I live a fairly simple life, and that didnt change much after I sold TechCrunch in 2010. I didnt buy a new house or even a new car. The one thing I did splurge on was a boat. Nothing too fancy or large. Michael Arrington More Quotes by Michael Arrington More Quotes From Michael Arrington Most people have an aversion to risk, my college economics professor told me. Which means they have to be rewarded to take on that risk. The higher the risk, the higher the possible payout has to be for people to jump. Michael Arrington college mean people Im nearly certain that Google accessed my Gmail account after I broke a major story about Google. Michael Arrington google broke stories America is an unsolvable problem: a nation divided and deeply in hate with itself. If it was a startup, wed understand how unfixable the situation is; most of us would leave for a fresh start, and the company would fall apart. America is MySpace. Michael Arrington hate america fall Customer research produces bland products. We're producing a piece of art. Michael Arrington pieces research art One thing I know from personal experience, judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases. There are a lot of things about our criminal legal system that need to be changed, and this is just one of them. Prosecutors know how to play the press. Most defendants don't. Michael Arrington party hate play Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining Michael Arrington whining quitting cry The payouts for starting a business are just terrible when you account for risk. A tiny minority of entrepreneurs ever get rich. And the majority of entrepreneurs would probably make far more money, and have more stable personal relationships, if they just worked for someone else. Michael Arrington majority entrepreneur risk Everyone wants the rich to pay more in taxes. Michael Arrington rich want pay I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture capital firm with investments in many startups around the world. I am also a limited partner in many other venture funds which have their own startup investments. Michael Arrington partner i-am own world Sometimes I have so many financial conflicts of interest that I can't even keep them straight. Michael Arrington straight financial interest sometimes Talking about Apple v. Microsoft without mentioning the Internet and the browser is like talking about WWII without talking about the nuke. Framing the conversation just in terms of open v. closed operating systems, the quality of the hardware or software or who the CEO was, is silly. Michael Arrington internet quality conversation talking If you really care about Facebook likes, don't just post your stuff to Twitter and then rely on it being republished automatically to Facebook. In my sample size of one, Facebook penalizes you significantly for that and shows that content to far fewer people. Michael Arrington your you care people I have Twitter auto-post to my Facebook page, and I occasionally post things directly to Facebook as well. I've always noticed that the direct-to-Facebook approach generates far more likes, but I've never actually gone back and run the averages. Michael Arrington never back run always Before the Internet, all most people cared about was Office. And Office was really the only reason anyone wanted Windows machines instead of Macs. Michael Arrington internet office reason people I remember endless Apple v. Windows debates in the early '90s when I was in college. Macs were better machines, everyone said; the whole Office thing was a huge pain. It was difficult to transfer files between operating systems, and generally speaking, if you wanted to do Office stuff, you needed a Windows machine. Michael Arrington better you pain remember I'm a creature of startups. For example, I don't want government interference in the startup ecosystem. Michael Arrington ecosystem government example want Journalists are supposed to put the people first, even before themselves. Around the world and throughout history, journalists have died to get the truth out. Michael Arrington truth history people world If a tech journalist needs financial security before doing what their conscience dictates, I'm not sure they should be calling themselves journalists at all. Michael Arrington doing security conscience financial More than once at TechCrunch, we made AOL extremely uncomfortable with things that we wrote. But they never ordered us to write or not write about something because they understood that not only would we not comply, we'd write a post about the whole thing. Michael Arrington something never things uncomfortable Our independence from AOL was so important to me that I negotiated an extremely odd provision in our purchase agreement that allowed me to disclose confidential information about AOL. It was their job never to give me that information. It was not my job to protect it in any way. Michael Arrington job me independence way
