I still love the story of Writely, a product we wrote about way back in 2005 when TechCrunch was just a little tike.
The company got a lot of attention as one of the first Ajax-powered “online Word” products. An acquisition by Google came just a few months later, and Writely formed the foundation for what is now Google Docs.
Cofounder Sam Schillace is now an engineering director at Google. He was profiled by the Wall Street Journal today: “Serial entrepreneur Sam Schillace had been writing software professionally for 16 years when one of his ideas caught Google Inc.’s attention. Within seven months, Mr. Schillace had sold his online word-processing program to the search-engine giant, where it spawned Google Docs. Now, he oversees engineering for Google products including Gmail, Picasa and Reader. Mr. Schillace spoke with reporter Elizabeth Garone; edited excerpts follow.”
He also says in the interview: “TechCrunch [then a tech-review Web site, now a network of tech sites] and then Google found us as we were testing Writely live. We were almost immediately in the middle of a press and investor/acquirer storm.”
Of course Writely would have done well and been acquired anyway. But we love that he remembers the small part we played in launching the service. If you’ve got an awesome idea baking, make sure we hear about it first. And the timing for TechCrunch50, coming up in September, may just be perfect for you. We want to put you in the middle of a “press and investor/acquirer storm,” too.
And for people who are thinking of starting a company of their own, Sam has some advice for you: “Never start a company just to start it. You start a company because you have an idea that you think will be great for some customer — and great ideas are always worth doing, even in a tough market. It’s also the case that many big companies are started during downturns and benefit from the added focus and discipline that’s necessary. So it might actually be the best time to start a company, if it’s the right idea and it’s done well.”
Going to waybackmachine to have a look at how TechCrunch looked in 2005
here’s a screenshot of how it looked back then:
http://www.flic...954020/sizes/o/
Fred Oliveira designed that site from webreakstuff.com. I loved it.
http://webreakstuff.com/
You should totally ditch the green and go back to the soft palette, fwiw.
Leave a comment on a techcrunch post, get your idea read and implemented by leading companies.
Mike,
I also feel nostalgic about Techcrunch of old. Back then you were profiling 2-3 neat new companies each day. Now it seems like this has become much less important.
i learned the hard way that its not always about what’s neat on TC. now the’ve created a monster that’s more powerful than ever.
SuccessLocator.com – its inevitable
The coolest part of that screenshot flashback is, by far, the fact that your Feedburner stats show 48,035 readers and now (in the footer) shows “2150K”. 45x increase in subscribers, not bad.
I love how “Web 2.0″ is right there in the description, and how as of late TechCrunch has hated the term Web 2.0 and everything associated with it
It’s amazing how the worlds vocab changes
I actually like that design more then this one.
me too in some ways.
But now too many sponsors to accommodate in limited pixels.
Wow, I remember TC in 2005 looking like that!
You’ve come a long way baby! w00t
Cheers!
Great inspirational story, thanks Michael.
I’m launching a wooden badger factory soon. Any shot at getting that featured in TC50, Michael?
It’s fully dynamic and built from best-of-breed synergies, of course.
Does it have a twitter app?
Nice!
I’ve been a loyal fan/user of Writely since the beginning. Has any of it’s code made it into Google Wave?
I started reading TC 1 or 2 months prior that screenshot’s date (finding out from the former Siliconbeat, now Venturebeat). It had around 42k RSS readers. Now it has over 2 million.
Writely was a success but so is Techcrunch. Hope to read you 10 years from now on too…
I sure hope I’m living on an island and have a beer in my hand ten years from now. If I’m still blogging something has gone horribly wrong.
Um, you wrote this comment at 2:02 am. You are a workaholic. You probably wouldn’t last longer then a couple of months doing nothing on the beach.
Is that to say that companies who choose to release with embargo or if someone else breaks the story, they’re less likely to get the TC coverage love?
I’ve long been pondering if passing up an exclusive and going with embargo is a smarter option, or giving an exclusive and hoping there’s enough meat that the others will pick it up?
Thoughts Mike?
go with the exclusive. recent examples are topsy and Super Chirp. both had excellent launches.
By they way, we’ll deal with embargoes…occasionally. there has to be a lot of trust there with the founders or PR firm, though.
What is the best way to shop your exclusive for interest before-hand, when so many stories go unnoticed or don’t make the ‘afternoon edition’ Topsy had a ton of funding, so that’s an easy pick-up, but how do the first-timers pitch a launch to maximize coverage?
I know this wasn’t the intent of the post, but I’m still learning the ropes in this area, so your insight is appreciated.
TechCrunch will completely ignore you, as a startup, if you tell anyone else first. Not exactly a startup-friendly policy, but they’re in this for the money.
This is very TRUE. All startups should be aware of this. Tell TECHCRUNCH first or they’ll pretend you don’t exist. Kinda messed up. I thought they would be interested in cool new startups, but ‘being first’ matters more. Even if a blog with 4 readers writes about you, they won’t cover you. LAME.
yeah that’s not true.
Crazy, I was just searching for some content from Techcrunch archive – 2005.
Here’s the real TC back then: http://web.arch...techcrunch.com/
that looks great! I miss that design too.
I love hearing about articles like this. Little guys become big guys and acknowledges the people that were with them from the start.
I think some YouTube credit to TC is in order too.
whatever happened to crunch notes? http://qzip.in/pl
Michael, your team has been extremely unapproachable, on several occasions during the past 3 years.
My company has raised international funding, gathered a significant user base, a team of highly regarded developers, continued media coverage in northern Europe, and you guys failed to reply even one email.
So we’ve simply given up on trying to reach you.
Yeah um …. not saying anything but – maybe when your “international fund raising & significant user base site” works in Safari, Chrome or IE8 – then maybe they’ll cover it. Sshhh if you’ve got funding – hire a designer ffs
You have bad luck:
You are in the wrong location of the world. (We too)
Funding from your dad doesn’t count.
@tom we’re onto that. support for safari is coming soon. If you don’t like the design or have pointers, feel free to ping me on twitter.
@foobar you would have been right 3 years ago
@Ramine
but you just tried to reach them right now :p
@Michael Arrington
i seriously love these stories and thanks a lot for bringing this back online but somehow Ramine is right. Don’t forget good old Europe or Asia, there are tons of great entrepreneurs and startup ideas.
Oh and btw. make sure to send me a crunchpad asap, so i can review it
Cheers from Taipei
I really like to hearing about articles like this. What is the best way to shop your exclusive for interest Little guys become big guys and acknowledges the people that were with them from the start.
Mike,
Is Google gonna update their Google Apps today? I heard that there will be a change in UI…Good flashback post here and I guess we will see an improved version of what Google has been working on for its enterprise apps
My start-up journey (a guy in his room in MD) started at TC40 (thnx TC). The journey that followed has been awesome!
If you have any inkling of wanting to create something, even wacky, start-up! Your life will change for the better failure or not!
Last year, we’re TechCrunch50 DemoPit Invitee:
http://www.cnties.com/
(Not TechCrunch50 companies – only DemoPit Invitee)
We’ve changed more than before.
Great story. And Sam’s advice is dead on. Startups should never be vanity projects – they should exist because they provide something new that customers want or need. looking over the latest TC profiles, anyone see the next writely on the horizon?
i wonder what yammer is working on?
I must have been a Techcrunch reader from near the beginning, since I was a Writely user from near the beginning.
What was nice about Writely is that it was a small team that was super-responsive. It almost felt like family. I started using it to power a mashup so contributors to a site I ran could edit their bio’s. When I posted a request to make some minor technical changes to help the embedding, Sam answered right away. He was really enthusiastic to hear how I was using it and put my request on the project list. A week later I caught Sam on the radio where he gushed about the innovative ways people were using Writely and smiled since I thought he might have been thinking (just in part) about our correspondence.
That culture all changed with Google of course, and it had to given the huge growth from Writely to Google Docs. But entrepreneurs wanting to build buzz would do well to mimic that close-knit responsiveness at the early stage.
We were at TC50 last year. Good times
http://www.openzine.com