Why TechCrunch sold to AOL

Mike Arrington on the "why".

The truth is I was tired. But I wasn’t tired of writing, or speaking at events. I was tired of our endless tech problems, our inability to find enough talented engineers who wanted to work, ultimately, on blog and CrunchBase software. And when we did find those engineers, as we so often did, how to keep them happy. Unlike most startups in Silicon Valley, the center of attention at TechCrunch is squarely on the writers. It’s certainly not an engineering driven company.

AOL of course fixes that problem perfectly. They run the largest blogging network in the world and if we sold to them we’d never have to worry about tech issues again. We could focus our engineering resources on higher end things and I, for one, could spend more of my day writing and a lot less time dealing with other stuff.

The (rumoured) $40m price of course never entered into it

That aside, Mr Arrington points to a very interesting problem that all startups will face at some point - it stops being about the technology (unless they are a pure technology startup) and starts to be about the product, and product managers etc etc rather than technology, and in The Valley that can be a tough transition.

And if the technology is not yet bedded down that is a huge risk to the business, and a major diversion of resource. I know of what he speaks from small companies I have run!

But what I can also tell them for free is that it is no picnic integrating into a large 24x7 infrastructure with huge heritage systems - never mind integrating a small, independent, "with attitude" culture into a large machine. We wish them luck - they will need it!

What is interesting is that they didn't opt for an Amazon or similar 3rd party infrastructure solution. But then those don't hand out $40m

(I think it works out to $25m to buy, $15m earnout, but it is, as I said, all rumours - as is the story that Mr Arringtom moved to Seattle some months ago to avoid California asset sale taxes)