It is with mixed emotions that I say goodbye to TechCrunch. During the past four years, this crazy and talented team has truly become like a family. But with every goodbye comes a hello. I’m proud to share that I’ll be joining Y Combinator. There are a lot of great things happening at YC and the opportunity to work with Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman and the rest of the team is going to be a lot of fun.
During my time at TechCrunch, I’ve been fortunate to work alongside Michael Arrington, who started the site from his living room in 2005, as well as current co-editors Alexia Tsotsis, Matthew Panzarino and this amazing team.
Directing content for the Disrupt stage for one of the biggest online media publications in tech has been a thrill. The past four years have been filled with memorable onstage moments and I’ve shared a few below.
But it’s the stories of backstage hijinks that really make me smile. Sometimes the electricity goes out just as the busiest day of the show begins. And sometimes the entire block loses Internet for the day. At a tech conference. With live demos. Other times speakers hitch a ride to the venue with a van of plumbers in the pouring rain. And yet on other occasions, TechCrunch staples, Buddy and Laguna, join the show backstage and drones are accidentally flown into the audience.
Through it all, fascinating personalities like Marissa Mayer, Ron Conway, Marc Benioff, Aileen Lee, Drew Houston, Travis Kalanick, Roelof Botha and so many more have been there to connect with the TechCrunch team and its community.
The goodbye part is difficult. I have spent many late nights with this team — be it in a Skype chat window debating content for our stage or in a karaoke bar belting out our favorite songs together. While I won’t see them in the office on a daily basis, I will still read their posts and enjoy their Twitter banter. I’m looking forward to my future and to theirs. I know we’re all bound for great things.
You can follow me at my Twitter account @slh.
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Here are just a few of the highlights of these past four years.
Mark Zuckerberg’s first post-IPO interview took place on the Disrupt stage with Michael Arrington in San Francisco in 2012.
Mike Judge, Alec Berg and a couple of the actors from Silicon Valley joined us in New York in 2014. The actors gawked backstage and remarked at how much the conference looked like their show. In reality, their show looked like our conference.
In London, Jordan Crook used her one last question to ask Jason Goldberg about his point of view of the gay in tech conversation.
Marc Benioff was nostalgic about Steve Jobs and shared intimate stories about his friend.
Michael Arrington and Tim Armstrong at the Crunchies contemplate the hypothetical of what makes a great CEO. Bonus footage of Greg Barto in his TechCrunch green tux.
Alexia Tsotsis and Alexis Ohanian explored the problem of bullying on the Internet and what can be done to solve it.
Probably my favorite panel of all time. Who knew that online monetization could be so compelling? Anthony Ha did. And Twitter’s Kevin Weil masterfully gained Twitter followers by giving Facebook, Google and the audience free advertising credit when he opened the product to the masses on the Disrupt stage.
John Biggs likes the early interviews because he’s “still a little drunk.”