Michael Arrington
J. Michael Arrington is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of [TechCrunch](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/techcrunch), a blog that covers startups and technology news.
Born in Huntington Beach, California, Arrington grew up in Huntington Beach, California and Surrey, England. He attended the [University of California, Berkeley](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/university-of-california-berkeley-2) and graduated from [Claremont McKenna College](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/claremont-mckenna-college-2) with a major in economics.
In 1995, he went on to [Stanford Law School](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/stanford-law-school). Arrington practiced corporate and securities law at [O’Melveny & Myers](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omelveny-myers-llp), and [Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wilson-sonsini-goodrich-rosati). His clients included [Idealab](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/idealab), [Netscape](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/netscape), [Pixar](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pixar), [Apple](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/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](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/realnames) as VP of business development and general counsel. In 2000, he cofounded [Achex](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/achex), an online payments company that was later acquired by [First Data Corporation](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/first-data-corporation) for $32 million.
Arrington also 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 the COO to a Kleiner-backed company called [Razorgator](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/razorgator), and was consulted to other companies, including [Verisign](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/verisign-2).
In May 2008, Time Magazine named Michael Arrington as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
Crunchbase profile →Latest from Michael Arrington
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2 Legit 2 Gangnam Style: How The Amazing Hammer/PSY Duo Was Born At Google Zeitgeist
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
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Livestar 2.0: Reviews Done Right (Also, Get A $30 Amazon Gift Card)
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
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Mark Cuban Bought Facebook Stock, Right Before He Didn’t
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
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Apple Stomps On Tapjoy’s App Download Circle Jerk (Again)
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… Read More
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Is There Much Of A Market For A Universal Translator?
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. Read More
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Hey Google, Your Nexus 7 Marketing Images Look Like Crap
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
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If You Love Startups And Live In San Francisco, Vote Yes On Prop E
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
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Paid Blogger
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
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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer On Stage At TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco
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… Read More
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I’m Back
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
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Editorial Independence
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… Read More
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Speaking Of Dropbox, Here’s My No. 1 Phone Prank
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… Read More
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HP Discovers The Wonderful Power Of Scarcity, And The TouchPad Lives On
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… Read More
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Index Leads $4 billion Valuation Round In Dropbox
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… Read More
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Prediction: Facebook Will Enter the Search Market Next Year
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… Read More
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Unbridled Entrepreneurism
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. Read More
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What Skype Really Paid For GroupMe
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… Read More
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Greplin Releases Must Have iPhone App To Organize Your Life And Avoid Rabid Googlers
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… Read More
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Dear HP: Please Keep Making Those CrunchPads! Er…TouchPads
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. Read More
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Thrive Capital Raises New $40 Million “Scalable” Fund
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… Read More
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