
Why You Always Read About Y Combinator Startups on TechCrunch - lemonysnicket
http://uncov.com/ycombinator-techcrunch-butthappy
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pg
There's no "formal agreement," because we don't have the power to dictate to
startups we fund how they should deal with the press. We tell them, as I would
tell any founder, that it is good to be covered in TC, and TC is generally
willing to write about them, because they know YC is a genuinely good source
of leads. Each one of these startups has already been selected from among many
applicants.

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ilamont
This is absolute B.S. I work for an online tech pub (The Industry Standard),
and we have also attended YC events and reported on YC startups. There was
never any restrictions on the timing of our reports other than what individual
YC-funded entrepreneurs (not YC!) requested.

I believe that PG and JL have enough on their plates without having to
micromanage press coverage to give Techcrunch this sort of edge -- they seem
to be much more interested in simply introducing press to founders, and
letting the two parties take it from there.

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SwellJoe
So, Ted Dziuba always strikes me as pretty much negative about everything. I
don't know him personally, but everything I've ever read by him has been
hyper-critical of everybody involved in our industry. And yet, he's involved
in the industry as well (he has some kind of media startup or something, that
I don't remember and can't be bothered to look up), and so ought to have a
sympathetic view of the trials and tribulations of this life.

Attacking everybody and everything just doesn't seem like a healthy way to
approach life to me, and whenever I read his articles, I'm tempted to respond
in kind and explain what a douche he's being...which is then transferring the
unhealthy attitude onto me.

I didn't realize uncov was a Dziuba effort, or I would have skipped it. And
next time I will. Life is too short to spend it railing against everything and
everybody, and I certainly don't want to get sucked up into his hate
maelstrom.

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fallentimes
pressflip.com

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wheels
Investor calls up press contacts for their portfolio companies, news at 11.

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fallentimes
Hilarious - reminds me of Ric Romero.

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motoko
"YCombinator startup will be featured on TC in exchange for the exclusive
launch story."

Translation

"TC: Hey, tell us about your startups when they're ready launch, we want to
write about them on our popular and relevant website. YC: OK."

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qhoxie
I don't really buy this for a number of reasons, which is not to say that YC
companies don't do exclusives with TC, but the author makes it sound way too
shady.

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netcan
I think the more interesting question might be why does this sound shady. It's
not coincidental. People have a tendency to regard press 'deals' as very shady
and be very suspicious that they are occurring.

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qhoxie
It only sounds shady the way the author spins it. PG explained it in plain
language above, and it sounds normal there.

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petercooper
Michael Arrington has made no secret (in the past, at least) of the fact that
he HATES being scooped and LOVES to get exclusives. And so he should! He's
trying to run the best blog in the game, so unless a piece of news is truly
massive, why does he need to run non-exclusives?

As such, it's no real surprise that a lot of Y Combinator startups make it on
to TechCrunch. As pg explains above, Y Combinator pretty much tells their
startups this, and if they give Arrington an exclusive, that coupled with pg's
reputation can seal a story pretty easily.

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jonknee
No "best of class" publication tries to operate under such an edict. It's
absurd when you think about it. The Wall Street Journal breaks some killer
stories, but also reports on all of the day's news. If they didn't no one
would subscribe, they'd wait to hear about the exclusives from someone else
who provided all the news. More over, these publications practice actual
journalism and go get the news instead of waiting to be briefed by some web
2.0 jack ass "exec".

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lanceweatherby
I work for Georgia Tech's (I hate to use the term) incubator. Very different
types of startups come out of there than YC. But media and investors come to
us every day looking for new companies. Why? Because we see a lot of deals and
vet them. YC does the same thing. Angels, VCs, and TC know that PG sees a lot
and only accepts the best. PG is the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for
Web app startups.

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vaksel
its simple really, Arrington trusts PG's judgement on what is a good or a bad
startup, so he covers them so that he can be one of the first ones to cover
the next reddit

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henning
What is worse than politics on Hacker News? Bad technology drama.

 _On Lisp_ is fucking awesome and that will never change.

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antirez
I don't read TC because the signal/noise ratio is not good for me, sometimes
there is some interesting article but most of the things are rumors, startups
with no relevancy covered, and so on. I guess there is space for the Ars
Technica of the web...

I know this is more a news site about development startups but I bet that one
of the best kind of startups one can build today is _content_ startups. The
internet is big and full of users but good stuff to read are rare.

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gwsaines
Irrational negativity. Read the first few sentences and quit. I'm really glad
that this sort of article doesn't reach the front page that often.

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thomasmallen
OK Teddy, we get it. You hate Arrington and his website. Get over it and find
better ways to spend your time than slinging vitriol.

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radley
link. bait. for. failed. website.

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netcan
worked?

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river_styx
Sigh. If we ignore uncov, will it go away again?

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ahold
The answer is simple. It is the same reason why most of you here automatically
vote for anything posted by PG to Hacker news :)

