal and I think there's, you know, one is we have, you know, gadget is a great property, and we have other tech properties, other great properties.

When I talked to Mike, one of the things that, I think, both of us felt and Heather, is there's an opportunity to having much larger tech presence as a whole and I would expect these brands to you know, operate independently but leverage each other, you know when there's an opportunity. And two is, you know, for our audiences, a great opportunity to put TechCrunch content in front of a wider group of AOL people and on networks and things like that.

So I would expect us to build a more significant tech content business overall as TechCrunch is one of the pillars, and two is immediately try to get as much TechCrunch content to a wider audience as possible. One more?

Just wondering if this has anything to do with getting back at Yahoo's CEO and if you'd like to address anything back to her regarding the F-off [sp?] for your small company.

Yeah. Amazingly, I've decided to sell my company to AOL to get back, yes, to get back at the CEO of Yahoo. And Tim likewise, was upset with her for various reasons. And we thought this would be a great way to do that.

You know, I work for a public put it down like that.

Yah.

Just say anything we want, but that was sarcasm. Can I still say whatever I want? I mean, that's part of the deal, right? That I can do whatever idea.

We want you to be a say whatever you've done so far that made you successful so we we will try to be as hands off as possible.

Through your credit, you guys as a group have said that one of the examples we use was a Twitter documents where I posted the Twitter documents that were clearly obtained illegally and then we obtained it. And I said, what if that happens with AOL? Not that it's likely, but if somebody hacks into AOL illegally obtains documents, and hands them to us. I will post them and then what happens, and the agreements have been crafted in a way that gives us complete editorial freedom to do that and I really appreciate that we have absolutely no editorial bounds at all. Also, the team is staying. TechCrunch is remaining on operating subsidiary. And I have a funny idea that I'll be with AOL at least for 3 years based on the variety of the sentence and any other questions, I think we can take the backstage with the press. Thank you.

I'm sorry for the distraction, I really am. I wanna start focusing right back on the Disrupt companies in the great panels. We have Eric Schmidt. We have Mike Moritz, we've got the Mayor all up in the next hour. And we just got some great the content. So thanks very much for bearing with us. And thank you so much for being here and being part of this. Okay, Thanks.

Thanks, Mike. Congratulations. It all starts off so well.

Okay, Erick Schonfeld here, co-editor of TechCrunch with Tim Armstrong, my new boss. So you just made an announcement on stage that, what was the announcement?

Yeah, the announcement - was really, I think is something that's very exciting for our future and hopefully, the future with you guys is TechCrunch and AOL getting together and AOL acquiring TechCrunch. But, I think the most important thing we're acquiring is actually talent. And I think you're a big part of that. Mike is a big part of it. Heather is, and the rest of the team and we're excited for the TechCrunch brand also.

We think the future of the internet, it's gonna be built on really substantial brands. And TechCrunch is already well on it's way to being one of the most substantial tech content brands in the world.

So where does TechCrunch fit within AOL? You're building, you have many brands and many blogs as well. Where do you see TechCrunch fitting in?

I think first, you know, out of the gate I think TechCrunch, well one thing we'd like to do is kind of keep it in its space and put more resources and scale behind it, and then you know, as we we work together and figure out where the opportunity pockets are, I think we will bring more of the tech properties into an area where you can really say, you know, like Ziff Davis did in the, you know 80's with tech content, how do you become the most influential source of tech content in the world? And I think TechCrunch will be a centralized, you know, pillar of that strategy and, uh, but I think out of the gates, we're gonna figure out how to work together well and figure out how to scale.

Right. What attract you to TechCrunch versus other types of properties in terms of and you've been going in many different directions in terms of broadening your content, your content properties?

Sure. I think TechCrunch has a couple of very unique strategies that I think you guys have been employing. And I think, you know, one is journalism. I think really covering companies and a specific ecosystem very well. I mean, it's you guys I think are known as the breaking news place for tech information.

The second is things like CrunchBase and other things where you guys have been really influential on taking structured data and mixing that into the, you know, the journalism and breaking news things that you're doing. I think that's actually a very substantial subtext to this.

And the third thing is, you know, what is the energy level behind the TechCrunch brand and the ecosystem of that in your ecosystem?  And, I think, you come here, there's 2,000 people here, many of the most influential people in the tech community are here and, I think, you take the combo of breaking news journalism, structured data and really deep environment, whether it's the conferences or just relationships you have.

I think that's a winning combination and that's what really made us interested in TechCrunch.

Okay. Well, we look forward to keeping on building the brand under AOL and, I know that we're really looking forward to the resources you're gonna bring to bear.

Right, we will bring the resources and you're gonna be in New York with me so I'll see you in the office.

So, I get a desk right next to you.

You will be in my office.

Okay. Thank you very much.

All right. Bye, sir. All right. Thank you.

Okay.