J. Michael Arrington

Founder of TechCrunch

• Born: March 13, 1970
• Place of Birth: Huntington Beach, California

Primary Company/Organization: TechCrunch

Introduction

J. Michael Arrington is an influential technology blogger and venture capitalist. A former corporate attorney, Arrington has a hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners writing style that has catapulted some Silicon Valley start-ups and sunk others. Although often under fire or a subject of derision for his brash manner and outspokenness, he is nonetheless considered one of the most prominent technology personalities and a major power broker. The companies in which he has invested have for the most part done well, and his buoyancy and knack for homing in on cutting-edge start-ups are major components of that success.

Early Life

J. Michael Arrington was born on March 13, 1970, and grew up in Orange County, California, and in Surrey, England. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, then transferred after his freshman year to Claremont McKenna College, a private liberal arts college east of Los Angeles, where earned his bachelor's degree in economics in 1992. In 1995, he obtained a juris doctor degree from Stanford University.

Arrington had an entrepreneurial spirit early in life. During college, he gave his neighbors competition in the recycling arena. They had been taking their empty beer cans and bottles to a local Latino family, until Arrington infiltrated the exchange and collared the market for himself.

After earning his law degree, Arrington worked for a few years at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, and O'Melveny and Myers, where he dealt solely with technology companies. Some of his clients included Netscape, Pixar, Apple, and Idealab. The Internet was just starting to boom. Arrington deserted corporate and securities law and got involved in the dot-com world. Even though he was involved with two auspicious Internet companies, RealNames and Achex, he did not make any huge financial gains with them. He went on to take an active role at a Carlyle-backed start-up in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was chief operating officer to Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers–backed company Razorgator, and consulted with various other companies, including SnapNames and Verisign. In addition to TechCrunch, he founded Edgeio and was a member of its board of directors.

Life's Work

Following the dot-com bust, Arrington took a year off, then returned to work. In 2005, he was inspired by American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer Dave Winer and started writing about Silicon Valley and start-ups as a hobby. His writing was in sharp, plain English, and he would intersperse images to break up the text. He made the tech world and its goings-on accessible to everyone. Backed by Archimedes Ventures, he and Keith Teare started producing what would be known as TechCrunch. It garnered a large following quickly because of Arrington's intense writing style, insider knowledge, and business strategy. TechCrunch involved not only blogs but also events. The company won a reputation for throwing fabulous parties at Arrington's Atherton home, and through these soirées Arrington got on the inside track regarding what was happening in Silicon Valley. The social networking that took place at these parties, which started in August 2005, encouraged the growth of the blog's readership. Arrington had also anticipated another surge in the tech industry and developed a band of influential allies that included Robert Scoble as well as Winer. He was astute enough to notice a rising trend in investments, so by the time Tim O'Reilly, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of O'Reilly Media, dropped the term Web 2.0, Arrington was already entrenched in the second tech boom. His access to venture capitalists as a corporate attorney and his experience in the investing trenches as an entrepreneur gave him the upper hand and added to his writing a credibility that others did not necessarily have. He had built a solid reputation with heavy hitters in Silicon Valley, and that cachet followed him to his Technorati blog.

Soon, Arrington became one of the most powerful people on the Internet, but not without stepping on a few toes. Frequently involved in controversy, the serial entrepreneur butted heads with many of his peers, all the while putting his money where his mouth was by constantly investing. Daylife, Dogster, Omnidrive, DanceJam, and Seesmic were some of the companies he supported. He also extended his Crunch base with CrunchGear, CrunchMobile, and CrunchBoard. Touching on the live arena, he formed a partnership with Jason Calacanis (blogger and founder of Silicon Alley, Weblogs, Inc., and Mahaho) to mount the TechCrunch 20 conference, a successful conference for start-ups that evolved into TC40 and TC50. Arrington and Calacanis went their separate ways on TC50, doing separate conferences, but not without Calacanis's claiming that Arrington had stiffed him. Arrington started TechCruch Disrupt in San Francisco, and Calacanis produced the Launch Conference. Both have been successful.

A man of many talents and with a keen eye for innovative technology, Arrington launched a project in 2008 with Fusion Garage to develop a $200 tablet, the CrunchPad. However, after several prototypes, Arrington claimed the company had cut him out of the process. When the tablet went on the market, it fizzled. During this time, animosity started to grow between Arrington and consumer electronics blog Engadget because, contending that what Engadget was publishing about his relationship and falling out with Fusion Garage was incorrect. This animosity would grow and come into play later in Arrington's career.

As TechCrunch's popularity grew, Arrington, who was already brash, grew more menacing in his articles and demeanor. He started getting death threats in the summer of 2008 and reported these to the police, then went to Hawaii until the air cleared. His relationships with certain colleagues remained contentious. On June 6, 2009, he had a falling out with radio personality and tech reporter Leo Laporte on the Gillmor Gang after accusing him of giving a positive review on the Palm Pre in exchange for a five-day evaluation unit. Laporte was enraged that his journalistic integrity had been questioned and stormed off the stage where this exchange took place. Arrington and Laporte apologized to each other the same day, but not long afterward, the Gillmor Gang was removed from the TWiT network. In the same year, Arrington was leaving a business conference in Munich and someone walked up to him and spat in his face. Although Arrington was accustomed to being insulted in public, he expressed his outrage about this incident in a blog post. He decided to make Seattle his part-time home in 2010.

In September 2010, AOL's CEO Tim Armstrong announced that the company had purchased TechCrunch for undisclosed amount, which was projected to be between $25 and $40 million. Despite Arrington's declaration that he would have a long-lasting relationship AOL, that was not to be. He immediately claimed his independence from the company by engaging in a gratuitous war with Engadget, an old wound that he reopened. He targeted the editors with public criticism, to which editor Joshua Topolsky promptly responded on Tumblr, temporarily diffusing the situation.

Arrington tempered his irascible behavior toward Engadget and returned to investing, starting up venture capital firm CrunchFund in 2011 with former college mate and venture capitalist Patrick Gallagher and M. G. Siegler. There were immediate concerns that this would present a conflict of interest, since Arrington was still contributing to TechCrunch. Arianna Huffington told The New York Times that Arrington no longer had editorial responsibilites with the site and that he was an unpaid blogger. Arrington walked away from AOL and TechCrunch at that point, although he kept the $8 million investment that AOL had contributed to CrunchFund. CrunchFund finances information technology companies at any stage but prefers seed or early-stage investments.

Personal Life

Arrington leads a private personal life. He once dated a Miss Universe contestant from Denmark and was in a long-term relationship of four years, until he started TechCrunch, where his devotion to the tech world interfered with his relationship. In 2013 a former girlfriend, Jennifer Allen, accused Arrington of sexual assault and physical abuse; he sued her for defamation and she eventually retracted the accusations. In 2021, Arrington purchased a $16 million waterfront home in South Florida's Old Cutler Bay community.

Bibliography

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Cringely, Robert X. Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition and Still Can't Get a Date. New York: HarperBusiness, 1996. Print.

Kaplan, David A. The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams. New York: Morrow, 1999. Print.

Kenney, Martin. Understanding Silicon Valley: The Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000. Print.

Siegler, M. G. You're Damn Right I'm a Fanboy: MG Siegler on Apple, Google, Startup Culture and Jackasses on the Internet. Hyperink, 2012. Digital file.

Simpson, Connor. "Michael Arrington and AOL Agree to Play Nice." The Atlantic, 23 Oct. 2012, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/michael-arrington-and-aol-agree-play-nice/322207/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.

Vogelstein, Fred. "TechCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz . . . and Cash." Wired, 22 June 2007, www.wired.com/2007/06/ff-arrington/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.

Wingfield, Nick. "Michael Arrington Drops Suit after Rape Accuser Recants." The New York Times, 27 June 2014, bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/michael-arrington-drops-suit-after-rape-accuser-recants/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.