Gawker: valleywag, edgeio

TechCrunch owner's startup slips into TechCrunch50 lineup

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:20:00 EDT

The TechCrunch50 is out and again the list reads like a self-parody. Shryk? Swype? There is one interesting startup on the list, however: Fotonauts. Not because we know or care to know what Fotonauts does. We're just intrigued by Fotonauts president Keith Teare's habit of saying he owns 10 percent of TechCrunch. Isn't that a refreshing bit of honesty about how a list like the TechCrunch50 gets put together?

Arrington himself describes Teare as someone "who formerly cofounded Edgeio with me," leaving out Teare's relationship with TechCrunch. As we understand it, Arrington and Teare swapped 10 percent stakes in their companies. Since Edgeio, an online classifieds startup, went under, we suppose that makes Teare the better dealmaker of the two. He's also more brutally honest. On his LinkedIn profile, Teare says of himself: "I am Mike Arrington's business partner in TechCrunch. I'm the one who advised him not to do it. :-)"

Winner of Edgeio auction another Web loser

Tim Faulkner — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:00:56 EST

The main thing anyone ever knew about Edgeio, an online classifieds startup, is that it launched Michael Arrington's career at TechCrunch. Desperate to find out more information about this "Web 2.0" thing he kept hearing about, Arrington started blogging, and eventually left Edgeio, swapping a 10 percent stake in TechCrunch for a 10 percent stake in Edgeio. Arrington's stake is now worthless — which I think would actually make Teare the savvier businessman here — and Edgeio's assets have been sold at auction.

The auction for the assets closed at $280,000, just $30,000 more than the open price, with only two bidders. This despite Teare's optimistic claim that: "a buyer will get a huge bargain at almost any price up to $6m. We had term sheets within the last 2 months and interest at valuations around $10m."

The winning bidder was LookSmart, which has itself been struggling to remain relevant after its early success in Internet advertising and search ten years ago. Arrington, who claims he has tried to avoid discussing his investments on TechCrunch, provides his own positive spin, saying he's "happy to see the assets move to a company with the resources to move the ideas forward." Of course, it's unclear what these so-called ideas are. Can anyone explain, really, what Edgeio did? At that price, LookSmart may well have just been bidding on the servers, office furniture, and links to the domain name from TechCrunch.

Michael, Do Better Next Time

rabruzzo — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:39:31 EDT

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington posts about the company he co-founded Edgio's receiving $5 million in Series A funding.

Now Michael did give the disclaimer in the post:

I won't say much more here due to the conflict of interest (I remain on the board of directors of edgeio and am a stockholder).

Good but not great Michael, your other two writers Nick Gonzales and Marshall Kirkpatrick should have taken this one. Or were you just so giddy to announce your baby stopped breastfeeding and now is suckling the endless bottle of funding?

June/July Valleyschwag review: 5 stars for cookies

Nick Douglas — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 22:02:42 EDT

The point of schwag (and the reason the Valley is buried in it) is to remind a consumer of an otherwise ethereal product or service. The less physical (or popular) the thing the schwag markets, the more the burden of cost falls on the schwag giver. (This is why Apple can sell its t-shirts while, say, Browster.com must give them away.)

It is thus with greatest pleasure that I opened the July edition of Valleyschwag. The monthly branded-geegaws package outdid itself by scoring some edibles from aol.com. Love or loathe it, any site that sends Superman cookies bound up with its logo is a winner. The crumbs may fade, but the memory of AOL's gesture — or is that just the saturated fat — will stick with me.

Equally scrumptious is the fortune cookie from Mozes, which tells me to text "fortune" to 66937 for my fortune. Not that I bothered texting, as adding "in bed" to "Mozes" was entertainment enough.

After the jump, more schwag, and someone's holding a hoedown.

Edgeio sends a pleasantly generic sticker that won't go on my iBook, as do abazab, eurekster, and snubster.

AOL accompanies the cookies with a dogtag bearing that little man. He's jumping. It's a symbol of an AOL user trying to fly. AOL must represent gravity, or lost dreams or something.

Jumpcut sends a rough but rightly-sized (small) tee. The logo looks cool enough to wear on an off day.

That's everything except waitwhat'sthisit'saPOSTER FROM VALLEYSCHWAG! Looks like the cowboys are holding a hoedown on July 14 at their office in South Park, San Francisco. Check out the deets and RSVP here.

Valleyschwag [Official site]
Valleyschwag hoedown [Announcement]

Another damn update

ndouglas — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 16:22:42 EST

Valleywag, in a vain attempt at reaching Wall-Street-Journal levels of inaccuracy, ran a non-item last week. Jeff Clavier, one of the SDForum speakers so unfairly accused of non-disclosure, sets me straight:

Sorry for the non-story here but
1) Steve Gillmor is not a root.net investor or advisor and
2) I have invited Mike in his TechCrunch capacity at the very last minute in replacement of Dick Costolo from FeedBurner who got grounded in Chicago by a snow storm the morning of the session. With just a few hours to find a suitable speaker, I could either get only 3 panelists, or add Mike who graciously agreed to join us. Edgeio had nothing to do with this.

Right, time to update the old disclosure table. After the jump, a full run-down of Valley bloggers, their special interests, and whether they're telling.

Earlier: Disclosure, kids: SDForum [Valleywag]
And: Wall Street Journal's fake blogger scandal [Valleywag]

The blogger	The blog	The make-out partner	The morning-after call
Jeff Clavier	Software Only	SoftTechVC	So his VC firm can't disclose everyone it works with. You just gotta trust him. (Heh. Trust a VC. I know, just try it for fun.)
Michael Arrington	TechCrunch	Edgeio	He name-dropped Edgeio when he mentioned it.
Steve Gillmor	ZDNet	Not root.net	Whomever he's in bed with, it's not root.net, despite my earlier report.
Dan Gillmor	Bayosphere	Fon	Smacked by the WSJ for not disclosing. Was totally disclosing.
Dave Winer	Scripting News	Edgeio	Whatever you have against Dave, you can't say he doesn't disclose.
Doc Searls	Doc Searls Weblog	Jabber, Ping, Socialtext, Spikesource, Technorati	Puts disclosures in his bio.
Robert Scoble	Scobleizer	Microsoft	Um, did you NOT know that he worked for Microsoft? Which of the "Here's a post about what we're doing at Microsoft" posts did not make this clear?

Disclosure, kids: SDForum

ndouglas — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 23:40:03 EST

An attendee of SDForum's monthly Search SIG says some folks aren't disclosing when they give talks.

Jeff Clavier (VC blogger and Edgeio investor), Michael Arrington (TechCrunch writer and Edgeio ~~advisor~~ co-founder), and Steve Gillmor (ZDNet writer and root.net investor) all mentioned their respective investments — but not that, well, they invested in them.

Could just be a misunderstanding; could be jealousy from a guy who didn't get to plug his own investments. But kids, kids, you've got to remind folks when you're plugging your own company — we tend to forget who runs what when there are so many dot-coms running around.

Search SIG [SDForum]