
Did Michael Arrington Screw Jason Calacanis and the State of California? - cletus
http://www.cforcoding.com/2010/10/did-michael-arrington-screw-jason.html
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invisible
So Jason was getting 30-50% of a conference that made ~5m to 6m with
TechCrunch's branding and Jason is surprised when Arrington feels like maybe
he is the one getting screwed? I think maybe TechCrunch's name has a bit
better branding than Mahalo...

Arrington is running a business - a startup - and he has every right to run
his own conference using his brand. (Well, I guess AOL's brand now.)

~~~
maconic
_Disclaimer: I'm just speculating_

Mike Arrington presumably wanted to reduce Jason Calacanis' stake because most
of the revenue was coming from TC50 and AOL didn't want to buy them with
Calacanis getting half the revenue. So Arrington, acting in his own self-
interest as one would expect, sacrificed his business relationship with
Calacanis in order to make TechCrunch more attractive for an acquirer. These
diverging interests led to their fallout and understandably made Calacanis
irate. Though, I suspect that Calacanis would have done the same thing if the
situation was reversed.

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skinnymuch
I don't know much about this stuff, but the 'sacrifice business relationship
with Calacanis', is that the only loss Arrington had? Seems like a tiny thing
to lose. Leaving Arrington's persona out, Calacanis is a major douche from
what I've seen so really it doesn't seem like Arrington lost anything from
switching to Disrupt.

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jwr
Why do people get so excited over Arrington? Seriously, why do we hackers have
to read about a lawyer-turned-blogger, his poor journalistic practices, his
failed enterprises, his likes and dislikes?

TechCrunch is the tabloid version of tech news. Apart from the drama factor
(same as for tabloids), I just don't see how it is relevant to make it to the
top of Hacker News so often.

~~~
protomyth
Valleywag was probably a little more qualified to be called tabloid tech news.

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sammcd
I don't see moving to get away from taxes screwing the state. If anything it
allows market forces to work with competition between states.

If people are screwing the state by doing this, then the New York Yankees are
screwing New York by training in Florida.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Steinbrenner_Field>

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joshu
The state auditors are on top of this kind of thing, I think.

(I had to go through this - when I sold my last company, I was forced to
relocate NY to CA, and I followed the rules about where to pay the state
income tax at the right time. Got audited anyway, including having to account
for my location every day for three years... Sadly the auditor found that I
was correct, because if I could have paid taxes in NY instead of CA I would
have been better off.)

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mbyrne
"Did Michael Arrington Screw Jason Calacanis and the State of California?"

No. Next question?

~~~
ceejayoz
"Should we even care?" Also no.

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mcyger
Calacanis was quotes in the article:

@arrington told me he wouldn't sell @TechCrunch for <than $40M last year.TC
has ~$6m in revenue/~$1.5m in profits (all TC50!)

If this is true, and TC sold for $30MM, that would be a 20x multiple based on
EBITDA. I seriously doubt that AOL paid 20x for an online magazine and in-
person conference. That is way above the norms for this type of sale, based on
the data I have (I am in publishing; go to <http://www.jegi.com> and look at
their industry reports). In order to justify that type of sale, they would
have to have a non-reproducible advantage over competitors but I see none.
Either TC had a phenomenal sale, the numbers are wrong, or AOL isn't being
responsible with their investor money.

Just my 2 cents.

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michaelhalligan
Could we get a new section for HackerNews that says "Social Media Drama"? Then
we could filter this entire soap-opera out?

