Erick Schonfeld

Erick has been discovering and working with startups his entire professional career as a technology journalist, startup event producer, and founder. Erick is President & Founding Partner at Traction Technology Partners. He is also a co-founder of TouchCast, the leading interactive video platform, and a partner at bMuse, a startup studio in New York City. He is the former Executive Producer of the DEMO conferences and former Editor-in-Chief of TechCrunch (where he helped conceive, lead and select startups for the Disrupt conferences, among other duties). Prior to TechCrunch, which he joined as Co-Editor in 2007, Erick was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine, and a senior writer at Fortune magazine covering technology.

At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving media property. After founder Michael Arrington left in 2011, Schonfeld became Editor in Chief.

Prior to TechCrunch, he was Editor-at-Large for Business 2.0 magazine, where he wrote feature stories and ran their main blog, The Next Net. He also launched the online video series “The Disruptors” with CNN/Money and hosted regular panels and conferences of industry luminaries. Schonfeld started his career at Fortune magazine in 1993, where he was recognized with numerous journalism awards.

The Latest from Erick Schonfeld

SocialFlow Opens The Floodgates

Erick Schonfeld
Brands love marketing across social media, but it is a little like TV advertising in that it is hard to measure how effective it is. Sure, you can count retweets, likes, and Klout scores, but how does

Pedestrian Map App, Lumatic, Raises $800K From Joi Ito And 500 Startups

Erick Schonfeld
All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at <a href="http://lumatic.com/">Lumatic</a> don't think they are good eno

How Facebook Really Stacks Up Against Pre-IPO Google

Erick Schonfeld
Now that Facebook is preparing the biggest tech IPO in history, it is possible to compare its financials and potential market value to Google's when it went public. At first glance, all of <a href="ht

Sh#t VCs Say: “Have You Ever Tried Kiteboarding?”

Erick Schonfeld
Following in the tradition of "<a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/01/25/finally-someone-makes-shit-silicon-valley-says/">Shit Silicon Valley Says</a>" and other Shit ______ Says memes, August C

Yammer Time: In 2011 “Pretty Much Everything Tripled”

Erick Schonfeld
<a href="https://www.yammer.com">Yammer</a> grew like crazy last year. How crazy? Product VP Jim Patterson just tweeted out the Yammer 2011 Year in Review infographic below with the comment: "Pretty

You Know What’s Cool? $1 Billion In Profits

Erick Schonfeld
We learned a <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/zuckerlog/">lot of things</a> about Facebook today from its <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-files-for-5-billion-ip

Facebook’s Profits: $1 Billion, On $3.7 Billion In Revenues

Erick Schonfeld
Facebook just <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-files-for-5-billion-ipo/">filed</a> its IPO registration (<a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034

The Birth Of An American Giant—Basic Clothing Sold On The Web

Erick Schonfeld
Nothing is made in this country anymore. In terms of actual manufacturing, America is increasingly at a disadvantage. The logic of the global economy moves jobs overseas. Get used to it, we are told.

Ben Horowitz: “It Took About 3 Weeks” To Raise Our $1.5 Billion Fund

Erick Schonfeld
<a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/financial-organization/andreessen-horowitz">Andreessen Horowitz</a> is definitely killing it these days. The unconventional VC firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Be

Jason Kilar: Hulu’s 2011 Revenues Of $420 Million Was Actually Above The “Board Plan”

Erick Schonfeld
Last year, Hulu brought in <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/01/12/hulus-2011-revenue-grew-60-percent-to-420m-will-invest-500m-in-new-content-this-year/">$420 million in revenues</a>, with was

CardSpring Raises $10 Million To Connect Payments To The Web

Erick Schonfeld
We measure every last click when it comes to the Web, but there remains a gulf between online and the real world. Yet the online world increasingly drives behavior offline, especially when it comes to

TrialPay Raises $40 Million From Visa, Greylock, T.Rowe Price

Erick Schonfeld
Offers are a booming form of advertising in which consumers are presented with offers to try or buy products. It is particularly popular in social games where players <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.

Twitter’s Dick Costolo: “We’re Growing Faster Than We Have Ever Grown Before”

Erick Schonfeld
Does Twitter need Google or does Google need Twitter? It's a question complicated by recent events, such as the two companies not coming to an agreement to extend their previous partnership through wh

Pre-IPO Filing, Facebook Trading Privately At $84 Billion Valuation

Erick Schonfeld
As everyone waits for Facebook to <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/01/27/wsj-facebook-filing-for-ipo-as-early-as-wednesday/">file for its IPO </a> this week, one of the big questions is what

LivingSocial CEO: Lumping Us With Groupon Is Like Lumping eBay With Amazon

Erick Schonfeld
The local commerce industry as represented by daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial is still barely learning to walk, even though Groupon has <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/01/23/d

For Those Who Can’t Let Go Of The Past: The Techmeme Re-Underliner

Erick Schonfeld
Remember the old <a href="http://www.techmeme.com/">Techmeme</a> of a week ago, before the <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/01/26/the-new-techmeme-design-plus-your-world-minus-underlined-link

Apple’s Off-The-Charts iPhone And iPad Sales

Erick Schonfeld
Sometimes you have to see things to truly appreciate their magnitude. Apple's latest <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/apples-q1-2012-46-3b-in-revenue-37m-iphones-and-15-4m-ipads-sold/">

LivingSocial Now At 5,000 Employees, Half The Size Of Groupon

Erick Schonfeld
A few days ago, at the DLD conference, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason revealed that his three-year-old daily deal company now has <a href="https://beta.techcrunch.com/2012/01/23/dld-2012-andrew-mason-groupo

What Apple Should Do With Its $100 Billion In Cash: Buy Hollywood

Erick Schonfeld
"Kill Hollywood," is the latest battle cry from Silicon Valley. If you are <a href="http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html">Paul Graham,</a> that's not a bad way to motivate young would-be founders to creat

Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC Raises $55 Million For Fund III

Erick Schonfeld
The micro-VCs are growing up. Case in point: <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jeff-clavier">Jeff Clavier</a>, who started out as an angel investor backing Web 2.0 companies and then transitio
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