Sarah Lacy launches PandoDaily (with former Techcrunch writers)

http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-pandodaily/

by diego • 15 years ago

68 54 15 years ago

pandodaily.com

suking2• 15 years ago

When I see "I do not want to sell this company" in bold - that means to me - I really want to sell this company asap.

Do we really need another site covering startups?

diego3• 15 years ago

I'm not sure that's the right question to ask. In 2003, people asked "do we need another social network?" The answer was surely no. However, (speaking for myself) I do want at least one good social networking tool and at least one good source of tech news.

There are countless sources of tech news, most of which are not particularly good (Sturgeon's Law I guess). If Sarah Lacy can manage to build a better version of what Techcrunch was at its best, that would be nice. It remains to be seen of course.

dpcan• 15 years ago

I came here to post something very similar.

"I do not want to sell this company" .... for less than a billion dollars :) She should have kept bolding.

I think there's always room for competition, even in startup blogging. Being so saturated, however, they WILL need to find a way to do something different - no matter how small - something to keep us coming back.

OoTheNigerian• 15 years ago

>Do we really need another site covering startups?

Yes.

Nobody covers startups in the aspirational way TC used to do. TC of old made you want to do a startup. TC of now/RRW/AllThingD etc, tell you about startups. just like any news site.

yuhong• 15 years ago

Personally, I think Arrington do have it's problems but I would not suggest the other writers to leave over it.

veyron• 15 years ago

She already sold the company (to investors). If she didnt want to sell the company she should have bootstrapped.

suking2• 15 years ago

Agreed. Not like a wordpress blog and design cost that much.

ChrisNorstrom2• 15 years ago

If you know Sarah in any way from her past articles and personal blog, she loved working at TechCrunch. As soon as it was sold to AOL things went downhill so she's just letting everyone know she's not making the same mistake Arrington did.

antidaily• 15 years ago

My thought was, "Sell what?"

hello_moto• 15 years ago

Yes.

We need more echo out there so the IT industry can flourish.

More users == more money channelling in.

Heck even without users as long as there's hype, there will be money.

I may sound sarcastic but can we say no to money to keep our hobby?

rewind5• 15 years ago

What do the investors get out of this if Sarah is never going to sell it?

diego3• 15 years ago

Dividends? That would be a novel concept.

rewind5• 15 years ago

Only if the dividends are going to return 10-100x over the lifetime of the investment.

staunch• 15 years ago

A return when she changes her mind. The biggest risk is that the company will fail, not that it will be a big success and she'll turn down obscene amounts of money.

flardinois• 15 years ago

my cynical answer: better/more coverage of the startups they fund?

sbarre• 15 years ago

In the same breath that she proclaims she won't sell, she pretty much hedges herself and says she reserves the right to change her mind.

tstegart• 15 years ago

Access. Probably worth a lot more than their original investment.

EDIT: I forgot to wish her good luck. Good luck!

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

The minute she writes about the companies they have invested in, they got their money. We all know that the hardest problem for a startup is user acquisition.

ChrisNorstrom2• 15 years ago

Money in advertising, emotional value, ticket sales from conferences, etc...

harold• 15 years ago

I’ve also raised a bunch of cash from some of the people I respect most in the industry. This includes: Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Tony Hseih, Zach Nelson, Andrew Anker, Chris Dixon, Saul Klein, Josh Kopelman, Jeff Jordan and Matt Cohler, all investing as individuals. Also investing are a handful of seed funds including the CrunchFund, Greylock Discovery Fund, Accel’s Seed Fund, Menlo Ventures Talent Fund, Lerer Ventures, SV Angels and Ooga Labs.

Is the coverage of any startup funded by these folks off the table? Seems like objectivity will be questioned from the start.

puls• 15 years ago

Call me cynical, but having all of this disclosure up front leaves me trusting her objectivity a lot more than the seemingly obvious alternative where unknown back room deals leave you wondering.

uptown• 15 years ago

I don't think cynical is the right word for what you're trying to say.

mtr2• 15 years ago

On a related note, if she's declared very publicly that selling this venture would be a failure, what's the exit strategy for her investors? Or (conspiracy alert) they're hoping that her coverage will help the exit strategies of their investments...?

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

I don't know how she is running her show, but I note that there is a place for 'revenue' companies. These are companies that pay a dividend on their stock quarterly.

This 'old school' concept is based on a the notion that the enterprise in question generates X revenue, and then Y gross margin on that revenue, and divides up the net margin as dividends on a per share basis. That has been a very common way for investors to participate in the success of the company they are invested in.

The economic impact is that the share price then moves based on the return compared to other securities in the market (like t-bills, junk bonds, Etc.)

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

Personal failure != Economic Failure. Example: Facebook acquires your startup for 20M, shelves the product and tell you they bought the team. Ouch.

tatsuke95• 15 years ago

You're correct. And we will question it, rightfully so.

The days of these people being "independent" media and bloggers are over. They may have been at one point, but these are cash generating vehicles, designed to promote product. And, really, I don't blame them.

But let's be realistic. She started what appears to be a blog. Why is there a laundry list of the who's-who of SV investing in it?

obiterdictum• 15 years ago

Why is it a bad thing? I think any site doing startup coverage needs to publish the list of its investors as a disclaimer.

diego3• 15 years ago

Just look at one of their first posts. One would think they could have waited a while before running a blatant ad for one of their sister companies.

http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/16/wealthfront-the-antidote-to...

DivByZero• 15 years ago

I think it would be impossible for a new blog to compete with TC/VB/etc. without serious funding.

Sarah did a terrific job at TC and I think she's worth some trust. Moreover since AOL mess TC has become so boring to read ... full of "Company X launch product Y" stories without any wit or insight ...

Personally I don't care who's funding her, I'm confident she'll create a great, trustable blog ... after all trust is the main value for a tech blog and she knows it. Moreover i'm glad to see Paul Carr, MG & Arrington back blogging :)

acangiano3• 15 years ago

I don't understand this trend of leaving RSS icons/buttons out on technical blogs. Yes, I know http://pandodaily.com/feed/ is there, but don't make it an ordeal to subscribe to you.

lkrubner2• 15 years ago

Can you name a single RSS service nowadays that doesn't auto-find the RSS feeds for you? Google Reader, and Netvibes, and Bloglines have all had auto-discovery for many years. (When I wrote a history of RSS back in 2006, most of the services I mention already had auto-discovery: http://www.category4.com/2006/10/24/rss-has-been-damage-by-i... ).

I think sites like PandoDaily.com make the reasonable assumption that you can just paste "http://pandodaily.com/ into your service, and your service will find the feed. I just tried this with my Netvibes account and it worked perfectly.

acangiano3• 15 years ago

There are two issues at hand:

1) Convenience.

2) Conversion rate (from visitor to subscriber).

Not having an RSS icon makes it less convenient for the user and "out of sight, out of mind" guarantees you less subscribers as well.

Why less convenient? Well, consider your workflow:

1) Double click in the URL address bar.

2) Copy.

3) Type in or click on your RSS reader bookmark (e.g., Google Reader).

4) Log in if you haven't already.

5) Click "Add Feed".

6) Paste the URL.

7) Click OK.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with it. Just that I find an RSS icon less cumbersome.

If you are a technical blogger, not having an RSS icon means shooting yourself in the foot and providing a disservice to your readers (particularly now that some browsers have stopped autodiscovering feeds and presenting you with their icon in the bar).

samstave2• 15 years ago

Lets just hope that whatever tool they use to write stories for this site actually includes a spell check. Or maybe they will do grammar checks on their articles finally.

I cannot recall a TC article I have read that didn't have any errors.

jonknee3• 15 years ago

Even better would be an editorial flow. Unless you want mistakes, writers should not be allowed to post on the site directly.

samstave2• 15 years ago

Agreed, but I dont think TC writers know the definition of those words.

Remember - they are "evangelists" "bloggers" and "technologists" not journalists.

googoobaby• 15 years ago

They misspelled 'PanderDaily'.

jgrahamc• 15 years ago

Is it pronounced pander-daily?

clowntown• 15 years ago

How much space will be dedicated to fawning over Mark Zuckerberg?

iusable• 15 years ago

Like Sarah (and the 'valley way') or not, she's really good at what she does - well written long-form pieces with some sort of historical perspective. She's been around the block a few times and whether you agree with her or not, she almost always makes a compelling case for her point of view.

I know that it's kinda common on here to be negative first, but I am glad that somebody like her is throwing their hat in the ring for 'my' attention. Short, sensationalist pieces are great for quick reading, but I welcome an experienced journalist's pen for what I love - startups.

Let the flaming begin.

Terretta• 15 years ago

Feels more like a Tumblr than a professional news site when you first stumble onto the home page. But if you visit from a tablet, the reflowed design is clean and easy to read. Unfortunately, the article page design with a vertical line down the left margin implies every article is a long quote, so back to feeling like a reblog.

Sarah Lacy launches PandoDaily (with former Techcrunch writers)

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