Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#21

Post by swyx » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:04 PM UTC

DEI / MEI culture war aside:

> After years of corporate ownership, culminating in Yahoo’s sale to private equity firm Apollo, TC has become a milquetoast site focused on big raises specially placed by expensive PR people and random tech news that has been neutered into pablum. The current editorial structure, controlled by one or two old-guard TCers and a lot of older editors hired by editor Connie Loizos.

sad to realize that this is exactly what i was feeling about TC in the last 3-4 years. is it salvageable?

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#22

Post by jdbiggs » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:09 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #21

DEI / MEI culture war aside: > After years of corporate ownership, culminating in Yahoo’s sale to private equity firm Apollo, TC has become a milquetoast site focused on big raises specially placed by expensive PR people and random tech news that has been neutered into pablum. The current editorial structure, controlled by one or two old-guard TCers and a lot of older editors hired by editor Connie Loizos. sad to rea…

author here: probably not.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#23

Post by PedroBatista » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:11 PM UTC

brigadier132 wrote: post #18

> White dude CEOs like Brian Armstrong and Jesse Powell came out hard against DEI efforts and even paid employees to leave, which led, incidentally, to morale at their companies so low it could be measured in millisieverts. But they were making money, baby, so it was all good. > So, by all measures, Alexandr Wang’s MEI bullshit was just that, bullshit Amazing, I don't think he gets it. His rant about white dudes whil…

Even by Bay Area standards, the last decade and a half has been beyond obscene by the amount and level of douchebags created and their most asinine takes and sins.

As time passes like in everything we tend to forget the bad things and imagine the past with rose colored glasses when the borrowing rates were essentially zero.

But then you interact with one of "those key people" from that era, and dear Lord.. your soul exits the chat.

Btw, Tech Crunch is and always was almost from the start a cesspool of snakeoil salesmen with zero scruples and a shitty pseudo PR firm. Everybody knew this and "everybody" with VC money played the game.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#24

Post by throwup238 » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #4

> But in the end, TC is no longer relevant... Here’s the saddest thing: it should be. Startups haven’t gone away. Any media startup could essentially recreate Arrington’s model and start selling little ads while profiling startups. Fun can be had poking holes in Valley blowhards, and there could be reams of content to be had by telling people how to be successful in startup land. But TC won’t do that anymore. The aut…

The average person probably knows Techcrunch from the HBO show since the Disrupt conference was a major plot point. Like you said they were never a bastion of journalism.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#25

Post by oaththrowaway » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:19 PM UTC

swyx wrote: post #21

DEI / MEI culture war aside: > After years of corporate ownership, culminating in Yahoo’s sale to private equity firm Apollo, TC has become a milquetoast site focused on big raises specially placed by expensive PR people and random tech news that has been neutered into pablum. The current editorial structure, controlled by one or two old-guard TCers and a lot of older editors hired by editor Connie Loizos. sad to rea…

It was lost as soon as AOL merged with Yahoo. The leadership of the entire "Oath" suite of companies was a joke

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#26

Post by nuz » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:20 PM UTC

I'd like to continue on the narrative here but the truth is kind of that tech itself hasn't really had much exciting things to report on in the ~2017 to now period. If I were in their shoes I'd probably switch reporting to anti tech as well.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#27

Post by snats » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

nuz wrote: post #26

I'd like to continue on the narrative here but the truth is kind of that tech itself hasn't really had much exciting things to report on in the ~2017 to now period. If I were in their shoes I'd probably switch reporting to anti tech as well.

Deeptech is going crazy, all of the AI boom is pretty much an obvious subject if you are in media, and finally you still have your usual gossip. You still have a lot of eyes

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#28

Post by unyttigfjelltol » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:25 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #15

karaterobot wrote: post #4

> But in the end, TC is no longer relevant... Here’s the saddest thing: it should be. Startups haven’t gone away. Any media startup could essentially recreate Arrington’s model and start selling little ads while profiling startups. Fun can be had poking holes in Valley blowhards, and there could be reams of content to be had by telling people how to be successful in startup land. But TC won’t do that anymore. The aut…

I remember noticing years ago (say 2008) that TechCrunch was heavy on stories about Facebook and Google long after either company ceased to be a startup. I was told back then that this is a function of their readership which is not really interested in startups and is more interested in FAANG or whatever you call it these days. I post quite a few "Company A has raised $B million to do C" articles to HN and I find tha…

Founders of that era were hoping to sell their ownership to the FAANG, so it makes perfect sense a startup-oriented outlet would cover FAANG, maybe with a little too much enthusiasm.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#29

Post by baxtr » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

PedroBatista wrote: post #23

brigadier132 wrote: post #18

> White dude CEOs like Brian Armstrong and Jesse Powell came out hard against DEI efforts and even paid employees to leave, which led, incidentally, to morale at their companies so low it could be measured in millisieverts. But they were making money, baby, so it was all good. > So, by all measures, Alexandr Wang’s MEI bullshit was just that, bullshit Amazing, I don't think he gets it. His rant about white dudes whil…

Even by Bay Area standards, the last decade and a half has been beyond obscene by the amount and level of douchebags created and their most asinine takes and sins. As time passes like in everything we tend to forget the bad things and imagine the past with rose colored glasses when the borrowing rates were essentially zero. But then you interact with one of "those key people" from that era, and dear Lord.. your soul…

Then there are the hard working people commuting every day to their jobs optimizing the products we use daily.

There are many companies like that in the valley too. They just don’t get the attention they deserve.

That’s one of the reasons I miss Steve Jobs. He delivered so much value but could also play the attention game so well.

Re: Tech, Crunched: How the go-to site for startup news lost its way

#30

Post by mudil » Mon, Jul 15, 2024, 7:26 PM UTC

Speaking as an MD, as someone who founded a medical technology blog in 2004, and closed it this year.

Not only TC collapsed but the whole blogosphere collapsed. The independent journalism has collapsed.

When Google and others take your content, crawl your site, store your data, use it and resuse it to serve targeted ads on memes, the journalism becomes a useless pursuit without salary. Google destroyed the internet.

It's a tragedy for whole society.