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10 years at TechCrunch on August 28, 2023 at 3:06 pm

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It’s been 10 years since I stepped off a ledge and landed at TechCrunch.

I don’t get self referential a lot here on the pages of TC, but I figured that a tin anniversary is a nice time to look at what we’ve done over the past decade as we approach this year’s Disrupt, coming up on September 19th-21st in San Francisco.

Like many people who have joined our team over the years, when I came on board, I landed right into the middle of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference – the proverbial fire. All hands on deck, circulating the tables, scooping news, preparing for their interviews, handling the logistics of a huge event with split second decisions and changing conditions every minute. With everyone offering help to each other where needed.

I never forgot that intense “team first” vibe and have tried to carry it forward with us.

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Since 2013, nearly 3 billion visitors have read what TechCrunch has to say about the world of startups. It’s been amazing to spend a decade at the startup ecosystem publisher of record, and it’s never been boring.

There are too many stories over the past decade to mention them all, but there have been some bangers. The intense examinations of how burrowing owls connect to the SF housing crisis, scooping the death of Google+, defining the Unicorn, blockbuster investigations into spyware tools, disclosing Facebook playing fast and loose with Apple rules and the resulting deactivation of its own internal apps, Apple re-launching Maps and apologizing for the Mac Pro (when I published a rare full transcript of an Apple executive interview – that was a fun call), the story of when two hackers saved the Internet, plenty of acquisition scoops, crazy early coverage of future giants like Robinhood, when we accidentally deactivated when we traveled halfway around the world to be the first to find the man who deactivated Trump’s Twitter account, and in a very TechCrunch move, plenty of coverage of…TechCrunch.

Throughout this period we’ve endured a long list of owners above us who never really ‘got’ what TechCrunch was about. Thankfully, Yahoo’s current leadership does get it, the CEO even launched his company on our stage 13 years ago.

But in the past, we definitely had to deal with a lot of very aggressive ‘suggestions’ that it took a lot of energy and time to deflect. But it was worth it.

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I still remember a conversation with leadership in early 2014 where co-editor Alexia Tsostsis and I were basically told that TechCrunch wasn’t a growth property.  And, to quote the goat, we took that personally.

Even though we’ve remained a lean team, typically under 60 people total across our business and editorial teams over most of that period, it didn’t stop us.

In fact, it has allowed TechCrunch to remain a permissionless state that has shipped and shipped and shipped without waiting for people or resources. 

And we still grew, and are continuing to do so. In spite of everything.

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During the past 10 years at TechCrunch we have done, well, a lot.

We doubled the size of TechCrunch Disrupt, without killing its special vibe.
Radically improved the inclusion and audience makeup of the TC team and Disrupt as a show.
Delivered a full-size Disrupt show virtually, pivoting hard in the early days of the pandemic.
Publish an average of 30-50 stories every day about existing companies and emerging technology in a human, genuine voice that prioritizes skepticism, not cynicism.
Created our successful subscription product TechCrunch+ that offers a deeper look into the hows of startups for builders.
Publish the killer Equity, Found, Chain Reaction and TechCrunch Live podcasts.
Increased Startup Battlefield’s cohort size to 200.
Launched hugely successful newsletters with industry-leading open rates.
Introduced hundreds of companies on the Startup Battlefield stage.
Shipped several major site redesigns.
Delivered incredible video content that goes deep on early stage tech.

What it looks like to to Disrupt virtually

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How was TechCrunch able to keep shipping new experiments, successful products and high quality news without major investment for a decade? 

I’m going to give you the secret sauce, right now:

We have hired and fostered extremely talented people and then…we trust them.

That’s it. 

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TechCrunch was already a special place to work when I joined, and we have tried to make sure we never lost its particular blend of anarchy and authority, anchored by a generous spirit.

When people care about one another and that attitude is transmitted from the top, they will deliver outsized efforts on undersized resources for the love of the game and of each other. To support that, my senior staff and I always made an effort to make sure that the job wasn’t about us, it was about them, which made them want to be about TechCrunch.

This willingness to help each other has allowed us to punch above our weight forever, beating publications with hundreds or thousands of journalists to stories and trends every single day.

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(Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

The TechCrunch Way.

To the consternation of PR departments everywhere, TechCrunch is managed significantly differently than other editorial organizations. Writers assign most of their stories to themselves, and bring editors in later. They generally work in areas of obsession, not beats. The most compelling stories about technology are told by those who are willing to drill all the way down to the whitepaper to understand it. 

Whatever point or angle you have about a technology, especially the most important and fundamentally world altering ones, it has to begin at a place of understanding. Otherwise you’re building on sand and standing up straw men.

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Most of our writers also have direct access to the publish button and generally write their own headlines, deks and ledes. You know, that trust thing.

Why would we hire people who were genuinely obsessed with a given technology or space and then not use their most potent asset: their sense of taste.

These days, you could argue that taste is the only moat. And when you apply that to everything from story sense to sourcing, you get a product that remains vital.

It’s hubris to think that any editor has an infinitely variable mouthfeel sensor that can pick up on everything brewing in the enormously diverse universe of technology enabled companies, from startup to IPO and beyond. The people I’ve had the luck and pleasure to work with at TechCrunch past and present have been the most incredible truffle hunters of scoops, true stories and new things I’ve ever seen.

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All of the current staff and many, many others over the years are what have made TechCrunch such a special place to work. You only have to look at how many people leave and come back to work here 2, 3 or even 4 times to see that there’s a thing about this place.

Image Credits: Slava Blazer / Flickr (opens in a new window) under a CC BY 2.0 (opens in a new window) license.

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TechCrunch is about founders.

A few thousand people gathered in San Francisco at the Design Concourse for TechCrunch Disrupt the year that I joined. Last year, despite the trailing effects of COVID, 10,000 people showed up. Our audience has always been mapped to the ebbs and flows of the ecosystem, so that’s encouraging.

Being the editorial programming buck stop for Disrupt is an enormous undertaking every year – especially as we used to run 3 per year. But it’s also energizing.

We’ve tried to make our annual event a global affair, with a far more diverse group of participants. This year’s Disrupt conference houses specialized programming across AI, security, SaaS, sustainability, fintech and hardware sectors. It also has a dedicated Builder track that gets into the nitty gritty of running and growing young companies. This year’s Disrupt will have nearly 50% women participating and 40% of the overall program participants come from backgrounds that are underrepresented in startups. 

Another highlight is our Startup Battlefield program. Every year, we get thousands of applications to be a part of the competition. After Head of Startup Battlefield Neesha Tambe and her team filter these applications, we get together and hammer out the top 20 in weeks of two-a-days.

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Then, they go into a training program to get them ready for the stage and present their company in front of incredible judges. The judging process gives a rare public look at the decision making process of high level entrepreneurs and investors. And into the ways that founders can successfully pitch their products. It’s as intense as any startup accelerator and just as fun to see the shape of what’s to come.

Because the companies apply to us so early, often in pre-funding or bootstrapped stages, we have gotten to get a yearly early look at the future. And that’s why all of us at TechCrunch do what we do – we live in the future, and we love it.

It was a big moment last year when we were able to expand the program to the Startup Battlefield 200. This effectively ended our practice of charging startups to buy a table at Disrupt, making exhibiting at the show completely free for the 200 companies chosen to be a part of Battlefield. 

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Over the course of the program we’ve featured over 1,300 startups, who have raised $29B in capital and have had 200 exits. The Startup Battlefield alumni represent a whole generation’s worth of entrepreneurs and is inclusive of gender, race, geography and vertical. 

It has taken a lot of dedication and attention to detail to get it to the great place it’s in now, and we’re just getting started.

Sugar Rush

When a grape vine is stressed, it puts all of its resources into the production of sugary, flavorful grapes. Any wine maker knows that a stressing season for vines means an incredible vintage is just a couple of years away from the bottle.

Many startup companies will only survive the next couple of years by being more inventive and crisp with their fundamentals. They’re going to have to survive on less and be more focused on self-sufficiency. But we’ve been seeing some very interesting shifts here. Founders are more focused on fundamentals, for one. Startup Battlefield applications have been far more likely to mention early revenue and traction, even in seed or pre-seed companies. The go-to-market slides are getting more defined and more focused on extending working capital runways. The founding teams are more likely to include someone with a background in revenue and growth even at earlier stages.

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The founders themselves are also just incredibly impressive. They’re coming into this game well aware of the current stakes and with all of the context that has come before. They’re ready.

The Stressed Grape Startups are coming, and they’re going to be more resilient and richer with experience for it. 

This has been an amazing decade to cover and participate in one of the most fascinating communities in the world. The eternal joy, optimism and cleverness of founders, designers, developers and hustlers is infectious and I never want to stop being close to that energy. There’s some kind of mania that infuses entrepreneurs – those folks who just can’t help but step off of ledges and into the thin air of hope.

I’m massively optimistic about the coming wave of founders and companies. Though the funding environment is tough right now, you can see the explosion coming.

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This one goes out to the ledge steppers. We’ll see you at Disrupt

 

​ It’s been 10 years since I stepped off a ledge and landed at TechCrunch. I don’t get self referential a lot here on the pages of TC, but I figured that a tin anniversary is a nice time to look at what we’ve done over the past decade as we approach this year’s Disrupt, coming 

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The Cities Bracing for Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

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In the wake of Donald Trump’s recent election victory and his promise of “the largest deportation operation in American history,” several major U.S. cities are bracing for potentially seismic shifts in their economic and social landscapes. As the nation grapples with the implications of this proposed policy, urban centers that have long been havens for immigrant communities find themselves at the epicenter of a looming storm.

Los Angeles, often dubbed the “City of Angels,” stands to lose more than its celestial nickname suggests. As a primary gateway for immigrants, the city’s vibrant tapestry of cultures and its economic engine could face significant disruption. From the bustling streets of Koreatown to the sun-drenched orchards of the Central Valley, the absence of undocumented workers could leave gaping holes in the city’s workforce and cultural identity.

Across the country, New York City, with its iconic skyline and melting pot reputation, faces its own reckoning. The Big Apple’s 5.9 million immigrants, many of whom are undocumented, form the backbone of industries ranging from construction to healthcare. The potential exodus could transform neighborhoods like Jackson Heights and Flushing, altering the very essence of what makes New York a global city.In the Sunshine State, Miami’s tropical allure belies the turbulent times ahead. Home to 2.5 million immigrants, the city’s economy relies heavily on sectors like tourism and hospitality – industries where undocumented workers often fill crucial roles. The potential deportation of these workers could send shockwaves through Miami’s economic ecosystem, from South Beach’s glitzy hotels to the agricultural heartlands of South Florida.

Chicago, the “City of Big Shoulders,” may find those shoulders significantly weakened. With 1.7 million immigrants in its metropolitan area, the Windy City’s diverse neighborhoods and industries face an uncertain future. From the meatpacking plants to the tech startups, Chicago’s economic resilience could be tested like never before.

In the Lone Star State, Houston and Dallas stand as twin testaments to the complexities of immigration policy. These Texas titans, each home to large immigrant populations, could see their booming economies stumble. The construction sites that dot their ever-expanding skylines and the service industries that keep these cities humming could face unprecedented labor shortages.

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Out West, the San Francisco Bay Area’s reputation as a bastion of innovation and progress could be challenged. The region’s tech industry, often reliant on immigrant talent, might find itself grappling with a new reality. From Silicon Valley’s coding campuses to the agricultural expanses of the Central Valley, California’s economic powerhouse could face a reckoning. Phoenix, rising from the Sonoran Desert, could see its growth trajectory altered. As Arizona’s urban center, it stands at the forefront of the immigration debate, potentially facing not just economic impacts but social and political upheaval as well.

These cities, along with others like San Diego and Las Vegas, are not just facing potential economic disruptions. They are staring down the barrel of profound social change. Family separations, community fragmentation, and the erosion of cultural enclaves built over generations are all possible consequences of mass deportations. Moreover, the fiscal implications are staggering. Undocumented immigrants contribute billions in taxes annually, often without receiving the full benefits of their contributions. Their sudden absence could leave gaping holes in city budgets, potentially affecting public services and infrastructure projects.

As these urban centers brace for impact, the debate rages on. Supporters of stricter immigration policies argue for the need to enforce laws and protect American jobs. Critics warn of economic devastation and the unraveling of America’s urban fabric. What’s clear is that America’s cities stand at a crossroads. The coming months and years will likely reshape urban landscapes in ways both visible and invisible. From the foods we eat to the services we rely on, from the neighborhoods we call home to the very character of our cities, the impacts of this proposed immigration crackdown could be far-reaching and long-lasting. As the nation watches and waits, these cities – vibrant, diverse, and economically vital – find themselves on the front lines of a policy that could redefine what it means to be an American city in the 21st century.

Bolanle Media is excited to announce our partnership with The Newbie Film Academy to offer comprehensive courses designed specifically for aspiring filmmakers. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to enhance your skills, our resources will provide you with the tools and knowledge needed to succeed in the competitive world of screenwriting. Join us today to unlock your creative potential and take your first steps toward crafting compelling stories that resonate with audiences. Let’s turn your ideas into impactful scripts together!

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How Trump’s Deportation Plans Could Reshape Major Cities

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In the wake of Donald Trump’s recent election victory, his ambitious plans for mass deportations have thrust America’s urban centers into the spotlight. As the nation grapples with the potential implications of what Trump calls “the largest deportation operation in American history,” cities across the country are bracing for significant changes that could reshape their economic, social, and cultural landscapes.

The stakes are particularly high for metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Miami, which host the largest populations of unauthorized immigrants. These cities, along with other major urban hubs such as Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, stand at the forefront of a looming transformation that could reverberate throughout the nation.

Economic Tremors

Economists warn that the proposed deportations could send shockwaves through urban economies. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, cautions that businesses would face “significant challenges” if a substantial number of immigrants were removed. Industries such as construction, hospitality, and healthcare—pillars of urban economies—could face severe labor shortages.

Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, emphasizes the potential ripple effects: “The native-born workforce cannot meet current labor demands.” This labor gap could lead to increased wages, potentially rekindling inflation—a concern that looms large over city planners and policymakers alike.

Community Fabric Under Strain

Beyond economic considerations, the social fabric of cities hangs in the balance. Elena, a Nicaraguan immigrant in Houston, voices a fear echoed in immigrant communities across the nation: “I’m scared… This is my home.” The threat of family separations, particularly in mixed-status households, casts a long shadow over urban neighborhoods.

Immigrant advocacy groups like FIEL are mobilizing, advising clients to prepare for “anything that can happen.” This atmosphere of uncertainty could lead to decreased community engagement and cooperation with local authorities, potentially impacting public safety and community cohesion.

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Cities at a Crossroads

As the debate intensifies, cities find themselves at a crossroads. Some, like New York and Los Angeles, have historically positioned themselves as “sanctuary cities,” often at odds with federal immigration enforcement. The impending clash between federal policy and local governance promises to be a defining feature of this new political landscape.

Meanwhile, the logistical challenges of implementing such a massive deportation operation remain daunting. Questions abound regarding detention facilities, transportation networks, and the sheer manpower required to carry out Trump’s vision.

Looking Ahead

As America’s urban centers brace for potential change, the full impact of Trump’s deportation plans remains to be seen. Legal challenges are all but certain, and the resilience of America’s cities will be put to the test.

What is clear is that the coming months and years will be pivotal for urban America. As Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, puts it, the plan is to “immediately reinstate” immigration policies from Trump’s first term. For America’s cities, this could mean a period of unprecedented change, challenge, and, potentially, transformation.

As the nation watches and waits, the story of America’s cities in the face of this ambitious deportation plan is just beginning to unfold. The outcome will undoubtedly shape the future of urban life in America for years to come.

Bolanle Media is excited to announce our partnership with The Newbie Film Academy to offer comprehensive courses designed specifically for aspiring screenwriters. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to enhance your skills, our resources will provide you with the tools and knowledge needed to succeed in the competitive world of screenwriting. Join us today to unlock your creative potential and take your first steps toward crafting compelling stories that resonate with audiences. Let’s turn your ideas into impactful scripts together!

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Donald Trump Wins 2024 USA Election

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Based on the election results, Donald Trump has indeed won the 2024 U.S. presidential election, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris. Here’s an analysis of the key statistics and implications:

Electoral College Victory

Donald Trump has secured the presidency by winning crucial battleground states and flipping some key states that were previously held by Democrats. The final Electoral College tally is still being determined, but Trump has surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Battleground State Performance

Trump’s victory was largely secured by winning several critical swing states:

  • Wisconsin: Trump’s win here was pivotal in securing his path to victory.
  • Pennsylvania: This state flipped back to Republican control.
  • Georgia: Another key state that Trump managed to win back.
  • Michigan: Trump successfully flipped this traditionally Democratic stronghold.

While the final popular vote tally is still being calculated, exit polls provide insight into voter priorities:

Congressional Control

The election results extend beyond the presidency:

Media Implications

The outcome of this election could be seen as a challenge to mainstream media narratives for several reasons:

  1. Polling Discrepancies: Many pre-election polls suggested a tight race or even a slight Harris advantage in key states. Trump’s victory, particularly in battleground states, may indicate that polls underestimated his support.
  2. Narrative Shifts: Throughout the campaign, much of the mainstream media focused on Trump’s legal challenges and controversies. His victory suggests that these issues may not have resonated with voters as much as economic and policy concerns.
  3. Voter Priorities: The emphasis on issues like the economy and immigration in voter decision-making may indicate a disconnect between media focus and voter concerns.
  4. Electoral Predictions: Many mainstream outlets were cautious about predicting a Trump victory, even as results began to favor him. This hesitancy could be seen as a reflection of broader media skepticism about Trump’s chances.
  5. Underestimation of Trump’s Base: The results suggest that Trump’s core support remained strong and potentially grew, despite negative coverage in much of the mainstream media.

It’s important to note that while the election outcome may challenge some media narratives, it doesn’t necessarily invalidate all mainstream reporting. The complex factors influencing voter behavior and the challenges of accurate political forecasting remain subjects of ongoing analysis and debate.

As the dust settles on this historic election, both the media and political analysts will likely engage in extensive reflection on the factors that led to Trump’s victory and the implications for future political coverage and analysis.

Bolanle Media is excited to announce our partnership with The Newbie Film Academy to offer comprehensive courses designed specifically for aspiring screenwriters. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to enhance your skills, our resources will provide you with the tools and knowledge needed to succeed in the competitive world of screenwriting. Join us today to unlock your creative potential and take your first steps toward crafting compelling stories that resonate with audiences. Let’s turn your ideas into impactful scripts together!

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