How polite! A husband and wife team, the founders of Barcelona-based FairCompanies, visits Silicon Valley. And unlike a certain group of Dutch entrepreneurs, they don’t decide to break into my house as a publicity stunt.
Instead they visit our office in the wee hours of the morning and leave a very nice note on our window:
TechCrunch – We are visiting from Barcelona and are readers of your blog. We don’t want to go into Michael’s house like the random Dutch guys, but we wanted to let you know about our site. We are a husband and wife team (he: ex-tech writer for Spanish Playboy & she: shooter/producer for MTV) with a site with tools on sustainability. Well, check it out @ faircompainies.com
Best, Kirsten & Nico
They add “Please don’t print this unless necessary” (it was, plus they didn’t write “off record” on the note) and apparently taped a Spanish Focaccia to the note that never actually made it to my desk.
Good luck with your startup, Kirsten and Nico. And next time, email ahead and we’ll meet you in person!
Nice!
‘unless necessary’ is always the scorcher
FairCompanies did a great job. Nice idea. Now this move itself attracts users to checkout FairCompanies.
sweet of you!
I think the “don’t print this unless necessary” was meant to play on the sustainability theme since you find similar notices now at the bottom of many emails that ask you to think of the environment before printing.
I second that! It was not about publishing… I think they were trying to be a bit funny!
oh. yeah, of course. good catch.
i should have linked to
http://www.tech...-emails-anyway/
Thank you very much for posting the info, Mike. We were on the area that day and we wanted to leave you a note without being too agressive on it.
And yes, we were trying to keep up with the post you refer to when we decided to include the “don’t print this unless necessary”.
Now seriously, we don’t expect to have big downtown time, as some way more popular sites have been experiencing during months, sometimes years.
So give a try to the site if you have the chance and time to do so. Thanks
Good to re-read things one says once in a while: “downtown time” was meant to be “downtime”. Auto-checkers are dangerous sometimes.
This just crashed their servers
wow. it sure did.
Ah yes, those were the days. Original video (yes, we taped the whole thing and no, we didn’t ‘brake in’) is here:
http://blog.fle...hael-arrington/
criminals.
more breaking news from TechCrunch.
*not breaking
Lol… the website is down! Seems like their servers were not ready to handle the load Techcrunch has generated!
Try it WITH the www.
I mentioned http://www.clasilistados.org on techcrunch and next day my server reported 1750 hits from this blog. Mike, I can pay you back by translating something into Spanish if you want to post an ad with us : )
All the best with 50
what do i get if i steal your mail?
A visit from the Feds.
What if he stole the focaccia?
cute… but those dutch boys got so much PR out of their little stunt I’m sure they’re still hi-5′ing each other
There goes my great ideal that I had for tomorrow night. I guess I send an email.
so will you feature me in tc if I come to your house with some real beer.. you know the stuff we have in Canada with real booze in it.. not that piss you all drink in the states and streak…I promise to put my logo on my chest so you know who I am.. and maybe you wouldn’t mind giving my mom the phone number of the police station when she calls.. after you have me arrested.. I will put TC somewheres and have it expand to techcrunch…
The real Canadian beer? Don’t you think that Belgian beer will be better?
What if I send you some Duvel, Hoegaerden or Leffe?
lol… Euro beer is good.. Lufthansa gives you free beer and has good food.. I would love to live in Europe.. when I was in malta.. 11 am, sitting waiting for a friend drinking a beer on the street.. That is living life.. here it is all about the money and then you die.. in europe people take time to really live.. I think that is something we miss here or don’t know how to do.. to put down the PC and enjoy a sunset..
that’s so cute! …now you’re going to get all sorts of food being delivered late at night taped to handwritten notes. let me know if you have leftovers, i’m always hungry.
It seems they read my post on how to be on TechCrunch
http://blogs.al...silicon-valley/
Actually, we didn’t.
http://www.thew...om….going a little something like that
Update: http://www.thew...bsiteisdown.com a little something like that
It’s been up all time but during the first wave of visits coming in from this post. So no, that’s not a “fair” joke.
note to self: get servers/network ready before visiting TechCrunch
http://www.yout...h?v=0ULf-hxOT-w
sigh.
wow ever was asking the questions came off like a real jerk
Ha – “a free resource to help you act responsibly”
Thanks for the help guys, and thanks for not being arrogant at all. I imagine if this was based around a faith other than Green Religion it would be met with more derision, but I’ll take up the slack for everyone.
Put a sock in it, zealots.
That is really nice of them , see Michael it made you post on TechCrunch how innovative is that to trigger some thoughts to land Post on TC :0
Soon a group of companies from Kuala Lumpur will visit silicon valley first quarter 2009, surely will inform you about our arrivals. We will bringing together – innovative product from various company from this part of the region.
Pretty poor to be a joke cooked and posted on Friday. I’m sure you can do better.
Thanks for the traffic, everyone, even if it did cause me a lot of headaches. Friday afternoon is one of the lowest traffic points of the week for us, so obviously it is when I might be doing some maintenance. Want to guess how fun it is to get a bump from techcrunch while doing a little DB cleanup and restarting your web servers? Thanks for the excitement and make sure to check us out. Despite the comments claims, we actually handled the majority of traffic we got and only a few of you slipped. Have a great weekend everyone!
Two snaps up for being innovative :->
I guess your disdain for your readers continue…eh MA? lol
Check the site. That’s not disdain, but posting something worth it.
It’s little unfair, or not? It’s so difficult to get TC coverage, but if you leave an note on their window, you get a full post from MC himself.
Did you actually check faircompanies? We also have a website. This is also about http://faircompanies.com. So yes, it’s fair because the product is solid.
Yes I did. I didn’t mean to play with the “(un)-fair” word…
You may have a great website and a solid product, but this is not enough in most cases to get TC coverage. You got the coverage just because you invented a nice way to push yourself. So in this sense it’s a little “un-fair” with respect to many people with great sites out there thet MC does not bother to visit from his web browser, not even mention write a post about them.
Life isn’t fair…
Should have made sure your site could stand up to TC traffic before asking to be covered…won’t load for me
Make sure your stack is fine. It will load in any stack we try on and on. If you want to share more information related to your issue, we will help you personally. Thanks.
Europeans are retarded.
Tech Crunch has NOTHING to do with the success or failure of a business. NOTHING.
That’s actually an insult. Big statements like those ones, not based on facts and actual data but on assumptions, make the world a more dangerous place.
I smell a troll.
The power of blogs…ouch!
Thank you again for the post and attention.
We wanted to share with you all a little photogallery on the making off of the note we are talking about here: http://www.flic...57622228288087/
Thank you for your interest and respect,
You misspelled the URL in the typed out version of the note. Oops.
I didn’t: http://www.flic.../faircompanies/, the address that appears on the note to TechCrunch above, is the address for the whole photostream of faircompanies in Flickr.
“Thanks For Not Breaking Into My House” let me know more about IT person
Apparently – according to Kirsten and Nico – “random Dutch guys” are well-known for breaking into houses.
Who are random Dutch guys?
In English, the word “random” can be used to define or bring a vague quotation, experience, etc. “Random” isn’t here a derogative expression, but a way to bring to our minds something we may remember (that is, the information we know related to the day a couple of Dutch entrepreneurs went to Mike Arrington’s house).
My apologies if any Dutch person has felt despised by the use of “random” in this context.
Of course, we don’t have any issue towards any nationality. On the contrary, we have strong linkages all across Europe and other parts of the world such as North America.
What a bunch of know-it-alls in the comments!
Very sad to read. Just proves that conflict sells.
To the product – I have checked out faircompanies.com before. It’s a great site to get motivation and ideas on how to be sustainable.
And to all you ’smart’ people out there who think Europeans are retarded? – well ask the Europeans what they think of Americans and you will blush.
And to all you who point out a misspelling – I bet you don’t even speak another language apart from English and probably not even very well.
Sad – when it’s about a good product just take it away and blah blah blah like you do best.
SUCKERS