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I won't say a huge deal about this, as I now work with Keith again, and haven't spoken to Mike for years, but I'm extremely surprised to see this version of events, as when I worked on Edgeio (I built the prototype, and managed the dev team for a while and continued to build the system) while Edgeio's and Techcrunch's offices were both in the house Mike rented in Atherton (Edgeio was largely built from the bedroom across from Mike's and the hall outside his room, while Techcrunch's office was his bedroom...), I got a very different impression from Mike in person. E.g. "started hanging out at my house and meetups" is a curious characterisation when Mike's house was literally the shared offices for both for quite a while. Mike at least once described Techcrunch to me as growing out of the work done to do research for Edgeio, and Archimedes Labs as a partnership between the two. Though it is possible for both that and Mike's version now to be true, my impression as someone who was there was always that both companies (Techcrunch and Edgeio) were shared projects, and Mike did nothing to dissuade that impression though it was clear Techcrunch was more Mike's baby than Keith's. Of course I was never privy to whatever discussions the two of them had behind closed doors. EDIT: Here [1] is an archive.org link from 2005, that lists Mike and Keith equally, on a post posted by the web designer who also did a lot of early work on Edgeio, describing them both as editors and Techcrunch as part of the "Archimedes Ventures" family. It was hard from that kind of presentation at the time to not see it as something they co-founded. I don't want to go into it further, as that'd be speculation on my side too (and of course what Mike let someone put on the site does not have to reflect what he thought about it in private) - I looked this up to see if there was anything to change my recollection: [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch... |
Well it's been a while (long time no speak, too) and 12+ years are known to change memory and bits, but I remember those times. I remember the tension between Techcrunch and Edgeio because I lived it, and I'll say that the resurfacing of these this subject is not surprising.
Because I know I would be biased and I have fond memories of those times, I don't think it would be fair to put my version of events forward. I will say this: despite his flaws, I have to give Mike a ton of credit for sticking with Techcrunch - he put a ton of energy into making it what it eventually became, even if that meant less energy spent on other projects.