About TechCrunch

TechCrunch, founded on June 11, 2005, is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.

TechCrunch is co-edited by Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld.

If you would like to contact TechCrunch with suggestions, comments, corrections, errors, or new company announcements, please email editor@techcrunch.com.

TechCrunch has received the following coverage:

Heather Harde (CEO)Heather Harde

Joining TechCrunch is a wonderful new adventure for me. Until now, I spent the last ten years working within News Corporation. I’ve held a variety of corporate development, strategy and operating roles both in Los Angeles and New York. Most recently, I was part of the founding team at Fox Interactive Media and their SVP Mergers & Acquisitions. We spent over $1.3 billion on eight acquisitions and two equity deals during my tenure. Our acquisitions spanned pre-launch start-ups all the way through public-company and pre-IPO buyouts.

Prior to Fox Interactive Media, I held a variety of posts at News America Marketing, TVGuide and ASkyB. Before News Corporation, I also worked for Viacom at Showtime Networks. The common theme in my media life has been working on assignments that focus on the impact of technology on media. This theme continues, of course, with TechCrunch. I started out doing investment banking for a small, private bank Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (hence my love for my HP12C). I had the opportunity to work both in New York and Tokyo on corporate advisory and private-equity transactions. I am a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Harvard Business School.

Michael Arrington (Founder, Co-Editor)

A few people have asked me to post a little more information about myself. Instead of the standard corporate picture, I’ve included a picture of me and my dad at game four of the Giants/Angels World Series a few years ago. I like this picture, and it reminds me that every once in a while I need to get away from my computer and live real life. If you want to see my corporate bio, check out my LinkedIn profile. You can also check out my Flickr pictures (includes both business and personal pictures).

I grew up in California and Surrey, England. I started college at U.C. Berkeley, and transferred to Claremont McKenna, a tiny college located near Los Angeles, after my freshman year. I majored in economics. I went straight from college to law school at Stanford in 1992, and graduated in 1995.

I spent a few years as a corporate attorney at O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini, working exclusively with technology companies. My clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a bunch of startups, venture funds and investment banks.

The late nineties were heady days in Silicon Valley - at any given time I was working on a number of IPOs, venture financings, and merger transactions. I also co-authored a book on IPOs while I was working at Wilson Sonsini, which is still in print (on its second edition) by Bowne. I worked all the time.

I left law firm life to join a hot startup and run sales and business development. The startup, RealNames, filed to go public but didn’t make it out before the bubble burst. Eventually, RealNames liquidated after raising over $100 million in venture capital. I left that startup as it was going through the IPO process and co-founded a company called Achex. We raised nearly $20 million after the bubble burst and sold the company to First Data Corp about a year later for $32 million. Achex is now the back end infrastructure to Western Union online.

I’ve worked in an operational role at a Carlyle backed startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was COO to a Kleiner backed company called Razorgator, and consulted to other companies, including SnapNames and Verisign. In addition to TechCrunch, I am a founder of edgeio and a member of the edgeio board of directors.

I’ve been interviewed in a few podcasts where I talk about my passion for startups and give a little more color on why I started TechCrunch.

I’ve also received the following coverage:

I can be reached by email at editor@techcrunch.com.

Disclosures: I (Michael Arrington) occasionally advise and/or invest in companies that may be written about on TechCrunch. Any conflicts are always mentioned if I personally write about that company. For companies like edgeio where I hold a substantial equity interest, my current policy is to have someone other than me write about that company if they appear on TechCrunch, and the conflict of interest is disclosed - see this example.

My current disclosures:

  1. I am a founder and significant shareholder in edgeio.
  2. I am an investor in a stealth company called Daylife, based in New York.
  3. I became an investor in Dogster on September 14, 2006.
  4. I became an investor in Omnidrive in December 2006.
  5. I became an investor in Dancejam in the Spring of 2007.
  6. I became an investor in Seesmic in November 2007
CrunchBase Information
Edgeio
Daylife
Dogster
Omnidrive
Dancejam
seesmic
Information provided by CrunchBase

Erick Schonfeld (Co-Editor)
erick shonfeld

Erick has been covering startups and technology news for 14 years. At Business 2.0 he wrote feature stories and ran their main blog, Next Net, which has nearly 50,000 RSS subscribers. He also does a lot of video work and hosts regular panels of industry luminaries called Disruptor Round Tables. Prior to Business 2.0, Erick was an editor-at-large for eCompany and a contributing editor for Fortune. In 1999, Schonfeld won the prize for best information technology submission at London’s Business Journalist of the Year Awards, and in 2001 he won the prize for best space submission at the Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards in Paris. In 1996 and 1997, Schonfeld was recognized in the TJFR Business News Reporter’s list of the “best and brightest financial journalists under the age of 30.” He appears regularly on CNBC, CNN, and NY1, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Schonfeld graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1993.

Duncan Riley (Writer)
duncan riley

Duncan Riley is a writer, developer, speaker and blogging evangelist. After many years online, including stints authoring politically focused websites, he discovered the then-new blogging in 2002, founding The Blog Herald which went on to become a Top 100 blog worldwide at the time. In 2005 he co-founded the b5media blog network, a company now based in Canada that took $4 million US in Venture Capital funding in 2006.

Duncan has a diverse background. Having started in merchant banking in Sydney in the mid 1990’s he’s had stints in Management and as a staff member to a Federal Member of Parliament.

Duncan left b5media in late 2006 and now enjoys his time as a freelance writer, speaker and developer. Duncan regularly attends conferences in Australia where he evangelizes on the benefits of blogging, as well as contributing articles to magazines and online publications on the same topic. Duncan started writing for TechCrunch in May 2007.

Born in Sydney, Duncan now resides in Melbourne, Australia where he finds himself married with 1 child and a rather large mortgage. He also holds a Bachelor of Commerce with a double major in Marketing and Ecommerce from the University of New England.

Disclosures: Duncan has options via Nichenet Pty Ltd in Orange Marketing Pty Ltd (Gooruze) and also has a podcasting agreement with The Podcast Network Pty Ltd.

Mark Hendrickson (Writer/Analyst)

I have been writing stories, developing websites, and managing projects for TechCrunch since July 2007. I grew up in Menlo Park, California and attended Bowdoin College, where I majored in both Government and Economics while focusing primarily on political philosophy. I was also a freelance web developer for several years before joining TechCrunch. I have no investments to disclose.