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Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

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Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#151

Post by bl4k »

McClure dug himself into a hole with his first response. He didn't think two moves ahead. In poker parlance what McClure did was to bet the turn on a semi-bluff not anticipating an all-in shove from his opponent on the river.

McClure's post - through both its style and its content, left an opening for Conway to come out with this email. Dave is stuck now, and his only response from here is to come clean in some way and clear the air.

McClure has made all sorts of mistakes, first the blog post, and then the accidental tweet. He is not handling this very well and I feel for him because he is the only person from the dinner who is speaking out. The other people in attendance are suspiciously quiet (and giving away that they were there by being quiet) and leaving it to Dave to do the talking (and not doing a very good job for himself or for the rest of them).

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#152

Post by tomjen3 »

pg wrote: post #147
credo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good summary. However, I'm surprised that so many other comments talk about Conway rocking, being a great individual etc. When I read his email, my thought was that the email was a great image-building propaganda tool and that he wrote it with the knowledge that the email would be made public. His email talks how great he is, how he loves entrepreneurs and how other investors are in it for self-serving fact…

Ron would not do that. First, he's not the sort of person who would write an email hoping it would be leaked. If he has something to say, he just says it. But also, if he'd written this to be leaked, it wouldn't sound like this; he wouldn't have said some of the things he did, and he would have showed it to his posse, who would have fixed the misspelling of "entrepreneur." I suspect he is mortified this got out. It m…

Either that, or one of the super angles are staying inside exactly so that he can leak this and work against the conspiracy.

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#153

Post by tomjen3 »

mahmud wrote: post #125
bootload wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... he world's most prolific angel investor apparently doesn't know how to spell "entrepreneur" ..." There is another (sneaky) explanation. Ron simply sent out many of these emails to different people with another word with incorrect spelling. This allows you to identify exactly who leaks the message. This is an old "intelligence" trick used to identify the source of information leaks.

That would only work if he controlled the mailing-list server, assuming this is an actual mailing list, and not a "CC all" ad-hoc solution.

Lets be honest - Ron Conway would have no problem getting a mailing-list server he could fix with.

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#154

Post by krosaen »

gkoberger wrote: post #16

There's one thing I noticed about Arrington at Disrupt- sure, he's a dick, but he's only a dick to people who a) can take it and b) deserve it. I can't think of a single instance where he has called someone out, and it turned out later he was wrong. For example, some of the panel at Disrupt were being rude (talking amongst themselves during a startup presentation), and he stopped everything and called them out on it.…

I found this post from a year ago convincing that arrington jumps the gun sometimes, examples include "google apps free is done" to the last.fm debacle http://www.somebits.com/weblog/culture/blogs/techcrunch-wron...

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#155

Post by mfukar »

techiferous wrote: post #120
cookiecaper wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so sure their intentions are pure or that "none of them are genuinely bad guys"? Do you know the people that were there well? If you don't, you're not really qualified to say this. People put a lot of time into image and posturing and often it has little to do with what's really under the surface. If they are in actually involved in illegal collusion, they should be charged and prosecuted. I don't think i…

"genuinely bad guys" Here's my take: generally, people and life situations are very complex and the reality is that people don't neatly fall into categories of "good guys" or "bad guys". Zoroastrianism really emphasized individual responsibility and thinking of individuals as good or bad. This made its way into Judaism and then spread into Christianity and Islam. Since our heritage as a nation is Christian, we have p…

Maybe, but we all use stereotypes. We imagine/form/accept patterns and they make our lives easier.

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#156

Post by dmoney »

lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #7
bretthellman wrote: post #4

"Dave McCLure…pls try not to blog about this and cause silicon valley more embarrassment with your unprofessional classless writings" OUCH

I seriously don't understand how people were defending his writing style. Anyone over ninteen would realize the use of multi-colored text, "drop a cap in yo ass" lines, and lack of capitalization looks like you're lazy and incompetent. I realize he's done fairly well in his investments, but does he not have an extra 2-3 minutes to capitalize and think out more coherent analogies?

His writing style's certainly drawing attention away from the issue at hand, so I'd say it works for him.

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#157

Post by ericb »

tomjen3 wrote: post #152
pg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ron would not do that. First, he's not the sort of person who would write an email hoping it would be leaked. If he has something to say, he just says it. But also, if he'd written this to be leaked, it wouldn't sound like this; he wouldn't have said some of the things he did, and he would have showed it to his posse, who would have fixed the misspelling of "entrepreneur." I suspect he is mortified this got out. It m…

Either that, or one of the super angles are staying inside exactly so that he can leak this and work against the conspiracy.

Were I interested in identifying the leak, I'd send an email with faked headers that looked like it went to everyone, but actually send each person a version that is subtly different--a misspelling of a word, or a variation in white space, or punctuation. Then, I'd wait to see which appeared on TC.

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#158

Post by flocial »

Ron Conway wasn't at the dinner in question. If you read all the information out there, it all comes down to Mike got snubbed, made wild allegations in anger, the first person to stand up (Dave) got ran over by the collective truck, TechCrunch posts suggestive information and the party goes on. The ball is still in Mike's court to produce something of substance.

At first, I admired Tech Crunch for having the guts to post something like it but looking it over there's no substance to it. It's just yellow journalism for the digital age. Complete rubbish that feeds into the collective psyche.

Re: Ron Conway Drops A Nuclear Bomb On The Super Angels

#160

Post by jacquesm »

rythie wrote: post #148
sharjeel wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if a) Twitter could take it b) Twitter deserved it http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/in-our-inbox-hundreds-of-co...

Someone else would have published it if they hadn't.

That's the lamest excuse of all to do something like that.
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