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Crunch time

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ArringtonA year back, AOL bought TechCrunch for c$30m. I had a passing interest as there are some similarities between TechCrunch and TechMarketView and, perhaps, between Michael Arrington and Holway/Miller. Could TMV be worth 5x revenues? Then in March, I had My Lunch Date with Arianna Huffington and was bowled over by this dynamo of a lady. I must admit, I pondered later what might happen if AOL bought us and  I had to work for Arianna and quickly concluded ‘No’. A clash of personalities would have been inevitable.

Since 1st Sept, the Arrington/Huffington – TechCrunch/AOL story has hit the headlines. Basically Arrington has set up an investment fund – CrunchFund. I think most people (incl us) would consider this a ‘conflict of interest’. Huffington faced off Arrington saying he couldn’t be both Editor of TechCrunch and head the CrunchFund. Yesterday Arrington announced that he was leaving AOL. Indeed he did it by wearing a T-Shirt with “From TechCrunch Editor to Unpaid Blogger” emblazoned on it.

The Wall Street Journal interpreted all this as more a Clash of Personalities rather than a Conflict of Interest. Arianna took issue and took them apart in her blog. But most observers continued to report considerable “Trouble at the AOL mill”. There is a surprisingly good expose of this in The Atlantic Wire – should you want a blow-by-blow account.

The ‘problem’ here is that really good content is actually produced by really bright people who tend to have big egos, strong opinions and prickly personalities. Big companies taking over such small enterprises face great problems in ensuring that those personalities can ‘fit in’. What Arrington could do when TechCrunch was small and independent is quite different to what is accepted in a large publicly company like AOL. CrunchFund and TechCrunch were clearly incompatible under AOL.


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