Did Michael Arrington Screw Jason Calacanis and the State of California?

http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/10/did-michael-arrington-screw-jason.html

by cletus • 16 years ago

41 14 16 years ago

sammcd• 16 years ago

I don't see moving to get away from taxes screwing the state. If anything it allows market forces to work with competition between states.

If people are screwing the state by doing this, then the New York Yankees are screwing New York by training in Florida.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Steinbrenner_Field

michaelhalligan• 16 years ago

Could we get a new section for HackerNews that says "Social Media Drama"? Then we could filter this entire soap-opera out?

mbyrne• 16 years ago

"Did Michael Arrington Screw Jason Calacanis and the State of California?"

No. Next question?

ceejayoz• 16 years ago

"Should we even care?" Also no.

jwr• 16 years ago

Why do people get so excited over Arrington? Seriously, why do we hackers have to read about a lawyer-turned-blogger, his poor journalistic practices, his failed enterprises, his likes and dislikes?

TechCrunch is the tabloid version of tech news. Apart from the drama factor (same as for tabloids), I just don't see how it is relevant to make it to the top of Hacker News so often.

darwinGod• 16 years ago

Adding to Arrington's likes and dislikes- and having read that "timeline", I felt that it missed out on a lot of things:

a)when Arrington got out of bed today, what was the startup he was thinking about? Was he thinking of the same startup,or a different startup in the loo? b)What did he eat for breakfast today? c)What does he intend to have for lunch?

Everyone on HN MUST know these things! I mean EVERYONE.

protomyth• 16 years ago

Valleywag was probably a little more qualified to be called tabloid tech news.

cletus• 16 years ago

TechCrunch is neither a traditional news organization nor a tabloid. It really is a blog and practices what I heard Jeff Jarvis call "process journalism":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/product-v-process-...

Basically he sometimes just throws something out there (eg angelgate) and sees what sticks.

Sometimes he gets stuff right and sometimes he gets stuff wrong.

Like it or not, TechCrunch is important in the startup world. Integrity is important in both the startup world and as a blogger/journalist.

invisible• 16 years ago

So Jason was getting 30-50% of a conference that made ~5m to 6m with TechCrunch's branding and Jason is surprised when Arrington feels like maybe he is the one getting screwed? I think maybe TechCrunch's name has a bit better branding than Mahalo...

Arrington is running a business - a startup - and he has every right to run his own conference using his brand. (Well, I guess AOL's brand now.)

maconic• 16 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm just speculating

Mike Arrington presumably wanted to reduce Jason Calacanis' stake because most of the revenue was coming from TC50 and AOL didn't want to buy them with Calacanis getting half the revenue. So Arrington, acting in his own self-interest as one would expect, sacrificed his business relationship with Calacanis in order to make TechCrunch more attractive for an acquirer. These diverging interests led to their fallout and understandably made Calacanis irate. Though, I suspect that Calacanis would have done the same thing if the situation was reversed.

bl4k• 16 years ago

I think it was clear when Arrington stormed off stage last year that they were not going to work together again.

skinnymuch• 16 years ago

I don't know much about this stuff, but the 'sacrifice business relationship with Calacanis', is that the only loss Arrington had? Seems like a tiny thing to lose. Leaving Arrington's persona out, Calacanis is a major douche from what I've seen so really it doesn't seem like Arrington lost anything from switching to Disrupt.

joshu• 16 years ago

The state auditors are on top of this kind of thing, I think.

(I had to go through this - when I sold my last company, I was forced to relocate NY to CA, and I followed the rules about where to pay the state income tax at the right time. Got audited anyway, including having to account for my location every day for three years... Sadly the auditor found that I was correct, because if I could have paid taxes in NY instead of CA I would have been better off.)

mcyger• 16 years ago

Calacanis was quotes in the article:

@arrington told me he wouldn't sell @TechCrunch for <than $40M last year.TC has ~$6m in revenue/~$1.5m in profits (all TC50!)

If this is true, and TC sold for $30MM, that would be a 20x multiple based on EBITDA. I seriously doubt that AOL paid 20x for an online magazine and in-person conference. That is way above the norms for this type of sale, based on the data I have (I am in publishing; go to http://www.jegi.com and look at their industry reports). In order to justify that type of sale, they would have to have a non-reproducible advantage over competitors but I see none. Either TC had a phenomenal sale, the numbers are wrong, or AOL isn't being responsible with their investor money.

Just my 2 cents.