this way, you are more agile and more robust, opinionated and bring faster reactions from your readers thus winning (hopefully) trust which enables people to throw money at you to be around you and your business.

enough ranting good video.

As for super teams – doesn’t have to fit into a one person one company model. Free lance and independent guerilla teams could fit into your dream team model, Michael.

Good luck !.

Hyper bowl?

Sell ient?

I still maintain that we should replace Web 2.0 with the word corndog.

Corndogs need an easy interface for the mass market such as a stick. There has to be mustard to add to the experience. There also has to be a way to distribute the manufacturing and promotion so that everyone enjoys corndogs.

Corndogs production will need financial backers and cross promotion opportunity from the established old economy condiment industry.

Mike posted a post (and a follow up) about how popular blogs are taking different paths to growth…

But Mike Arrington doesn’t seem to be saying “put off funding” so much as “let’s put together a Dream Team and THEN go out and get funding,” so it doesn’t seem like putting it off per se is his point.

No, rather, his point must be, as you say, “the dream team/super-blog-network would be able to raise money at much more favorable terms than most of the blogs individually.”

First, while this is generally true, it shouldn’t be taken as a given. Arrington seems to be yelling at the folks who took money, “Idiots! We could have gotten a group rate!” But if you don’t know what was negotiated in each case, isn’t it presumptuous to say you could do better?

It would be a more compelling argument if what he was proposing allowed people to do something they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Instead, he’s asking people (who, he doesn’t exactly say) to WAIT, and turn down EXISTING OFFERS for pie-in-the-sky.

“Favorable terms” might also mean different things to different people. For some people, owning 49% of a business might be preferable to, say, losing an independent and authentic voice and being told you’re not passing the ball to the other guys on the team. (logrolling, engaging in the “politics of linking,” etc.)

Which brings to my second point: that if it’s a “Dream Team,” egos are bound to be involved. If you’re Charles Barkley and you’re scoring a quarter of the points on the team, you might start to wonder why you’re only getting a 12th of the gold. And why Mike gets the damn Wheaties box cover. Who knows, maybe Mike wants a bigger piece of the pie, ’cause, you know, it’s his ball, and his court they practiced on, and his mom made the lemonade. He wants to take people who are used to being fiercely independent and make them all play nice. Maybe less of a Dream than a Nightmare.

Third, I know it was a “rant,” but Arrington didn’t come near making a convincing case for a merger or roll-up. He didn’t describe how you could take a handful of assorted car parts and turn them into a $200 million CNET-crushin’ tank. He was too busy browbeating people about how if they didn’t participate, they’d be “left out in the cold” “alone and lonely,” “having a generally miserable time.”

It’s one thing to call for cooperation and union. It’s another thing to goad people into it and then drop hints that it’s only natural that you be appointed King.

Haven’t we learned to narrow our eyes just a little when someone proposes a merger and yells “Synergy?” Especially when the pitch is thin on numbers and thick on FUD?

You said, “Who wants to buy a tire when you can have a piece of a running car?” True. But a car is more than an engine, a fuel pump, a side view mirror, an AM radio, and a single tire overinflated with hot air.

Keep the entertainment coming, y’all.

I need something to get my mind off my problems!

I love too see more money to the bloggers (not only the big ones, every little blogger can make a cup of coffe/year on their blog) but invest in a personal opinion is something really bad. Even Techcrunch, that got a lot of writers, are personal. And that’s why we like it. But do we invest in Techcunch? No… organic development is the best.

USA is actually really, really invest-driven. There’s other ways to make a nice business than find an investor and shooot.

Let’s say you are pre-revenue and think the company is valued at $10 million. Well, in order to raise even $3-5 million you would most likely have to give up a controlling interest in your business. This is generally very hard for a true entrepreneur to swallow. I have found that those who start businesses to get their name in the papers have no problem giving up 51%. However, those who developed their business because they love what they do, tend to have a hard time giving up control. Early stage investors generally require higher returns than later stage investors. They are taking on a lot more risk and tend to have a lower success rate. This is part of the reason they need a controlling interest, even though it may end up hurting them.

Instead of raising money at the pre-revenue stage, you may be able to assemble a team of dedicated employees who believe in the long term value of your company. These people will be far more interested in having an equity interest themselves than in getting a fat bonus. Essentially, your team members become your equity source and are happy to do it for a much smaller ownership interest. At a later stage, the company can raise money at much more favorable terms. If the team and model have already proven themselves, then the perceived risk is much lower and investors are willing to accept a lower return.

The dream team/super-blog-network would be able to raise money at much more favorable terms than most of the blogs individually. This is a strategy that has proven successful in many other industries both inside and outside of tech. Who wants to buy a tire when you can buy a piece of a running car?

If they just purchase regular A-Class shares then they get their proportion of any return, whether it be 20% of $10mil or 20% of $25mil.

She is just speaking her mind in a professional interview. Is this professional or is this the future of Internet mainstream journalism?

It sorta irked me that she brought it up, as we are used to reporters speaking only in a objective fashion, rather then subjective. But, this could be where mainstream journalism on the net is heading…. Hmmmm

demand and supply…

You said, “If you don’t raise money” you get to keep all the marbles. Ok, you don’t raise money. Now what? Don’t hire those additional writers? Don’t buy that CMS, or pay for that redesign, or buy more bandwidth, or whatever you were going to do with the venture capital? You’re telling people NOT to do something, but not advising them what to do instead, other than obliquely hinting they should wait for The Great Rollup.

And I’m still trying to tie this “don’t take financing” advice back to your original “Dream Team” idea. You were talking about rolling up a bunch of blogs and having someone “pony up a big round of financing” around that. So your advice is, “Don’t take venture capital, unless of course you’re in the Dream Team, in which case we, as a group, will take venture capital?”

My apologies — I didn’t intend for the rest of that comment to be an attack, personal or otherwise. I look forward to your post on “the politics of linking” and am curious to see how you justify “distasteful” behavior.

And I don’t personally know you or Nick Denton, so forgive me if I fail to see significant differences between your blog empire ambitions and his. The video seemed to suggest that you wanted cult-of-personality bloggers, whereas Denton wanted more anonymous bloggers writing under a brand — a difference which (everything else considered) seems about as significant as toaster pastry flavor preferences.

No, Mike, my personal attack on you was over on Scoble’s blog, where I referred to you as “Cap’n Ahabarrington” and CNET as your Great White Whale. But you’re right, it was poorly thought out. LOL

“The old dream is gone.”

Wow.

Holy shit. Are you kidding me? LiveCrunch? You run a tech blog called LiveCrunch? You’re thinking about branding it, just like Mike? Maybe you should have your tag line be “If I could be like Mike”. Someone may have used that one already though. Maybe you could call it The Tech “Jungle” and readers who comment on your posts could get some “Jungle Karma”. That may not be too original either now that I think about it.

Sorry for the rant – couldn’t let that one go unnoticed.

Technology blogs are totally glamorizing funding rounds, and making it out to be like this is a necessary step for any company to grow. This could not be further from the truth. Any business school will show you the process of growing your company, from creating a product, to hiring the right people and generating revenue. Companies these days focus on VC’s, Angel investors and rounds of investments when they should be learning what a statement of cash flow and PNL statement is.

I will never forget a meeting we had with Valley-based company where a certain person bragged how they were funded by Sequoia, and asked who funded Digitaltrends.com. We told them no one did, and he chuckled. He wanted to use our videos on their site and create a chat room around it, and then he wanted us to put their chat room on our site. I asked how they would make money and he told me they were going to try and sell ads, and they would be bringing in a “Revenue Officer” or something like that to kick start an ad program. Here I am thinking: Digitaltrends.com is profitable with revenue in the millions growing the old fashion way, organically, with a product, credit lines (yes folks, you can go to the bank and get a credit line instead of taking VC money – imagine that), and a business plan. Yet, this company brags about being backed by Sequoia and has no clue how to make money (at the time of the conversation).

And like Michael pointed out once you raise money, you have a person on your board – with control. You will have to sell your company for 20X (example) what you normally would to walk away with the same amount of money you would have received without a VC on the board. Why do you think Digg or FM are asking for such high valuations for example? Because in order for the “owners/creators” to walk away with the money they want, they need to sell for a lot more because their ownership percentage is a lot less.

The rest of your comment is really just a poorly thought through personal attack, which i won’t comment on.