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Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here. By now you must have heard the news that AOL has acquired us. Here are videos of the on stage signing of the agreement and an interview with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong immediately afterwards. So how did all this happen? And What happens to TechCrunch now? In May I had a chance to interview Tim on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt: New York.

After the talk we went to the speaker room for a quick private chat (this happens after most talks unless the speaker has to rush out). Tim asked me how things were going at TechCrunch. “That’s too bad, he said, we’d love to acquire you but we’d need to know you would stick around.” “Wait. We laughed, and that was the end of any conversations for a while.

The truth is I was tired. AOL of course fixes that problem perfectly. The more we spoke with AOL the more we saw a perfect fit. From a product and business standpoint, it’s a perfect fit. So at that point we were basically sold. Tim told me that he doesn’t want whatever makes TechCrunch special to go away. Remove TechCrunch Comments - Galerie des extensions Google Chrome. TechCrunch. TechCrunch Europe. TechCrunchIT. The early days of Techcrunch – Helloform. I remember it well: back in June 2005, I sent Michael Arrington an email criticizing his personal blog design. I also remember that design quite well – it really did look like crap. Mike and I had been blogging about similar subjects and exchanging blog post comments.

Back then I was blogging at webreakstuff.com (which became my company), and Mike was starting Techcrunch. Those exchanges and that particular email I sent eventually led to Mike asking me to design Techcrunch. I needed a challenge and decided to take him up on the offer. A couple months later, on August 25th, I got a long email from Mike. I’ve spent some time discussing edgeio with you and skirting the idea of you working with us. About three weeks later, I was landing at SFO and moving into what for the 4 following years was called the Techcrunch HQ – or simply Mike’s place.

I remember going to bed and Mike being up, writing. These days, Techcrunch is huge – Mike talks about how big it is in his post at Uncrunched.