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The Real History of TechCrunch

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Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#21

Post by telltruth »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17
telltruth wrote: post #13

This gets played out in all companies every day: You do something interesting in your spare time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit and soon enough he is the visionary leader while you get transformed in to dude doing engineering implementation of his ideas. Lot of big projects where you will see one of the executives or managers attached, the real work - including vision - is many times done by…

> You do something interesting in your space time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit This is unfortunate, but not what happened here. Better analogy: you do something interesting; your roommate takes credit to hock junk securities.

This is exactly what happened here. Keith Teare had 75% equity in Edgeio. So he was majority shareholder - similar power that managers have.

He basically said he wanted to start N number of startups under the umbrella of Archimedes Labs. This meant that when Arrington accepted to become "co-founder" as minority shareholder, he implicitly accepted that whatever he does can be accounted as building new startup under Archimedes Labs. Keith then tries to get credit of all work done by him even though he had no contribution whatsoever. The difference is that Arrington can threaten legal action unlike usual employees. However things could have easily gone other way around. Arrington might have yielded in face of litigation and giving Keith 50% share, making him bonafide co-founder.

One of the tactics people like Keith exploit is this: if you ever talked to him about what you are doing, his responses would be counted as "contribution" - even if they are complete nuance. For example, if Keith would have said "I don't think this would be successful, but do it anyway" then it gets counted as participating in vision exercise.

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#22

Post by telltruth »

verytrivial wrote: post #19
telltruth wrote: post #13

This gets played out in all companies every day: You do something interesting in your spare time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit and soon enough he is the visionary leader while you get transformed in to dude doing engineering implementation of his ideas. Lot of big projects where you will see one of the executives or managers attached, the real work - including vision - is many times done by…

You sound come across as competent. If you don't feel justly compensated for this loss of credit, you need to walk.

I hear this advice all the time from my friends. If I was working on just another web development project, yes, I could walk away to yet another web development project. But if I was working on sending space crafts to Mars, then what other choices do I have in the world? Working on improving search results by 0.0001% at Google? Or identifying state actors at Facebook? Ewww....

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#23

Post by nkoren »

biztos wrote: post #9
ktamura wrote: post #7

>As a final note, I want to add that if anyone was a “cofounder” of TechCrunch it was Heather Harde. She joined in 2006 but she was in the trenches with the team until the very end, working 20 hour days, sacrificing her personal life and giving everything she had to make the company what it was. Heather never sells herself like Keith does, but she should. Unlike Keith, she helped build that company, and gave way more…

I don't disagree with you, but I call BS on the OP: 1. 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor. 2. Sacrificing your personal life for your employer is pathological, not heroic.

> 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor.

Then you've never been there. Yes, they are. Have done it many times.

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#24

Post by hnzix »

nkoren wrote: post #23
biztos wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you, but I call BS on the OP: 1. 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor. 2. Sacrificing your personal life for your employer is pathological, not heroic.

> 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor. Then you've never been there. Yes, they are. Have done it many times.

I've worked 36 hours straight in the days before I knew better. And I got off lightly compared to my friends the game industry.

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#26

Post by telltruth »

telltruth wrote: post #21
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do something interesting in your space time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit This is unfortunate, but not what happened here. Better analogy: you do something interesting; your roommate takes credit to hock junk securities.

This is exactly what happened here. Keith Teare had 75% equity in Edgeio. So he was majority shareholder - similar power that managers have. He basically said he wanted to start N number of startups under the umbrella of Archimedes Labs. This meant that when Arrington accepted to become "co-founder" as minority shareholder, he implicitly accepted that whatever he does can be accounted as building new startup under Ar…

Another tactic that people like Keith employ is to walk the fine line, i.e., claiming credits while not claiming it. Here's what his LinkedIn profile says about TC:

I co-founded TechCrunch through my friendship and business partnership with Michael Arrington. We started edgeio and TechCrunch simultaneously whilst cooperating through Archimedes Ventures LLC. I can't claim a lot of credit for TechCrunch ... I'm the one who advised him not to do it :-). I hope I helped Mike get to the point where he wanted to do it, and was able to help him be successful.

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#27

Post by waqasaday »

When starting a new company (esp without any compelling background), no one cares about their project. So founders often reach out/involve potential employees/advisors/supporters on the side line, and sometimes those name appears on incorporation document/contracts/rent agreement etc because founders were trying to get things off the ground. And they don’t want to screw up the newly built relationship to get going.

Situation like these do not make someone a real co-founder.

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#28

Post by birken »

It seems the one fact that nobody is disputing is that the guy in question owned 10% of Techcrunch. Generally people who own 10% of a company had significant involvement in it. Not always, there are always edge cases, but that is a good general rule.

Maybe this is one of those edge cases. But claiming somebody who owns 10% of the company had literally nothing to do with the company is an extraordinary claim that I'd say requires extraordinary evidence. This blog post to me doesn't seem like extraordinary evidence.

But really the conclusion of this saga is pretty irrelevant. If somebody is investing in any type of business because an advisor to that business may or may not have co-founded a tech blog 12 years ago... well they have bigger problems.

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#29

Post by modeless »

telltruth wrote: post #22
verytrivial wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound come across as competent. If you don't feel justly compensated for this loss of credit, you need to walk.

I hear this advice all the time from my friends. If I was working on just another web development project, yes, I could walk away to yet another web development project. But if I was working on sending space crafts to Mars, then what other choices do I have in the world? Working on improving search results by 0.0001% at Google? Or identifying state actors at Facebook? Ewww....

That's not a very convincing argument. There are tons of interesting space companies, like these 10: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.fastcompany.com/3026685/the...

They don't even mention all the ones I know about, like Planet Labs, or Blue Origin, or places like JPL.

Re: The Real History of TechCrunch

#30

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

majani wrote: post #25

Two sides to every story. One thing that sticks out here is why Arrington of all people would easily cave and give 10% to someone who did "nothing."

TechCrunch was a tech blog which didn't require much "operation". The site was just a wordpress blog and the only work involved was probably blogging and some wordpress maintenance.

This Keith guy never blogged, and this guy is no programmer.

The best he can claim to be is an "investor", but you really have to be shameless to call yourself a "cofounder" when you really did nothing, and use that reputation everywhere you go, especially in this case to promote scam ICOs.

Whether he deserves the 10% or not doesn't really matter. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. But you're not a "cofounder" if you did no work.

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