J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news.
Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He also co-authored a book on initial public offerings.
In 1999, he left WSGR to join RealNames as VP of Business Development and General Counsel. In 2000, he cofounded Achex, an online payments company, that was later acquired by First Data Corp for $32 million. Achex is now the back end infrastructure to Western Union online.
Arrington worked in an operational role at a Carlyle backed startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was COO to a Kleiner-backed company called Razorgator, and consulted to other companies, including Verisign.
In May 2008, Time Magazine named Michael Arrington as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
Conflicts Of Interest
Updated 10/23/12
I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture capital firm with investments in many startups around the world. I am also a limited partner in many other venture funds which have their own startup investments.
Because of these investments, if there’s a startup there’s a good chance I’m a direct or indirect investor in it. Many times I won’t even know that I’m an investor, because venture funds that I invest in don’t normally share non public information with limited partners.
Also, CrunchFund’s investors include AOL and many of the top tier venture funds.
That means I invest in a lot of startups. And I invest in a lot of venture funds. And a lot of venture funds have invested in me.
I also occasionally own public company stocks. I currently own shares of Facebook. Until recently I owned shares of AOL. I also own other public company stocks through the management of a third party, although I typically don’t know about those investments and they are primarily not in the tech industry.
Sometimes I have so many financial conflicts of interest that I can’t even keep them straight.
So when you read what I write on Uncrunched, TechCrunch or wherever, understand that I’m conflicted. A lot.
How do I deal with this and still write?
I addressed it in one of my first posts on Uncrunched in 2011:
“Here are the things you can expect from me:
TRANSPARENCY: I will disclose, as I’ve always done, all financial conflicts of interest (I have lots and lots of those). I’ll also disclose other conflicts of interest, like friendships, when I can. I know a lot of you don’t understand why I can’t disclose all conflicts of interest. The answer is that if I did, not that many people would want to talk to me in the direct, honest way that I prefer. As a reader you must remain aware of the inherent bias in everything you read, and form your own opinions accordingly. Read this post on TechCrunch and the links for more about how I see the world.
TRUTH: I always try to find the truth in a situation. That unvarnished, pure nugget of truth at the core of every issue that I write about. Sometimes this takes more than one post, and sometimes I have to go back and correct things I’ve gotten wrong. I’ll continue to do that. For more on this, read my post about process journalism.
BIAS: I have lots of it, and I never try to ignore it or hide from it. The main thing to know about me is that I’m a champion of entrepreneurs and the startups they build. They are my rock stars. If in doubt I side with them, and that’s clear from my writing. For more on this, read my ll always disclose the conflict of interest directly in that post.
Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel talks about Facebook rejecting a $1 billion offer from Yahoo in 2006. He and Accel’s Jim Breyer were on the same page – “take the money and run.” But Zuckerberg said no. He “barely humored the idea of selling,” says Thiel. Which is about the same thing we heard back then: “At one point in the Yahoo negotiations, the talks… → Read More
Facebook is showing your content to far fewer people than they used to, says Nick Bilton at the NY Times, pointing out that while his subscribers have soared, the number of likes per post has declined rapidly. Josh Constine writes his thoughts here. Bilton’s theory is that Facebook wants to incentivize people to pay to promote their content, so they show unpaid content to far fewer people. → Read More
Anyone wanting to see the whole “history is written by the victors” thing in process should read Tim Wu and John Gruber battle it out over exactly why Apple has kicked the crap out of everyone else since the late 90s. Wu, who’s confused about what open v. closed systems really mean (he uses a variety of definitions), says that Apple has succeeded despite being a closed system. → Read More
Editor’s note: The interview between Hunter Walk and Jason Kincaid reprinted below originally appeared on LinkedIn. Follow Hunter on LinkedIn. I was happily surprised to see Hunter Walk interview Jason Kincaid, one of the first TechCrunch employees. The interview is here and I’m reprinting it below. Jason joined TechCrunch when it was still being run out of my house (before the city… → Read More
So I was chatting with my dad yesterday. We had a long drive home after the Department of Homeland Security seized and impounded my boat. The mood was somber. We were talking about how awful America has become. We are a nation that has been split into groups that absolutely hate each other. Debt is rising, taxes are rising and freedom is being demolished. Meanwhile our elected officials are doing… → Read More
Yesterday I wrote about the ongoing CNET editorial independence issue. I said that the editors and journalists at CNET were part of the problem, and suggested that they either publish their (assumed) dissent, or resign, or both. A conversation began in the comments of that post, with some people saying that it isn’t reasonable to expect people to resign. From Danny Sullivan: I think a lot of… → Read More
A couple of weeks ago CNET was put into an absurd situation – they could not favorably cover a technology product because the company behind that product was in litigation with CNET’s parent company, CBS. I wasn’t all that interested in the story at the time. Reporters and bloggers are constantly pressured to write or not write about things by parent companies and even business… → Read More
Nik Cubrilovic points out that people were significantly less enraged by Aaron’s legal troubles just a few months ago. → Read More
In 2008 I was griping about 2,433 unread emails in my inbox. Which is nothing. Today it’s up around 7,000, and I declared an email bankruptcy just a few months ago and started fresh. Cue, a handy mobile app for organizing and searching your online data across a variety of services, released some fascinating anonymized user data this afternoon that confirms what we all know already. → Read More
I love talking about taxes. Our President and both houses of Congress have finally all agreed on a deal on this whole fiscal cliff mess. I’ve been holding my breath on this because I thought for sure that I’d be paying a lot more in taxes this year. But I dodged the bullet. All venture capitalists did, actually. Nothing the government agreed to in the last few days actually affects the… → Read More
It’s just about 2013 and I gotta say, I’m a little bored.
At least, the blogger in me is. As an investor things are just peachy. All this panic about overpriced consumer startups has led to a nice softening of the market (periodic reports of Blubbles are great for that). And other sectors, like business to business, is still under capitalized v. the consumer sector. → Read More
TechCrunch reader Kuan Yong sent me an email today showing me something that I thought I’d never see. I thought it must be some photoshopped joke. But I’ve confirmed it for myself. TechCrunch, it seems, has joined the Tapjoy app download circle jerk parade. Paying for app installs is just embarrassing. To do it to manipulate app rankings is also a clear violation of Apple’s terms… → Read More
Ron Conway, Silicon Valley’s best known angel investor, got quite a gift this evening. Laurene Jobs, the wife of the late Steve Jobs, dropped by the Conway annual holiday party this evening and unveiled what I can only describe as an epic painting of the man. It was hung on the wall, and just about everyone in attendance took a picture. The painting is based on a photo taken of Ron and his… → Read More
You can’t say I didn’t give it an honest try. It was over a year ago now that I tried switching from an Android phone to the iPhone. The main reason I had waited so long was my tether to Google Voice – I’m all in there after porting my phone number to them a few years ago. And Google Voice never worked natively on the iPhone. → Read More
We just got screwed. More on this below.
Nobody says “Web 2.0” anymore. The term just didn’t stand the test of time, long ago it became clichéd.
But a handful of years ago it had real meaning to a lot of us. It encompassed a lot of ideas, but chief among them was the notion of mashed up web services, all collaborating via APIs. → Read More
A TechCrunch tradition: wasting time in the office by putting ourselves and coworkers into JibJab videos (and then posting them). They just released a Gangnam Style one, starring you as Psy. Get to it. → Read More
The question isn’t really whether you’ll watch the amazing Gangnam Style video with MC Hammer from the American Music Awards last night. It’s how many times you’ll hit “replay.” I’ve now watched it half a dozen times. → Read More
Livestar first launched at TechCrunch Disrupt a few months ago. It’s a mobile app that lets you see (and write) reviews for the things you generally want reviews for – restaurants, movies, music and other apps. The company was founded by former Microsoft M&A exec Fritz Lanman. → Read More
Dan Lyons has a post over on ReadWrite facilitating a classic Mark Cuban rant. Cuban is pissed about the Facebook Promote fees for the Dallas Mavericks Facebook page – he was asked for $3,000 to reach 1 million people who’ve already Liked the page. → Read More
Memories of Scamville have faded, and we don’t see the brazen customer ripoff schemes from the big gaming companies these days.
But the main company behind Scamville, Offerpal (the company renamed as Tapjoy after the Scamville disaster), just can’t seem to find an honest way to make a buck. In their new incarnation Tapjoy is the primary purveyor of paid app downloads, and it has made a mess of… → Read More
Microsoft has an impressive new universal translator demonstration – Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid shows a real time translation of English (voice) to Chinese (voice, via text), with the interesting twist that the translated language is spoken in his own voice.
Rashid writes about it here, and there’s a video. More here.
This is a product that just naturally resonates with people. We’ve… → Read More
No one understands why President Obama didn’t hammer Governor Romney on his 47% secret video comments during the first presidential debate. In hindsight, a mistake. Like President Obama, Google is throwing away its best ammunition against the iPad mini – pixel density – by publishing marketing materials that make the Nexus 7 look like a turd. → Read More
San Francisco residents will be voting on Proposition E next week, an important measure aimed at eliminating the ridiculous payroll tax companies here pay and replacing it with a (slightly less evil) revenue tax. The net effect – an estimated increase in tax revenue for the city of around $28.5 million next year, and a significantly more startup-friendly environment. → Read More
Hey.
My name is Michael Arrington. For newer readers who don’t know, I founded TechCrunch back in 2005.
Last year I was fired and began writing on Uncrunched. → Read More
It was May 2010 and all I wanted was an answer to my question, “What is Yahoo?” Then Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz wasn’t able to answer that question. But the conversation was…lively anyway.
TechCrunch wants to try this again, and newly minted Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and I have both agreed. I’ll interview her at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, coming up in just a few weeks. → Read More
Hey! So TechCrunch Disrupt New York is just around the corner on May 19-23. So, what, you say, you don’t work here any more, right? (for the newer TechCrunch readers, I’m the guy who founded the site)
Well, yeah, I don’t work here any more because Aol fired me last year. Lots has been written about that. No need to rehash it all here. We’ve all moved on. → Read More
There’s confusion – way too much confusion – about my status at TechCrunch and TechCrunch’s status at Aol after last week’s announcement that I was launching a venture fund, partially backed by Aol.
The multiple conflicting statements made by Aol on Thursday and Friday of last week are evidence of that confusion, but that isn’t the core issue. My employment relationship with TechCrunch and Aol… → Read More
Everything’s candy and roses for Dropbox today as the company simultaneously breaks out the expensive champagne and whispers “no comment” to anyone asking about the news. No matter, though, I’m right here cheering them on, too. That’s just how I roll. High fives, all alone, but there in spirit.
Anyhow, all this reminiscing about the young days of Dropbox and I kept coming back to this one… → Read More
Hot damn, I want one of those HP TouchPad tablets. Why? Because they’re sold out!
Perception of scarcity is a fascinating human condition. It’s one of the first things we learn as children – that running towards something is usually a guarantee that you won’t get it. But act like you don’t want something, and it’ll come running to you. The creation of the perception of scarcity is a winning, if… → Read More
Dropbox is finally moving to close that massive valuation venture round we’ve been talking about all summer. According to multiple sources, Index Ventures will lead the round, which values Dropbox at around $4 billion.
At some point I hope that the entire story comes out about this round. Nearly everyone in Silicon Valley has taken a look. There was early interest at valuations of $8 billion or… → Read More
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