Why Venture Capitalists Can’t Be Bloggers In Disguise
So we all know about the whole Techcrunch mess and half their writers leaving to set up a competitor while Arrington and MG Seigler moved into the world of venture capitalism. They’ve backed a number of great companies, but the big issue is they can’t fully take their blogging caps off with both having active personal blogs and contributing to PandoDaily (a new Techcrunch competitor which they backed financially and is mostly staffed by ex Techcrunch writers).
The whole messy affair has cranked up another notch today though with posts by Arrington and MG Seigler defending one of their portfolio companies Path who have been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the last week. Just when the privacy storm had cleared, up popped an article in the New York Times that the guys took offense to responding with their own attacks on the author and creating a new story within a story.
Short Memories
Sometimes people get stories wrong or you don’t agree with what they write about your company. When Techcrunch was in its prime, they leaked private documents that belonged to Twitter and were constantly involved in exposing things that were happening within start ups. This pissed no amount of people off and even though it was mostly accurate, it still left a bad taste of many of the the companies involved.
Now the shoe is on the other foot and although not involved directly in the companies the pair are tied up there through an investment in Path. So what is the first thing they do when the going gets tough? Flip the story around and go on the attack. Now it makes no difference that the story in the NYT wasn’t as well written as it could have been because, in my opinion, investors with such high profiles shouldn’t be getting involved in tit for tat.
They have once again turned themselves into the story, and while being at the center of a story was a unique and genius ploy which they developed when professional bloggers, I’m not sure it works when investing large amounts of other people’s money in start ups.
More Attention Is Bad For Path
The guys might think they are doing a great thing standing up for their company, having the reach and platforms to do so via Twitter and their personal blogs, but they are adding more flames to the fire though. This thing is going to run and run and go to another level now that it’s turned in to a bitch slapping session. All the egos have arrived and it’s on the top of Techeme.
Path are caught in the middle and if I was their CEO and just getting over one of the toughest week’s in the life of my company, I’m not sure I’d be happy to be facing in to another week with round two just limbering up. The apology should have been the end of it all with everybody moving on.
So what if the New York Times came out with yet another inaccurate piece a few days later. Let it slide. Point people to the original apology and let them move on to whatever this week’s big controversy or let people get back to speculating about the screen resolution on the upcoming iPad 3.
You Don’t Know The World’s Best Investors
You probably have heard of Warren Buffet but most people don’t have a clue about the rest of the big investors in the world. For the most part, professional investors like to keep a low profile and rightly so. Their objective is making money, helping the companies they invest in and not drawing the spotlight on themselves.
I mostly agree with what Arrington and Seigler are saying and if they had written it as bloggers, I’d be patting them on the back for their honesty and for calling something out that deserved to be. As investors they need to hold their fire though. Their drug is exposure, comments, techmeme, page views and all the other things that come with blogging.
Investment doesn’t deliver the same sort of instant exposure or constant thrills that being involved in a fast paced story does. I think the guys are the two best tech writers on the planet, they look like they are pretty shrewd investors as well but trying to wear both hats at the same time is just going to end in more trouble.
