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.
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 is not the core issue. The only issue being discussed at this point, the only issue that matters, is TechCrunch editorial independence and self determination. Regardless of my role, if any, going forward.
I believe that Aol should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence. → 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 story. It happened about a year ago, at the Lobby Conference in Hawaii put on by August Capital. I’ve attended the conference each year and it’s a blast. But there’s one big rule – everything is off record – and if I break that rule I’ll get banned from the event. So I spend the weekend somewhat under utilized. I still collect information quietly but don’t say a word until I get back to the real world, and even then I’m hazy on whether or not my sources were drunk on Mai Tais at the time of disclosure. This is all true – just look back at the big stories I’ve broken in the week that follows the Lobby conference each year.
Anyway, back to Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. A bunch of us are out at dinner. I’m sitting between Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson having their first heart to heart after Jay resigned as CEO of Digg. Kevin ate most of the sushi before it got down to me, and Jay drank all the alcohol before it made its way to me. So I was sitting there hungry and thirsty and listening to some of the best content I’ve heard in a long while and I was thinking if a permanent ban from the conference was worth it if I could just sneakily pull out my video camera and get a clip of Jay telling Kevin what he could go do to himself. → 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 shallow, tactic in most human relationships.
And finally HP has its day. In July HP couldn’t sell a TouchPad tablet despite having distribution deals with Best Buy and other major retailers. Apple had sucked all the oxygen out of the tablet market. HP offered its inferior product at the same price as the iPad. But consumers weren’t fooled. No one wants a Dodge at a Cadillac price. → 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 more, although one source says that it may have been firms who threw out huge numbers just to get a look at the company’s financials. As of a couple of weeks ago I had “firm” information that the round would close at $5 billion or more. → Read More
Next year, search advertising will be a $15 billion market in the U.S. alone, growing by 14 percent, according to eMarketer. And, if Facebook can capture half the share of that market that Google has today, it could easily add an extra $25 billion or even far more to its value.
For most any CEO who could have even a modest chance of succeeding at it, that payoff would be reason enough to take a serious look at entering the search category. And yet, while I’m sure he wouldn’t scoff at the extra revenues, profits, or valuation, I suspect that Mark Zuckerberg finds something else far more motivating than just increasing the financial value of his company.
And that’s what will propel him next year to make a completely disruptive entry into the search category. → Read More
Y Combinator had its semiannual demo day earlier this week, where many of the 63 startups in this batch showed their stuff to investors and press for the first time. It was the largest demo day so far. And they did the same show two days in a row so more people could come.
What struck me about the day wasn’t that so many companies were launching, or how awesome more than a few of them were. Unlike most events like this, the audience wasn’t mostly paying attention to their phone or laptop or tablet. It was more like the audience at a movie theater – quietly watching with their full attention. People like Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Ron Conway and others there, too. And people didn’t flock to them like they usually do. It was all about the new companies.
It hasn’t always been like this. Just a few years ago when I started TechCrunch new startups launching tended to do it in my living room or back yard during one of the monthly parties at my house. I’m being quite serious – see this old post, for example. That’s my living room, and those pictures show companies launching right there. Once the parties got too big we moved to other venues – the last one had 600 people and my house was a wreck afterwards. Someone was coding on top of my washing machine, and a very stoned VC was passed out on my couch because he couldn’t find his car keys (turned out they were in his pocket, but we searched my yard with flashlights for an hour). → Read More
On Sunday we broke the news that Skype was acquiring group messaging service GroupMe. What we didn’t know was the price, and neither company disclosed any of the terms of the deal other than that GroupMe would remain a standalone brand for now, and the team would stay in New York.
A widely spread report said that Skype paid as much as $85 million for the year-old company. We’ve heard this number is a bit high. What’s the real price? → Read More
It was only a year ago that I first wrote about Greplin, the “other half of search” for you online life. It’s an incredibly useful search engine that indexes your online email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Calendar, Dropbox and other stuff (22 services are currently supported). Greplin is a single search box for all of this, and it’s fast.
Until now, though, you had to use the HTML5 site for mobile use, there was no dedicated application. If you’re an iPhone user, that’s now changed. Android and other users have to wait a bit longer.
Why the need for a dedicated app? 20 year old CEO Daniel Gross says they needed an app to add in their most requested features. The goal is to reduce typing by anticipating what you need – if you open the app on a way to a meeting, Greplin can use your location and the date/time to make an intelligent guess you want an address or phone number relevant to that meeting, and then give it to you.
The Greplin iPhone app’s predictive accumen is impressive. → Read More
Back in the Summer of 2008, when there was still a glimmer of innocence and belief in the fundamental goodness of people in this young blogger’s mind, I decided that I wanted a touchscreen tablet. Something like the screen side of a Macbook Air, plus a touch screen. It would mostly be for “couch” computing, I said. although I also meant “bathroom” computing. Here’s that post, titled We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.
At the time there was no iPad, or hope of one. Apple had ditched the idea, we’d heard, after unsatisfactory testing of a device with employees. So our choices where hugely expensive and near-useless tablets like the Dell Latitude XT. Meh. → Read More
Thrive Capital’s first venture fund was just $10 million, but the fund made 27 investments and more than a couple look like home runs. That fund, closed in 2009, holds stock in GroupeMe (acquired by Skype), Greplin, Art.sy, Warby Parker, Zaarly, Fab, Bank Simple, HotPotato (acquired by Facebook), KickStarter and OnSwipe, among others. Not bad for the sole partner, 26 year old Joshua Kushner, who’s also a cofounder of embattled but hugely successful Vostu.
Now Kushner has raised a second, $40 million venture fund. But unlike most other funds, Thrive also has a co-investment structure with some of their limited partners that enables the fund to write much larger checks. The effective size of the fund is much larger, possibly up to $100 million. → Read More
Skype will acquire group messaging service GroupMe, a service that was born at a hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York in 2010. GroupMe was founded by Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci.
The terms of the deal, including price, aren’t being disclosed.
Just a couple of months after TechCrunch Disrupt the company closed a $850,000 round of financing from Betaworks, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and a number of prominent angels. Early this year the company raised $10.6 million more from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst and previous investors. → Read More
Tax the rich. Those bastards.
I get why people who aren’t rich hate those that are. No one really cares what they have, they only care what they have relative to others. When there is inequality, and there always is, even the hyper intelligent call for a redistribution of wealth. It’s an enduring longing for us as a species, and no evidence to the contrary will convince people it just doesn’t work in any large group.
What I really didn’t understand until recently though is why so many rich Americans seem to loathe their richness as much as everyone else does. Many in Silicon Valley want to tax the rich into the middle class and let government spend and spend and spend. The super rich tech elite flock to Obama, joining in the call to screw the rich as loudly as all the rest. → Read More
WhaleShark Media, which just announced an investment by Google Ventures, continues to acquire coupon sites around the world. Tomorrow they’ll announce the aquisition of eConversions, Ltd., operator of the web sites VoucherCodes.co.uk in the UK and Gutschein-Codes.de in Germany. Vouchercodes is the UK’s largest coupon site, says Whaleshark.
The size of the acquisition isn’t being disclosed, although we’ve heard it’s around $40 million in cash and stock. VoucherCodes is currently generating around $15 million in revenue, we’ve also heard from sources, although the company wouldn’t confirm that either. → Read More
We’ve been tracking the twists and turns of the Dropbox mega funding round for over a month now. In July Sarah Lacy wrote that they’d be raising $200 million to $300 million at a $5 billion or higher valuation. A week ago MG Siegler wrote that the auction process was over and Dropbox was considering bids as high as $10 billion.
The company has now chosen which investors will lead and participate in the round, we’ve heard from one of our sources. The final valuation will be less than $6 billion, and we’ve heard that the original estimates of a $200 million – $300 million round are still accurate. We do not yet know who’s leading the round or otherwise participating, but that information will probably become available soon. → Read More
Ah, litigation. Nothing ever really gets done, but the lawyers get paid, and there’s always drama. The Vostu v. Zynga case exemplifies all of this. And it just got weird to boot. Today a U.S. judge just told a Brazilian court that they can’t shut down a Brazilian startup. That’s definitely a new one for me.
Background: On June 16 Zynga sued Brazilian clone Vostu in California for stealing Zynga’s games. Vostu’s initial press response was to (1) point out that the two companies have overlapping investors, and (2) make note of Zynga’s less than pristine past when it comes to respecting others’ intellectual property. I called that the “I know you are but what am I defense.”
That’s always a crowd pleaser, but courts often hold themselves to a higher standard. So last month Vostu filed a response to Zynga’s lawsuit. That response also brings up another defense – that the lawsuit is retribution by Zynga over a failed attempt by Zynga to create a “strategic relationship” with Vostu. → Read More
If you’re like me you’ve thought about digging up old 8mm film, or VHS tapes, and converting them to a more modern format. There are a lot of services that fulfill this need – just do a search for “media conversion” or something similar and you’ll see dozens of services. Most of the sites don’t inspire much confidence in sending them priceless childhood videos, though. And generally they focus on getting media to DVD and mailing it to you.
Omaha, Nebraska based PeggyBank stands out. The company mails you a pre-addressed box for your media. You can include anything – photos, slides, negatives, 8mm video or VHS. They’ll convert it all, put it on their site for you to view, and return the original media. You can then share links to the digital files, or download them to keep on your hard drive, burn to DVD or CD, etc.
Here’s an example video from 1958. → Read More
The economy is a mess. And while venture capital is still flowing like whiskey during the Prohibition, it’s not right for every business. A year ago we wrote about the birth of a new type of investment fund, Revenue Loan. The experiment has worked, says founder Andy Sack. They’re expanding it, changing their name, and offering $500,000 to the right type of startup.
First, the basics. Revenue Loan is now Lighter Capital. They’ve completed eight revenue loans in the last year. The companies received $100k – $500k each in a loan. They then pay a small (3ish) percent of their monthly revenue to Lighter Capital until the initial capital has been paid off 3x-5x. Sound expensive? It can be a lot cheaper than equity venture rounds in the long run for the right companies.
Usually Lighter is looking for startups with real revenue and growth. But in at least one case they invested pre-launch. Check out Tomato Battle, where thousands of people are paying $50 to have a massive tomato fight. You’ll probably see me at the next one throwing tomatoes along with everyone else. → Read More
DJ Patil, the former LinkedIn Chief scientist who recently left Color Labs, now has a new job. He’s the “Data Scientist in Residence” at Greylock Partners, working alongside his old colleague, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
This title’s a new one for me. Venture firms regularly hire experts in particular areas who can help their portfolio companies, like Bessemer’s “Designer in Residence.” And firms also hire lots of “Entrepreneurs in Residence” – successful executives and entrepreneurs who need a place to park for a while as the figure out what their next company will be. But Data Scientist in Residence? Never heard of it.
Patil tells me it’s a hybridization between a standard entrepreneur in residence job and the executive in residence roles where experts help portfolio companies. Eventually he hopes to join or start his own company. In the meantime, he wants to work with Greylock’s portfolio companies to help them leverage data into new products and services. → Read More
I’ve said this before, but working at AOL is my first experience working at a “big” company. I’ve watched, mostly with amusement, as a Dilbert cartoon has come to life around me. Some of the policies and bureaucracy are useful (I’ll think of some examples, just give me a second).
Some are hilarious (forced drinking events). Some are really annoying. For example, every couple of weeks I get an email titled “AOL Standards of Business Conduct Training” with the demand “As a new employee, you are required to complete one hour of web-based training on the Standards of Business Conduct (SBCs).” The only problem is that I need to have access to the AOL network to complete the training, and they’ve never given me access so that there’s an information barrier between me and the company.
But there’s one weird policy that really stands out. AOL is absolutely crazed about questioning employee expenses. Our CEO Heather Harde deals with the brunt of the pain involved in getting expenses approved. But I’ve dealt with my fair share, too. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
