Yeah, nice idea also while I’m here, Mike you got my email?

I love techcrunch, but i also read Read/Write Web.
Just out of curiosity are you taking on R/RW by saying

but we’ve also missed quite a few good companies because we have to make a write/no write decision very quickly

Because I honestly taught to myself when I saw Richard MacManus post about MyBlogLog aquisition by Yahoo that Mike would be pissed.
Are you mike?

Mike,

What’s the biggest mistake startups make while submitting to you that holds TC-quality startups look bad on paper to you when you’re going through daily submission?

-Zaid

Marvin, yep. I hate that guy. He’s absolutely evil.

I’m kidding, by the way. ReadWriteWeb is a fantastic blog and one of a handful that I read every day no matter what. Richard is also a good friend.

Hi Michael - I cannot post to the Forums. I’m logged in (can send a private message) says I do not have permission to post to the Forums and sends me to login page. I re-login and tells me i’m not valid. But I go back in my browser i’m still logged in (can still send a private message, see my account etc). Just FYI. Thanks~!~ A

Zaid - too much hyperbole usually means we don’t even click the link to see the company. If it’s a Myspace killer, we’re probably not interested.

The best thing to do is to get right to the facts, talk about the features, what market you are addressing, any interesting anecdotes about the company, etc.

Well he is a major rival to TC and ohh yeah he is coming up fast.
Too bad he is located in New Zealand I think.
Keep up the good work TechCrunch, maybe you will buy out R/RW.

Amy, We just sent you an email. We’re on it.

Zaid #3, Check out this post on CrunchNotes: http://www.crunchnotes.com/?p=307

Mike, good to hear you’re monitoring the forums for blogging fodder. I know it’s hard to get through to you guys through email, so providing an alternative route on to TC is great for company owners.

Marvin - he’s awesome. I agree. We all love readwriteweb. I’ve been reading him since he had just1,000 or so RSS subscribers, in May 2005.

Josh - I had forgotten about that. Yeah, that’s exactly what not to do with us or anyone else you’re pitching.

The post you linked to:

Best Way To Be Ignored

Submit a company for review that starts off with:

“_____.com Leads Web 2.0 Revolution with New Unrivalled Revenue-Sharing Social Networking Site

– In one of the most monumental projects ever created for the Internet, _____.com has launched a never-before-seen user-powered news site, positioning the company to achieve success of MySpace and YouTube proportions.”

I found something even better:):

Company XYZ Releases Google Killer
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Company XYZ today announced the release of a Google killer.
…
Currently in private Beta, Company XYZ’s new and innovative search tool GoogleKiller promotes search to the next level – by adding result clustering, Semantic Web taxonomies, the human element, as well as SnakeOil(TM).
—
Complete release: http://www.personalbee.com/1607/8638197

Good night from the east coast.

-Zaid

Mike, a suggestion for that Company Reviews forum section: impose a rule saying that if you start a new thread, the title has to be in the form of

NewSiteDomain.com: Exactly what this site is about in ten words or less

That would make it much easier to scan through the topics to find one you want. Having titles such as “FreshFortunes.com Design Feedback” and “Profilactic.com — what do you think?” and “Check out dehsoftware.com” isn’t very helpful.

“Too bad he is located in New Zealand I think.”

Hey!

Thanks for the nice words Marvin, but actually I see R/WW as complimentary to TC rather than a competitor. We occasionally write about the same things, but from a different angle I think. I read TC religiously, because I value Mike’s opinion - and hopefully he reads rww for the same reason. Plus of course he’s a good friend and puts me up whenever I venture across the Pacific ocean to Silicon Valley.

Also, nearly every blog wrote about MyBlogLog yesterday (and iPhone today). So I’m not sure why me writing about it would’ve pissed off Mike? But nevermind, it was nice of you to mention me Marvin

Paul, good suggestion

I still think a startup contest on the forums with TC users voting and MA investing in the winner should happen! Heck, MA could sit back and pick off the best startups each quarter and broker funding…

Hello Richard. I do also read your blog religiously but in my humble opinion, not until today, I always taught you and Mike were rivals (even when you link to his site often).
I am happy to know that you guys completely support each other.
This brings to mind a lady Alice Backer ( http://kiskeyacity.blogspot.com )who is part of an organization that brings bloggers and blogs together( http://www.globalvoicesonline.org )
She always pushed me toward doing what you guys do for the tech world for Haiti.
I hope one day it will happen, maybe I’ll have a Start-up promoting Haitian blogs or Francophone Blogs.
When it happens I’ll make sure I post it in your forums and maybe both Arrington and MacManus will link to my site.
PS: Richard, for the record, I said the thing about New Zealand because you did post once that your New Zealand readers are a very small number.

Anybody know who holds the record for the maximum number of PhD’s obtained by a single person, and how many?

For anyone who hasn’t seen this:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/20....._in_t.html

> For anyone who hasn’t seen this…

Was there, great conference. Many interesting things were said about TechCrunch. Micro$oft needs better food in their conference buildings though…

Great advice from the Mikee here on how to pitch a submission:

http://startups.in/exchange/di.....w-economy/

I would hazard a quick caution at this point. Google learned the hard way as are now Digg,. Theres great temptation to try and manipulate contests as such. I’m not sure what the answer would be? I will have a think about it.

One other point, in contests such as, (user generated) there is no way to rank users themselves thus you have long drawn out comments from retards like (us all) who are out to profit at the same time. Not sure about the solution for this either? But will have a think.

anther, scoring should be not for first impressions (how it looks) but whats under the hood. The amount of people who never look under the bonnet (hood) when buying a car, far outstrips those that do, likewise with users on sites. They say things like “I don’t like the colour, its not got a stereo, I want one with big wheels. Ive got go faster stripes on mine…

So who’s going to police the rioters? How to get the cream to rise to the top? else you will just end up wading through yet more crap to get to the crops.

agentbleu

You know mike . I dont like your blog now.

You forgot to cover the largest technology round in 2006 for a “Mobile VoIP” startup called ((truphone)). I have the product since 3 months when they launched and I have never read about it on your blog. You seem to miss quite a lot. I believe they launched in Fall last year in US and UK and are a mega success story. This is the way mobile communication will go. I love it, it just saved me $2000 on my holiday trip over Christmas. Everybody should now the story about truphone as it is very relevant. just find out yourself on http://www.truphone.com , these are a the “new kids on the block” going after the old GSM / 3G model with an opensource infrastructure which just beats everything.

so what do you suggest, go back to drawing board, or continue development and tweak things…. after everyone on the forum pretty much dismissed our site

How ’bout rewarding the submission that got that forum rolling? You’ve covered Spokeo, ProfileLinker. Why not Profilactic?

http://forums.techcrunch.com/f.....hreadID=87

forget google and youtube, my startup is a ratemypoo.com killer

Here’s a good piece about “why” everyone needs to pitch to Techcrunch, yeah, I wrote it It’s still relevant.

http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2006.....r_mar.html

TechCrunch is where it is because of the obsessive profiling of start-up companies. Traditional journalists overdo the scepticism of new players and underdo it for established players, understandable because most new companies and initiatives will fail, so in a statistical sense, their scepticism is valid. TechCrunch has taken a more optimistic, almost an evangelical approach, with the mission to cover as many ventures as possible, providing fledgling new ventures that crucial initial spark; what they make of that initial spark is up to them.

The forums section is a cool addition, giving even more fledgling companies that opportunity. The good karma of introducing so many new companies and products is what comes back multiplied several fold as traffic to TechCrunch.

Sridhar

Great idea. I checked it out and there were quite a few interesting sites. Some though… Well time will tell.

Congratulations on the addition.

Simple words of advice that I see done wrong all too often:

Say what your company does, not what it doesn’t.

Say what you are, not what you are like.

Couldn’t agree more with the post.

I am just hoping the forums don’t turn into mlm/get-rich-quick heaven. Good moderators will help keep that from happening.

What is your definition of a Startup?

Ted - saying what you are like puts your product in context. There’s nothing wring with that.

If I say we are like salesforce.com, but with a great free edition, lots of web 2.0 features and not just for salespeople - what’s wrong with that?

Nice service,Mike.

-Amit
http://www.ipatrons.com

There should be a way to rate (perhaps the ever subtle thumbs up thumbs down) the companies profiled in the forums so that the most liked go to the top, as I’m interested in checkin em out but too lazy to scroll.

A democratization of startup announcements if you will….has the chance to be a digg and reddit killer

Granted that takes the ease out of running the tech crunch forum…and they’re all 2nd tier companies (in Mike’s view) anyways….just a thought

Mike
On the forum, I get disconnected from the internet after clicking two or three links. Any answers. Thanks.

Maxcon - you are actually getting disconnected from the Internet? Or is your browser just closing, or a freeze? We’re looking into this, any additional facts would be appreciated. If we’ve found a way to actually disconnect people from the Internet I intend to patent it immediately.

By disconnected from the internet, do you mean you can no longer connect to any site on the internet, or just thoughout the forums? Sounds like an odd by very serious problem. Please send me an email to Nick at techcrunch.com.

Mike - lol…you better patent this before I beat you to the hammer, we are 3 hours (NY) ahead of you guys.
Nick - Totally disconnected, I can no longer connect to any site.
This is happening only in the forums.

I really like the new forums. They were a great idea and greatly increase site stickiness.