The founder of TechCrunch.com Michael Arrington is resigning as editor of the popular technology blog, and will run a $20 million venture-capital fund backed by AOL Inc. and several venture-capital firms according to the WSJ.com which is called CrunchFund.
“Mr. Arrington “will run the fund and will continue to write for TechCrunch, but will have no editorial oversight,” said an AOL spokesman. Erick Schonfeld, who has served as co-editor in New York, will become interim editor while AOL searches for a replacement for Mr. Arrington, the spokesman said. AOL purchased the site last year.”
“Mr. Arrington’s new fund, called CrunchFund, closed Thursday with $20 million”
As one commentator notice already that Michael may have failed to acquire the domain name Crunchfund.com before announcing the venture.
There is probably no one that has published more stories about startups in the Tech space so Its a pretty big miss not to secure the domain name of your $20 Million fund before announcing it to the world.
The domain is listed as owned to a Richard Burton registered in July 2011.
but CrunchFund.com is owned by Richard Burton (not the dead actor… but a lucky guy of NJ, still alive) and not by Michael Arrington
Only
Maybe that will be the 1st purchase made by the new fund
probably true, but, lately, we have seen many (much bigger) companies to forgot to register (or buy) the domain names of their new products, like (e.g.) Google for its Nexus phone
I remember talking to Michael at Domainfest about some different ideas and he said he had awful judgement when it came to deciding if a business would succeed.
I remember him saying he thought youtube would fail and some other BIG company.
He seemed like a clown when i met him in person.
Now, he is running a 20 million fund.
Go Mike!
guess at what price? ______
read through the headline. what’s really happening?
he’s been kicked out, or has pulled out, of yet another unethical internet “business”. why? what did he do? what did his colleagues and “business partners” do?
first he’s out of the domain resale “business”. why?
now he’s been demoted in the blog hype “business” (“journalism”?). why?
other internet authors have been commenting on how he conducts himself given his editorial oversight. is it all true? it’s not all positive.
maybe aol is not thrilled with the negative pr?
so what next?
of all the possible things a financially secure person could do with their time, he has chosen the internet vc business.
he’s chosen to join the parasites that lurk on blogs like techcrunch, seeking to profit from the work of others, without contributing any work themselves.
oh well.
more dogs to lie with. more flea-ridden days ahead.
as they say, you reap what you sow.
is techrunch really anything to be proud of?
very true, if we follow the conventional concepts of “work”.
computers and the networking are based in abstraction. start with a electrical signal, and keep adding layers of abstraction (the first being numbers) until it starts to resemble something the brain can work with.
in this case, “work” = ideas.
and you don’t get the ideas unless you spend the time to learn about stuff like bit masks.
some people working for vc firms have spent that time. but in many cases vc’s, most certainly in i.t., they have not. they understand little about the “technology”. they simply have access to funds and have learned enough corporate law to be able use it to reap profits from the work of others.
cynical perhaps, but not far from accurate.
@maybe
“is techrunch really anything to be proud of?”
Of course it is. Astonishingly successful. And it sold. A blog. Not bad.
Talk about Mr cynical. People like you are all smiles when you want the investment and then you complain when success means that the spoils are shared.
however, the registration date (july 2011) is a pretty strange coincidence … maybe, has Richard his office just near the Michael’s office, in a building with too thin walls…? 🙂
Researching end users, I came across a well-funded tech firm, with a brandable dot com, then it has a dot ie for one of its trademark products, and no domain for its other product. My work is cut out, if I have to educate someone who probably hates domainers. I feel this wall of contempt if I approach someone with a nice but meaningless domain and suggest he could extend his company’s reach with a few choice generic dot coms. It’s like 20 years ago: people feel if you pitch a domain you’re not developing, you squatted their name, even if it’s generic.
nic: sorry for the cynicism. i just don’t see techcrunch as providing much useful info. it’s pure fluff or the most vacuous variety- and although it might seem like “fun”, those behind it are after money and influence. indeed, it worked, and they sold it. but that doesn’t make it good, in my view. aol has bought more than a few fad sites that have later tanked. so time will tell.
as for me, but you’re making assumptions. personally i would take investment from no one.
assuming what we read is true, i think you have to respect some of the well-known domainers who used their own personal savings to fund their portfolios early on. that’s called shouldering the risk. and being self-made.
owning domain names is shouldering risk. traffic is predictable to some extent, there are patterns to analyze, but the internet is unpredictable to a much greater extent. there is risk in owning domain names. some owners try to spread their risk among others. but not all. i wouldn’t do that, personally. to each his own.
I don’t care for arlington one bit and his ego
Remember all the s h i t he gave domainers couple years back and his back and forth commentary with Frank Schilling
Guy is pretty rude imo. He’s about himself.
Sorry. Typo
Arrington I meant
http://www.dnforum.com/f77/techcrunch-founder-former-pool-com-pres-declares-war-domainers-schilling-responds-thread-394295.html
There’s more info about it here
http://www.businessinsider.com/aol-left-arianna-huffington-in-the-dark-about-her-underlings-controversial-vc-fund-2011-9
“CrunchFund Without The .Com”
===
people still buy .COM domains ?
…
Crunch.FUND
Interesting reading this thread. I purchased the domain back in July figured it would be a good domain to own for my website CrewBuyer.com and didn’t guess that there would be a VC firm created that used the same name.
I remember in the movie “Social Network” when
Sean Parker: “Drop the “The.” Just “Facebook.” It’s cleaner “
but, what, “CrunchFund”, has to do with “CrewBuyer”? they’re two very different names
CrewBuyer is about people banding together (crunching their funds together) in order to buy at a discount. A friend of mine actually came to me saying “I’m trying to crunch together some money ..” and that triggered a conversation about my website etc. I also own a lot of other domains like OffBook.me EasyShout.com, EasyShoutOut.com, Socends.com, goshopthere.com, groupsellr.com, javasandbox.com, lunchdealer.com, privatefriend.me, tappay.me, sonews.me, etc..
I tend to register domains of interest to me for use later on. There are times I sell them and often I keep them.
I own about 40 domain names. I tend to register domain names that I find interesting like offbook.me, socends.com, goshopthere.com, lunchdealer.com, etc.
CrewBuyer is all about people coming together and using their buying power to get the best possible deal. CrunchFund.com was registered a week before my Birthday (July 27th in case you want to send me gifts) after a friend said “I am trying to crunch together some money” and crunchmoney.com was registered a year or so ago.
I don’t make a living off of domain names. I’m an engineer who loves building websites and each domain I register is typically a project I work on during my own time.
Regards,
Richard L. Burton III
Richard
Thanks for the info, just out of curiosity has anyone approached you about buying crunchfund.com?
I haven’t checked any of my e-mail accounts. I’m far to busy with work and my start-up to be thinking about it honestly. I was surprised to hear about the forming of the company and all of the noise going on about it.
OOORRRAH !