When I first reached out to MG Siegler to join TechCrunch two and a half years ago, I knew he was an amazing talent who could help cement our place as the premier technology blog on the Internet. Ever since Michael and I hired him, he has not disappointed. As his TechCrunch power has grown, others have noticed his talents as well. Everyone from the New York Times to every one of our competitors has tried to recruit him away, but he’s always stuck with TechCrunch.
Over the past few months, a lot of venture capital firms have been trying to hire him as well. This time, the lure was too great. He decided to change careers and will become a VC, just like Michael Arrington. In fact, Michael is the one who is hiring him as a general partner at the CrunchFund (beating out offers from several other top-tier VC firms MG was considering). But MG will be the first to tell you that his decision to become a VC predates all the recent drama around Michael leaving TechCrunch (and I will let him tell you so himself in his own post).
While MG will only be working full time as a writer at TechCrunch for another month, I am pleased to announce that he will continue to write for us after that on a regular basis as an outside columnist. The scope of what he will write about will be very narrow: Apple. He won’t write about startups or venture capital. And just like he has always done, he will continue to follow our editorial standards, which require strict disclosures for any kind of conflict whatsoever—financial, business, or personal.
Apple is a big enough company and a big enough story to keep him busy as a columnist. MG is one of the top journalists in the world writing about Apple already. (Check back tomorrow when he will be covering Apple’s iPhone event).
As our first official columnist, MG’s new role will also mark another change at TechCrunch. We are going to have a lot more columnists. In fact, you already know many of them because they are currently regular contributors—people like Chris Dixon, Mark Suster, Andrew Keen, Steve Gillmor, Cyan Bannister, and Jon Evans. (You can find them here). Some are also investors, others are journalists, we’ll even have a few founders and CEOs. Stay tuned for more announcements. And, yes, I am also hiring more full-time writers, but more on that in a future post.