[DenisM]

IIRC in his Mixergy interview Aaron Wall suggested Calacanis could be doing this simply to rake in "crusader" points because those will come in real handy should Google or anyone else try to step on Jason's controversial business.

In other words it's very handy to be wrapped into a flag, especially when it doesn't cost you all that much.

[_pius]

That's assigns a pretty absurd amount of cynicism and mustache twirling to Jason Calacanis. Doesn't really fit Occam's Razor.

Simplest explanation: dude thinks that paying to present is bullshit; dude says so.

[jasonmcalacanis]

That is absurd... I've been doing conference since 1996 when I was publishing Silicon Alley Reporter are there are three reasons:

1. I enjoy hosting debates and dialogues with really smart people. I mean, I come in to HN and get my ass kicked by 4/5 posts just to engage the debate.. it's what I do.

2. They make money. Lots of money if you do them right.

3. Open Angel Forum is designed to a) kick the sh@#$%t out of these bastards, b) get me into amazing angel investing deals (i'm doing 10 deals a year.. in fact, I'm almost at 10 deals in 2010 and we're not even half way there... so I might do 15 deals in 2010). c) make modest profit.

Aaron is on a massive jihad against me... which is great. It's only motivated the Mahalo team to get better and better... his attacks on Mahalo got the team focused. At the end of the day the changes he demand we make--and we made--rose revenue 50% while reducing traffic by 15%. That's a deal I would make any day. I'm going to do an epic presentation on Aaron's free advice in another six months. it's going to be sick.

[rosshudgens]

Interesting point, can we really substantiate that if he originally sent that through e-mail? I could see something in his head clicking that it was bullshit but I see more formal, orchestrated evilness would have constructed this in a formal blogpost.

Latent evilness may have realized that he could use this to generate "crusader" points, but he couldn't have thought this really would have built that much steam.

[bgoodman]

the fact is he's not doing this for the startups. he wants to make a name for himself. he wants people to think he's a superhero, but he's gonna fall on his ass. are you guys aware that you used to charge startups when he was running silicon alley reproter before it failed! ask him about it.