This is a very important lesson for Michael Arrington and many people reading this can learn from it without losing too much emotions or money themselves:<p>Someone, who claims this to be a cofounder of your business even once, is not your friend! Don't support their claims, don't pity them. They try to exploit you.<p>This kind of person is really good at keeping you emotionally hooked, and therefore even let you find excuses for their behaviour. Think for yourself: Would you claim ownership over their pet project like that? Probably not.<p>So be strict with yourself and let that person go. The earlier the better. They won't change. Your interpretation is not wrong. It's not your fault. And most importantly: You have earned and will find true friends that support you. And with them together you will make lots of money if you have that in you.
I won't say a huge deal about this, as I now work with Keith again, and haven't spoken to Mike for years, but I'm extremely surprised to see this version of events, as when I worked on Edgeio (I built the prototype, and managed the dev team for a while and continued to build the system) while Edgeio's and Techcrunch's offices were both in the house Mike rented in Atherton (Edgeio was largely built from the bedroom across from Mike's and the hall outside his room, while Techcrunch's office was his bedroom...), I got a very different impression from Mike in person.<p>E.g. "started hanging out at my house and meetups" is a curious characterisation when Mike's house was literally the shared offices for both for quite a while.<p>Mike at least once described Techcrunch to me as growing out of the work done to do research for Edgeio, and Archimedes Labs as a partnership between the two. Though it is possible for both that and Mike's version now to be true, my impression as someone who was there was always that both companies (Techcrunch and Edgeio) were shared projects, and Mike did nothing to dissuade that impression though it was clear Techcrunch was more Mike's baby than Keith's.<p>Of course I was never privy to whatever discussions the two of them had behind closed doors.<p>EDIT: Here [1] is an archive.org link from 2005, that lists Mike and Keith equally, on a post posted by the web designer who also did a lot of early work on Edgeio, describing them both as editors and Techcrunch as part of the "Archimedes Ventures" family. It was hard from that kind of presentation at the time to not see it as something they co-founded. I don't want to go into it further, as that'd be speculation on my side too (and of course what Mike let someone put on the site does not have to reflect what he thought about it in private) - I looked this up to see if there was anything to change my recollection:<p>[1] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch.com:80/?page_id=120" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch...</a>
>As a final note, I want to add that if anyone was a “cofounder” of TechCrunch it was Heather Harde. She joined in 2006 but she was in the trenches with the team until the very end, working 20 hour days, sacrificing her personal life and giving everything she had to make the company what it was. Heather never sells herself like Keith does, but she should. Unlike Keith, she helped build that company, and gave way more value than she ever took.<p>As someone who's also been an early employee, I totally see why Heather does NOT claim to be a co-founder. When you work your ass off alongside the founders, you learn two things:<p>1. Building a company is incredibly hard.<p>2. Nobody takes it harder than the founders.<p>Yes, I have worked hard. In the last six years, I always worked parts of my weekend if not my vacations (which were few and far in between early on). I pulled off all nighters as well as a last minute trip straight from work to close a customer. I fell asleep on my laptop answering support questions. There were many nights of dry tears and waking up in cold sweat from nightmares that were all too real.<p>But what I went through is a fraction of what the <i>real</i> founders went through. And I saw their ups and downs up close.<p>Startups are hard. Incredibly hard, especially for those who has to lead the ship from Day One. Early, dedicated employees see this first hand, thinking to themselves, "Man, I thought I had a good/bad day, but they are probably having it better/worse". That's why we never claim to be the "founders".
It seems the one fact that nobody is disputing is that the guy in question owned 10% of Techcrunch. Generally people who own 10% of a company had significant involvement in it. Not always, there are always edge cases, but that is a good general rule.<p>Maybe this is one of those edge cases. But claiming somebody who owns 10% of the company had literally nothing to do with the company is an extraordinary claim that I'd say requires extraordinary evidence. This blog post to me doesn't seem like extraordinary evidence.<p>But really the conclusion of this saga is pretty irrelevant. If somebody is investing in any type of business because an advisor to that business may or may not have co-founded a tech blog 12 years ago... well they have bigger problems.
Regardless of what the legal structure was, it's pretty pathetic to keep calling yourself a "cofounder" when everyone knows you didn't do jack shit for the company.<p>Kind of amusing because that's what that guy seems to be doing on a Twitter thread <a href="https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776</a>
It does muddy the waters somewhat and allow for a claim that he is "credited as being part of" that he was listed as an editor on the about page. [0]<p>In fairness to the author, he does point this out.<p>If this individual really did do as is claimed and really did nothing other than try to stop TechCrunch's existence, it may seem to some a strange thing to continue to associate with such an individual.<p>To have provided a link to the website of archimedes ventures [1] on the about page [0] where the author is listed alongside this individual as one of two "general partners" seems like a slightly surprising omission when covering the "real history."<p>It seems that had archimedes ventures been more successful than TechCrunch has been, the author could have been able to have claimed to be a greater part of that than this article would suggest.<p>[0] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcrunch.com:80/?p=2" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcr...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archimedesventures.com:16080/?page_id=2" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archim...</a>
I don't know anything about what might have actually happened or who said what back when, but FWIW when I first met Keith a few years ago (I only see him socially, not professionally) we talked about what each of us had done in the past and about TC all he said was words to the effect of "..and I was involved a bit when Techcrunch got going. Then I ...". The only reason this even stuck in my mind at all is my GF had earlier described him as having founded TC, so I noted what he said to correct my my understanding.<p>Maybe other times he played his involvement up more, and maybe other times Arrington played it up more (as have been noted in these comments) but literally the only time Keith ever mentioned TC in my presence is completely consistent with what Arrington says in this blog entry "is what really happened".
Doing a quick search on the About TechCrunch page and TechCrunch wikipedia page for "Keith Teare" will yield no results.<p>Another reason to do your due diligence when investing in ICOs.
This gets played out in all companies every day: You do something interesting in your spare time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit and soon enough he is the visionary leader while you get transformed in to dude doing engineering implementation of his ideas.<p>Lot of big projects where you will see one of the executives or managers attached, the real work - including vision - is many times done by that engineer working away in his/her weekends. I know of at least two Ted talks (one from Google exec) where the real person having the idea and doing the work never ever gets even mentioned.<p>Very recently this is exactly what happened my current job. I hate the guy who is nakedly and blatantly taking all the credit of my work. There is nothing I can do because he is favorite in the upper management chain. I don't even get to present my own work because he has convinced the upper management that I'm just an engineer and not good at executive-level presentations. Unlike Arrington, there is nothing I can do except leave the job but when I try that I get grilled through stupid CS questions. Meanwhile my manager was ironically featured in TechCrunch for all the work I did.<p>The credit stealing by managers in tech world is huge huge huge problem.
Arrington deleted a whole bunch of tweets today seemingly about his worry that SEC is going after investors investing in... shady ICOs. anyone know what they said?
I used to eulogize my role in the early internet because being one of ten thousand felt good. Now I keep quiet about it because I doubt I did much of value and none of it persists. The real work was done by people we all know and me and my fellow nine thousand mainly were early adopters with minor bug reports to our name. Work is work.<p>It feels like some people prefer to mythologize their roots but I think deprecation is safer.
Two sides to every story. One thing that sticks out here is why Arrington of all people would easily cave and give 10% to someone who did "nothing."
When starting a new company (esp without any compelling background), no one cares about their project. So founders often reach out/involve potential employees/advisors/supporters on the side line, and sometimes those name appears on incorporation document/contracts/rent agreement etc because founders were trying to get things off the ground. And they don’t want to screw up the newly built relationship to get going.<p>Situation like these do not make someone a real co-founder.
> Ultimately Keith knew I could just walk away from it all and TechCrunch would lose all its value, so he relented and I agreed to pay Keith 10% of any value I received in the company eventually to avoid litigation.<p>I know and have done business with Mike.<p>That said the above sounds like Mike may have been using resources [1] of Edgeio and so essentially to avoid litigation Mike had to give Keith a cut of the action. So as a stretch Keith could claim that w/o those resources (pay, reimbursement, guidance and so on) Mike would never have been able to start Techcrunch. That doesn't make Keith a founder for sure. But then again (taking Keith's side of this not that I have any reason to do so at all) it doesn't seem entirely unjust that he got 10% of Techcrunch. He could probably rework the 'techcrunch' connection creatively to reflect this.<p>Also nobody gives up 10% of a company in this circumstance (remember Arrington went to law school) unless they feel the other party has a leg to stand on and they stand to loose more. Generally of course.<p>[1] "He asked me to work with him on Edgeio and possibly other companies he was to start.
I agreed and began working with him.".."At the time I was working with Keith Teare on another project called Edgeio, a company that he founded"
How does this actually matter? Various players either have stock and money from tc or they don’t.<p>I’ve seen maybe a half dozen first hand examples of companies here in Colorado bootstrapping, getting some real funding, going through a big pivot and then having their history effectively rewritten. CEO and maybe a CTO are named “founders” and neither was involved in any capacity for the first 12-18 months. After a pivot and some branding, about the only original equipment is the name of the corporation and some legal paperwork, perhaps a couple employees. Engineers do this too, surely we’ve all witnessed a little “title inflation” on LinkedIn, I think it’s almost a disease with dissolved startups, I just assume someone gave themselves a bump when reading a resume with details from a completely nonexistent startup.<p>“Founder” is funnier though, it’s one thing if you got payed, but it’s not like you’re claiming engineering experience. Seemed like a few years back at defcon and black hat, folks were getting twisted about “credit,” like Apple and MS, etc.. were going to give “Solar Ninja” credit for finding a security flaw they fixed in a service pack.
Michael Arrington is named as an advisor to Nexo [1]. Is this connection legitimate?<p>[1]: <a href="https://nexo.io/" rel="nofollow">https://nexo.io/</a>