Techcrunch's new chief exec

So Heather Harde is to come in as chief exec of Michael Arrington's Techcrunch. We should have listened to Valleywag commenter, Alexandra, who had heard that the Fox M&A exec was in the market for a new job. So, is it a smart hire for Arrington's tech publishing group? Generally, I'm skeptical about the operational abilities of dealmakers. There's a reason why they're dealmakers, and it's usually because they don't have the patience to grow a business organically. And if Harde was to do what she knows, and consolidate other properties? The group, which gets about 3m pageviews per month from its flagship property, needs scale. Acquisitions would help Arrington get there more rapidly. The hitch, and its a big one: there are few independent titles in online tech media; and the owners tend to have larger egos than their sites have scale. Any acquirer, whether Techcrunch, Federated Media, or one of the new rollup vehicles we're hearing about, has an unenviable task.

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