Open and solicited letter to Michael Arrington:

Michael,

First I must say that I admire your work thus far. I think, however, that you are taking the wrong path. It’s not too late to change, but you better do it fast. Your days as the leading voice of the Web 2.0 movement are numbered. Admit it. Throw in the towel. Social news sites like Digg do a much better job than you even could in sifting through heaps of news and extracting the most relevant ones. It’s only a matter of time until a Digg-like site takes over; you are perfectly positioned to adopt a crowd ranking system and let your readers decide which companies are cool and which reviews are the best.

You asked for comments on your predictions. The truth is they don’t matter much. Unlike many others, I don’t think you can pave a golden path for budding startups simply by posting some positive notes about them. There are so many success factors, that your opinion is frankly a drop in the sea. A big drop, maybe, but still a drop.

TechCrunch is slowly becoming yet another media company, and the difference between you and CNET and so many others becomes less apparent by the day. You will quickly lose your luster and blend with in the crowd. Your’s won’t be another fucked company, but your recent actions like hiring a top media exec will eventually cut the geeky branch you’re sitting on.

You are a talented writer and a great communicator, and you know a thing or two about internet business. But your overnight reincarnation as a media mogul blinded you and made you think you can (and should) become one of “them”. Open your eyes and realize that you are not serving your community any better by going that route. Leave this to others.

Turn TechCrunch into a social news site focusing on the internet economy, and let users vote on which companies to review. This little enhancement of your existing startup review forum could change the site dramatically. Users will post reviews of those top companies and rank reviews written by others; the best ones will be posted on the homepage. This obviously won’t guarantee future-proof reviews, but will definitely be more accurate than your own predictions. At the minimum, it will empower your readers and eventually allow you to exit gracefully and pursue your next big thing.

Best Regards,
Yair Harel.

I’m meeting with angels and venture capitalists these days, pitching my company and asking for feedback and referrals. The doors slowly open up as my networking efforts bear fruit. As every entrepreneur knows, it’s a long and tedious process; the more I do it the more I like it though. I keep learning and getting better at it, and the first thing I learned is that the elusive “perfect pitch” doesn’t exist. Many VCs and entrepreneurs publish what they see as the perfect presentation. Every time a new format pops up I tweak my presentation to fit it, only to discover during my next meeting that the VC thinks I can do much better. I then tweak it to fit his style, and go back to square one.
The thing is, everybody has very good feedback. Really. I’m impressed by the VC’s ability to provide constructive and actionable feedback. Only that you can’t fit it all in one slide pack, and ultimately some things must stay out.
So here’s a great product idea. Let’s call it the Perfect Pitch Machine. You punch in the venture capitalist’s name and company, and the program crunches all the information about him or her and spits out a presentation template that he/she would like the most. You then fit your slides to this template, and voila – you have the perfect pitch! Make it a web service, charge $19.99 per template, and you can build a small but nice business around it. To make your customers come back, tell them that the VC’s taste changes on a daily basis, so you must use the service no more than 7 days before the meeting. Version 2.0 will take your existing presentation and turn it into the perfect one by automatically changing it to fit the VC’s flavor-du-jour. Another extension would be to open this to the corporate market, adding large corporations to the mix. If you need to present to an Intel executive, you’ll punch in her name, title, and department, and the subject you’re talking about, and get the best template possible.