If you have a startup or are deep in the tech world, odds are that you read Techcrunch and have read an amazing article by MG Siegler. Having written some of the best articles ever published, MG has gained respect from many in the valley. Watch as he joins us on stage and talks about how to get written about on Techcrunch, writing about Apple, and where tech is going next.
[00:00:13] Let’s welcome MG Siegler to the Startup Grind. Here we go, MG, come on out.
[00:00:31] MG: That’s good.
[00:00:32] You don’t belong here.
[00:00:33] MG: Yeah. Nice.
[00:00:36] QUESTION: What do you have in that bag? Is there something --
[00:00:39] MG: All kinds of stuff. You never know when I’ll have to stop and write something up really fast, in the middle of our conversation.
[00:00:47] Twitter at Startup Grind, if you’re not following us, please hashtag that. Let me give you a amazing introduction that I wrote myself, I’m quite proud of. MG Siegler, otherwise first name Maximus, right?
[00:01:04] MG: Yes.
[00:01:06] QUESTION: Yeah. Grew up in Pepper Pike, Ohio. Anyone familiar? Okay, we’re going to talk about Pepper Pike. Attended the University of Michigan. Disowned family, friends.
[00:01:19] MG: I did. Leaving Ohio altogether.
[00:01:21] QUESTION:Yep. Went to LA and San Diego to work for an advertising agency, worked for a film production studio run by Ben Stiller. 2007 secured a job at Venturebeat and you worked there for a few years and then started TechCrunch in 2009. Now you’re programming director at AOL.
[00:01:41] MG: I am, I have no idea what that actually means-
[00:01:43] QUESTION:: What does that mean?
[00:01:43] MG: This is the first time I’ve actually been here. This really is, I had no idea where I was.
[00:01:48] QUESTION:: Did they card you? I mean was it-
[00:01:49] MG: I snuck in the back door.
[00:01:50] QUESTION: You did? Okay.
[00:01:51] MG: Yeah. I don’t have a secret pass or anything to get in here. I think we have desk space, I know Erikson specifically has a desk with his name on it he’s never going to INAUDIBLE so, we’ll be here again tomorrow for a second Startup event.
[00:02:05] Yeah tomorrow night. The same room I think.
[00:02:07] MG: Oh, is it?
[00:02:08] Derrek: I think so. Hugo says yes so-
[00:02:12] MG: Alright, sweet. Good that I got to know it then.
[00:02:15] QUESTION:: So, you are the main reporter, I’d say, for TechCrunch companies like Google, Apple, Facebook. Single handedly created the social success that Four Square is, that’s been attributed to you, right?
[00:02:30] MG: Right, one hundred percent.
[00:02:32] QUESTION: So, yeah, we are excited to have you. I want to start, we’re going to get into all the issues and things we’ve been talking about the last few weeks and months, but let’s start with your family. Tell us a little about – we’re going to get to Pepper Pike INAUDIABLE yeah a little bit. So tell us a little about your family, tell us what did your parents do? Where did they work? Tell us about your background tell us about your brothers and sister.
[00:02:59] MG: Sure. My dad started a contracting company, or he didn’t actually start it my family long ago his grandfather started it, so he runs that and he’s run that my entire life. He is quasi retired now, but still does that and spends time between there and Florida. My mother has done various things, but was basically a house mom raising me and my younger sister who, interestingly enough, I went to Michigan she went to Ohio State, so that was a-
[00:03:27] Derrek: It’s a good time for you right now.
[00:03:28] MG: Yeah. Well, right now, hasn’t been for the past several years, so I have a younger sister she went to Ohio State, she studied biology there, so she pretty much has absolutely no idea what I am doing and I have absolutely no idea what she’s doing. I’m not even sure my parents know what I’m doing.
[00:03:48] QUESTION: Have you told them or do they think?
[00:03:49] MG: Oh yeah, they see my name every once in awhile, I’ll let them know if I’m going to be on tv or something and they see that are like “wow he’s on tv, I have no idea what he’s talking about” [Audience laughing]
[00:03:58] QUESTION: So tell us a little bit about Pepper Pike. I mean it’s the hometown of James Garfield, population six thousand?
[00:04:07] MG: Yes.
[00:04:08] QUESTION:And it has some of the best, I’m lead to believe – we sent some reporters out there actually in conjunction with this - but I’m lead to believe it has some of the best public schools in Ohio.
[00:04:18] MG: It does. The school I went to is very good – was very good, I don’t know about it anymore – but, Orange High School its called, it’s a nice place-
[00:04:27] Derrek: Sure, I know it well.
[00:04:28] MG: It sounds like you’re the quickie thing on the Ipad that you’re reading off the Wikipeda page.
[00:04:34] Derrek: Hopefully my voice doesn’t sounds like him.
[00:4:37] Hello. Pepper Pike is good. It’s a suburb of Cleveland for those who don’t know it’s a half an hour outside, its near Beachwood or Shaker Heights if you’ve heard of those bigger suburbs of Cleveland. It’s a small little ritzy town that’s not at all what you would think Cleveland is like, but it’s a good place to grow up.
[00:05:00] QUESTION: And so you went to U of M, what did you study, did you study journalism? Did you study communications?
[00:05:05] MG: I was studying film there actually which lead me to my next phase, but I toyed around with what to do there. I really had no idea what I was going to study when I first went to school. I’ve always had the same basic interests, which were technology, writing and film. So I just went with the latter of there, but I almost went into engineering and did some other things, but at first it seemed like I was going to have a totally different career than I have now, but it was exciting doing that.
[00:05:37] QUESTION: So have you always been a writer? Do you have some sci-fi novels that are on a back shelf somewhere?
[00:05:44] MG: No, I don’t have that I heard you were going to have Ben Parr here in a couple weeks for that evil evil other blog. He does that I know.
[00:05:55] QUESTION: Does he? Are they good?
[00:05:56] MG: Yes, but I haven’t read them.
[00:05:57] Derek:Well I will.
[00:05:58] MG: Okay you read them between reading up on his background. I’ve done some writing, I wrote a little bit for the school newspaper at Michigan. I had always been more into creative writing growing up just because there was no real blogging at the time when I was a little kid. I think I started blogging about the time that I moved to Los Angeles so right when I was done with college so that was 2004. I had moved from Michigan to go to Los Angeles for film. I had a bunch of odds and ends jobs, various things, everything from an onset PA doing all kinds of-
[00:06:41] QUESTION: What movies? Tropic Thunder or something? Were you in these movies by that production company, right?
[00:06:47] MG: That was Ben Stiller’s production company, yes. I wish I would’ve been a PA on those movies, but I in a movie called Officer Down, basically it’s a straight up dvd movie, Casper Van dien is in it if you remember him from Starship Troopers. That’s about the only star that I think I could name from it. [00:07:13] INAUDIABLE It was a very bare bones production and I mean I got to do some cool things there and I got to really learn the industry from the absolute bottom up, I mean not doing porn or anything, but one step up I’d say. So I just moved throughout there and did other various jobs in Hollywood. I worked at Warren Brother’s lot for awhile as an assistant to a producer there and eventually worked my way up to working for Ben Stiller’s production company. I was doing scripts there that was always my thing. When I first got there I was trying to decide what to do, but scripts eventually became the major thing.
[00:07:56] QUESTION:: Where you writing technical scripts like minority reports style stuff? When you say script writing, give us an example.
[00:08:03] MG: Well, mainly I was doing script reading for them, so I started off as an intern there and basically got every shitty script that came in, it would land on my desk and I would have to read it and pump out what is called coverage --which is basically like a book report--about how bad the script is and ninety nine point nine percent of them are awful, really really really bad. I mean if you think that there are movies that get made that you see that are awful just think those are the top zero zero one percent of the movies out there, there are some awful awful things that don’t get made. So that was my job. I read those eventually I worked my way up, so I got to be kind of like the last line of defense before Stiller and his people would actually read it, but eventually I got to read some good scripts. One script I read was Juno actually that came out and won an Academy award, Diablo Cody wrote that. So there were some good things that came in, but again ninety nine point nine nine percent were awful.
[00:09:07] QUESTION: Your goal getting into college or studying film was what? Did you want to make films, did you want to write films?
[00:09:14] MG: When I came out to Los Angeles I was kind of deciding that, I thought maybe producing for a little bit – of course its all working your way up though to get to that level to be able to do that and really paying your dues unless you have significant connections, which helps a lot, and I didn’t have – but, yeah eventually writing, I just kind of zeroed in on that, film and writing together.
[00:09:37] QUESTION: So, tell us something you learned about working in LA?
[00:09:41] MG: I learned that I hate driving, which I really don’t do anymore, but I was in my car all the time there. Overall it’s a really fascinating place to work, both good and bad. I don’t know if its more good or more bad, but its close. Hollywood is interesting because its not all – people try to compare it to what its like out here because there is kind of a rock star atmosphere a little bit during the boom times, which we are in right now there are some rock star entrepreneurs and of course now The Social Network won best picture so that’s kind of like the merging of the two, but its really not at all like it – the behind the scene thing I am sure there are some people like that – but generally there is so much waste going on, I mean people spending eighty one hundred thousand dollars a night on various parties and hotel rooms that they really don’t need to spend because they are making tens of millions of dollars every movie, so else are they going to spend that money on. If Hollywood really wanted to buckle down they could streamline the hell out of that industry and really just blow away everything else in terms of profits that they make, but you know that’s part of it, that’s part of the allure I think that there is this majestic quality because everything is larger than life and everyone is spending gobs of money on things they don’t need and just living extravagant lifestyles. Thankfully that’s not really the way it is out here – again there are exceptions to that – but for the most part its not like that.
[00:11:12] QUESTION: So, you’re in LA, you’re working in the film industry. What factors lead to you ending up at Venturebeat? What changes did you make? What things were you improving on, I mean how did that happen?
[00:11:12] MG: So, there were a few different factors that came in to play. At the time it was mostly about a girl though. I was dating a girl for a long time – at the time, not anymore – and she really hated LA. She was a year behind me in school she graduated the year after I did and she went back home for a little bit and was trying to decide if she should come out to where I was in California because she was back in Ohio of course. We eventually compromised and she would not move to LA, maybe she would’ve if I really really would’ve pushed it, but I was a little bit fed up with the stuff I was talking about some of the bs that was going on in Hollywood and I was okay with taking some of the script stuff and moving somewhere else, so we compromised and moved to San Diego. For a little bit I was doing a little freelance script stuff down there, but then I also started to pursue more of the text stuff that I hadn’t been doing for a long time except as a hobby on the side.
[00:12:26] QUESTION:Like what? What were you doing? A personal blog or something?
[00:12:27] MG: Yeah I was doing that for a long time, but then I ended up going back to take some classes at USD and really learned web development, just basic front end web development html, ses and java script, eventually I got a job at a web development firm down in San Diego.
[00:12:48] QUESTION: Do you need a job are you looking for a little side work? We’ve got a couple front end guys who-
[00:12:52] MG: Yeah, I can make you a good Geocities site I’m sure. I don’t know if I remember anything right now. So, I kind of morphed into that and the Hollywood stuff just faded away. While I was doing that stuff blogging really started to take a hold and that’s when I really started to get interested in writing about technology because I was so immersed in it now on a daily basis.
[00:13:19] QUESTION: Tell us about how you ended up at TechCrunch, you were at Venturebeat for two years?
[00:13:24] MG: Right, so I got to Venturebeat when I had the web development job down in San Diego and was blogging on the side and I was blogging enough that people started to recognize my name because I would be bitching about things or whatever just personal blogging my thoughts. So a few posts got on things like Techmeme and stuff like that so one of the writers at Venturebeat at the time, Eric Geldon who is of course still around he works at Inside Networks now, so he found me and just said hey would you be interested in contributing for Venturebeat we are based up here in Sillicon Valley I know you are down there maybe you can come up and meet the team, so I did and eventually that just merged into a full time thing I just hit the ground running. So that to TechCrunch – I was at Venturebeat for a little over a year and a half and was really doing a lot of content there and of course Arrington saw that and said at one point, I mean we must have had this discussion like four times, do you want to come work for me then he’d go off and run away to Hawii or something for like six months and I wouldn’t hear from him, but eventually we got on the same page it was like yeah why don’t you come over here and work, so I did.
[00:15:01] QUESTION: Was it anything like Suge Knight how he used to get people involved?
[00:15:06] MG: Yeah, Mike was basically like --I’m Vanilla Ice – and he’s holding me over the edge of the balcony.
[00:15: 13]Derek: Cool, well rumors are true in some cases, its good to know.
[00:15:30] QUESTION:Raise your hands, who here reads Venturebeat on lets say daily basis first? Okay, weekly basis? Okay hands down. Who reads TechCrunch on a daily basis? What about weekly basis? Okay, so it seems like a reasonably good move on your part. So, in two thousand nine --lets talk about how much harder it is today to get a story on TechCrunch than it was in two thousand nine, or not. How have things changed and evolved since you first got there?
[00:16:08] MG: Well, we’re definitely bigger than we were, I was looking at the stats the other day and I think we are about three times the size that we were back then even which is good that’s what we were hoping for. Things are quite different now being under this lovely regime of the building we’re in, but in terms of day to day coverage it certainly helps that we have more writers now, but we also see a lot more, every day there is more and more stuff coming in, as I talked about we are in a boom time right now so there is a massive flood of influx of different startups and different pitches, all kinds of different things coming in so its probably a little bit harder than it was in two thousand nine because we haven’t ramped up hiring as quickly as the startup scene has grown, but its still relatively doable I’d say.
[00:17:00] QUESTION: New redesign, let’s just quickly address this, fans of the new redesign? Okay, six people. Lets do redesign neutral? That’s pretty good. Not fans of the redesign? Okay. So, yeah a few days ago I was looking at the new TechCrunch and my eyes started bleeding, I mean I looked for a place where I could submit this feedback. I actually really enjoy – this new website, I cant remember what its called but it shows the old TechCrunch, do you know what I’m talking about?
[00:17:44] MG: Yes, that was genius, I don’t remember what its called either, but they have the hacker news version, they have the just simple streamline version the old version, its really nice.
[00:17:50] QUESTION: Yeah, so the new design probably has absolutely nothing to do with you, but talk about, what has the feedback been? Has the page use increased?
[00:18:02] MG: Well, we certainly didn’t gawker it, as we like to say, which is good. Yeah, I mean the response generally has been what the audience say, most people say they just don’t really care either way and that’s kind of how I feel to be honest about it. The one thing that I do love is that its significantly faster, we got rid of a lot of the sharing widgets. I used to bitch nonstop about behind the scenes that we have got to get this faster and I would get four thousand pings a month about how slow it was and those call about all those different buttons, so anyway we were able to do that. The overall design, its growing on me I like certain parts of it and I don’t like other parts of it, but overall I think it’s a net positive, its going to stick. I mean, that’s what we’re sticking with so --
[00:19:00] QUESTION: The future of blogging – print is dead, so everyone says – what point does blogging die, does it die? Or does it evolve, where is blogging going in five years from now?
[00:19:012] MG: I think its been slowly evolving and I think that will continue, like maybe if someone had looked at it five years ago and then had not looked at a blog again until right now they would see a massive change, but I think its been more of a gradual change for all of us who have been very much immersed in it for the past five years. I think that its slowly but surely moving right now toward more sensational things, which can be good and not so good it depends, but I think that there are cycles that it goes through. I think right now the certain kind of thing like google seo gaming and things like that are really starting to take off and people recognize that that’s the way to get a lot of page views. At the same time there are a lot of blogs that are taking it very seriously and really competing with things like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that have existed forever and doing a good job. I’d like to include that TechCrunch has a little bit of both I think, but I’d like to include us more in the part that really competes well with New York Times and Wall Street Journal, I mean the amount of tech news that breaks via TechCrunch I think is amazing. There is no way to say that the most amount of news does not break on TechCrunch, I think even if you were to add all the other sites together I think that we do a good job breaking news.
[00:20:35] QUESTION:Yeah, I have to say about Mike Arrington he breaks more exclusives and he is right more than anybody else is in the tech world, I mean say what you want about him about what you’ve heard or haven’t heard, but the guy when he posts about something he doesn’t lie and you can go back and trace every single one of his posts and almost all of them actually happen two or three months later. Its interesting to me to see ever since he wrote – this was before your sale – but in Fast Company or maybe Fortune he wrote this article about his philosophy on blogging and he specifically mentioned exclusives and its been interesting to see, and I don’t know if you guys have seen this but, all the other blogs now you see exclusives not Mike Arrington’s story, you know
[00:21:17] MG: Right, yeah, which I hate. I mean I don’t hate that its not Mike Arrington’s story I hate the exclusive –
[00:21:23] QUESTION: But that’s part of there are stories about, you guys love exclusive, right?
[00:21:30] MG: Absolutely, we love exclusives, I have the mindset that if we have exclusives that we don’t have to yell in caps that we have an exclusive you know like write your story well enough that everyone recognizes that it is important story that is yours.
[00:21:43] QUESTION: It was interesting I saw that Ben Parr after you broke that story about the Facebook Ipad app I thought it was cool he called you out by saying hey it was a great scoop you know and you didn’t, I don’t remember if you wrote exclusive in all caps on that?
[00:21:56:] No I didn’t.
[00:21:58] QUESTION: So, are you supposed to write about certain companies? Do you have free range to write whatever you want? What is the structure with the writers?
[00:22:08] MG: Its different across the board, I’m one of the senior people now of course so I have free range to do what I want which is good and that partially came from me coming over from Venturebeat and already having an established name. Mike is very smart in that he knows the best way that people work, he knows I don’t want someone in my face telling me what to do and I don’t really need any supervision, Ill just get it done what I need to get done when I need to get it done, that could be five in the morning that could be two in the afternoon it could be eight in the morning, it really varies every day its just when [00:22:44] INAUDIABLE
[00:22:44] QUESTION:Do you have days off? Because it seems like you post literally every day.
[00:22:49] MG: Not really, I mean I have done a better job in the recent, probably about the past year, of taking a weekend day off, but almost always I am pretty much working all the time, but I do that because, not that Mike is a task master forcing us to do that, I really enjoy it. I mean, if there’s something out there that’s happening and its interesting to me I want to be the person who writes it I don’t want to be the person who is sitting back there having to read it. I took time off last year and went to Japan for a couple weeks with my girlfriend and I promised her that I wouldn’t do any work when we were doing that, it was really the first time off I have taken in several years, and I was sitting there and wasn’t supposed to be checking news or anything, but of course if we walked into some place with wifi I would pull out my phone and go oh look whats going on Twitter bought X company and blah blah blah, sitting there just grinding my teeth like I need to write about this.
[00:23:39] QUESTION: So the entrepreneur in me – well actually I want to ask you something first. Who in this room has secure funding, raise your hand? For your startup. Okay so we have a couple, most people have not, that’s totally typical of our audience I think people in here, including myself, would say man I wish MG would write about me, but I think realistically, and I would love to get your thoughts on this, at this stage where you’re at in the TechCrunch hierarchy of people that odds of you writing about a no name startup who hasn’t received funding who doesn’t get introduced, what are the odds of that happening based on your scale?
[00:24:30] MG: That’s a great question, you know this is something that I think a lot of people want to know definitely, I get asked a lot at the devil that is email and other mechanisms, but general thing has kind of evolved over the years, like you said, my beats as you are all probably aware are of apple, google and a few other companies, but at the same time I do really enjoy writing about new startups and learning about new startups for sure. At the same time, there does need to be some sort of a filter, there is just too much coming in to really pinpoint something to write about and do it in a timely fashion is what its really they key to that. So usually we use, I think all the writers do this, we have our own social filters and personal introductions from someone that you know that say hey you should check out this this company they are really cool they are doing this and that and here’s what they’ve done. Occasionally there are things that come in, we definitely try to make sure some of the new writers really dive into the TechCrunch tips which is where a lot of the people who don’t have a way to get to us come in and really try to pick out the best ones. We don’t do a good enough job of that I don’t think right now and we’re trying to do a better job.
[00:25:47] QUESTION:Well its flooded with garbage too, right?
[00:25:49] MG: It is, its really hard to go through those, but I think we have a way to do a better job of that and part of the redesign actually, we haven’t highlighted it enough because we’re still working out the kinks of it, but we have a specific startup column because that’s how TechCrunch started, it was Mike writing about these startup and even just writing a paragraph about it to kind of point out what it is to people and that’s sort of what CrunchBase is now in a way, where its just this influx of new companies and it has a little blurb about what they are. So we have this startup column again on TechCrunch and we hope to really populate that with companies that aren’t the big companies, even the bigger startup companies like Facebook and Twitter right now, which are still technically startups I guess, but we hope to get some of the smaller guys there too because that’s really what the core of what TechCrunch has always been.
[00:26:36] QUESTION: I wanted to ask you about – this is a personally theory so if this is wrong or crazy tell me to shut up and we’ll get off of it – but, it seems to me that there’s very much an in crowd in Sillicon Valley. People like Kevin Rose, Joe Hewitt, Ev, Biz, and another example I can give is I saw one time that there was a PlanCast party you went to. I follow you on PlanCast I get your updates. You went to this meeting and I looked at it and looked at the people involved. There were six people and among those six people, this was maybe six months ago you had maybe twenty thousand followers, but among the six people there’s like a hundred and thirty thousand followers on Twitter, represented in one room. When me and my friends get together its like three of them are blocked from spamming and you know these other guys they don’t even have computers. So, I’m trying to understand, a lot of people in this room would say, or myself would say, what does it take for you to write about me wearing a new sweater in a picture, like Dennis Crowley, what does it take for those guys to get there? Great products, is it something special, what is it?
[00:28:03] MG: I think first and foremost it is definitely great products. If someone has something that really hits it out of the park and they are – a lot of the people you mentioned are pretty charismatic so they are also good at doing events and speaking and getting up so they master followers that way – but, the key really is having at least one killer thing that you have done that has really inspired other people to do things and I think that’s really a snowball effect that helps these guys gather all these followers. In some ways this is maybe similar to the Hollywood situation where a lot of those people feel more comfortable hanging out with other people like that because its something they have in common certainly and they also share a lot of the different, I don’t want to say burdens because all those people are very successful, but they have the burdens of living up to what everyone has built them up to be.
[00:29:12] QUESTION: Right, totally. I wanted to talk about Google and Apple a little bit. Google plus you have written extensively about it, go watch MG videos with Jason Kincade there’s lots of stuff on there, amazing growth, you compare it to Friend Feed a lot, do you think it impacts Facebook or Twitter more?
[00:29:32] MG: To me it seems more akin to Facebook, but I know some people use it in a similar way to Twitter. I mean the truth is they are all different products of course. Its really an interesting thing right now, it started off really hot – I wrote a story the other day that really pissed Google off saying its not as hot right now. Yeah. the sophomore slump, as soon as we publish that we get fifty phone calls about why that’s wrong and I’m an idiot. We’ll see, the best is on Google plus where its just this incestuous conversation about how Google plus is awesome, no I think its more awesome and you think its awesome.
[00:30:17] QUESTION: Where do these people come from? Have they just been hiding on Gmail just waiting to voice their love for Google? Have they always existed and now they have a platform?
[00:30:26] MG: I think, and I am just as guilty of this as anyone, when people discover a platform for the first time, be it Google plus, be it Twitter, or in the early days be it Facebook or Friend Feed, you kind of start identifying with that and that community a lot and its like if someone says something negative about it in a way its attacking a sliver of your own identity that you have attached to this. Its like if someone says well maybe its not so good, what the hell do you mean its not so good I spend 40 hours a day there its awesome. I’m guilty of the same thing, I mean I was one of the early Friend Feed users and I compare everything to it so much, I loved the hell out of it and I still love it. I wish Facebook didn’t buy it and then turn it into a nonexistent zombie town, but it was totally awesome when it was first introduced.
[00:31:28] QUESTION: As you use Facebook now, as opposed to Google plus, when I use Facebook now it feels like a very sad clown to me. I couldn’t see it before, but now I can see two thousand five in it when I first started using it in college, do you think Facebook is going to have to make some huge changes? Do you see that now do you feel like its that much further ahead in design or usability?
[00:31:53] MG: This is another interesting thing because this is something else that I think fuels the Google plus craze right now is that a lot of people are disenchanted by Facebook, and some people by Twitter too, but more by Facebook there are more users obviously and so they are kind of like well I don’t like Facebook anymore so this thing, this is new and fresh. It has different ideas and I think that’s empowering to some people and also just kind of a fresh take and a lot of people find that appealing. That said, I don’t think Google plus really challenges Facebook at all.
[00:32:26] QUESTION: Its completely different audience, right? I mean the content is different.
[00:32:29] MG: Yes and they have seven hundred fifty million users and at some point, its already slowing down of course, but at some point that has to stop them from growing because unless they go to another planet there is only so many billions of people on this planet and the reality being that not everybody has a computer of course and in some other countries they are not as fortunate as we are to be online all the times of all the day and they are doing smart things will mobile with being able to access some other countries more, but I just don’t see Google plus really having an impact on Facebook overall. Maybe it has more of an impact on Twitter, which isn’t as firmly cemented yet. Twitter’s main problem is that they have a lot of users, but they still really need to nail the user engagement factor, they need to get people coming back more and they really need to manage the business side of things, so you know that’s another slam dunk that [00:33:26] INAUDIABLE. Facebook is set those as a business, the ads are going insane, they make so much money and they are going to IPO next year and make billions and billions of dollars, they’ll be fine. I don’t see Google plus really affecting that.
[00:33:38] QUESTION: You’ve talked about this as well, you have seen Google plus rise in the traffic charts with TechCrunch? Again correct me if I’m wrong, but if you post a great article you see Techmeme, you see Hacker News you might see some things from Twitter or Facebook and now all of the sudden the top ten is Google plus out of nowhere, right? Is that totally unprecedented? Do you think its from Google playing with that or do you think its organic, what do you think?
[00:34:10] MG: No, I think its both unprecedented and its legit. At first they made it a little hard to track though, but then they made it easier once they realized that it was good numbers. At first you had to kind of dig into google dot com slash p equals something to find out what the referrer actually was, but now they just give you the Google plus dot com so you can track it much easier. And the numbers really are impressive, less now as they were in the first week they’ve been slowly dwindling over time, but they’re still in the top ten in terms to refers to TechCrunch itself and yeah I think it has good viral effects and the fact that they are Google and they start out with several hundred million users and they are able to turn that into ten plus million, I don’t think that is surprising.
[00:34:57] QUESTION:This idea of them having, oh we are scaling we can only do invites at this time, I mean they’ve got two floors of people, like 200 people, working on this project, is this a marketing thing?
[00:35:09] MG: Yeah that’s total bull shit, I would say there is something to be said for doing it that way because there are going to be little things that people hate they they just don’t even think about because they’ve only done the internal dog fooding of it and testing of it. I think its more for that than the scaling of it. But, I mean they could definitely scale this thing to however many X millions of users that they want to have right now, but yes it’s a smart marketing strategy they have everyone talking about it, but they did that for Google Wave too and that didn’t work out so well.
[00:35:40] QUESTION: Is Apple the most valuable company in the world?
[00:35:43] MG: Exxon still is, but its getting close. I looked a few days ago –
[00:35:50] QUESTION: I didn’t mean literally, I know its not literally but tracking that way –
[00:35:54] MG: They are getting close to being literally. I just saw a bunch of people today who read a story today that said they have more money than the US government does right now. They actually have more cash than the US government does, on hand, which is awesome. Apple can be the bank that bails out the US government. Yes, yeah totally, they’re the most valuable company right now, they are the one that everyone is kind of racing to catch up with, in terms of the many things they are doing in the spaces, in mobile and in tablets, and you know the one thing that has yet to be seen and I guess we will see this Fall is what they do with the cloud stuff, of course, iCloud is not out there yet, it sounds good. It sounds interesting in that its supposed to be as simple as possible, which I think will be a welcome to a lot of people who aren’t so versed in how to do all this stuff, like my mom, but we’ll see how that goes.
[00:36:47] QUESTION: Do you think they have the chance to replace Dropbox? You talk about that thought about your mom, my sister just started using Dropbox and it was like literally the fastest easiest thing.
[00:37:02] MG: Dropbox is awesome. I’ve been using it for several years now. I don’t think Apple will have a way to replace that in that I think most people are still used to the Windows mindset where we have the file system, I think it will take Apple a long time if they are ever able to replace, which is what they are trying to do, replace the file system with just this automatically saved, automatically in the cloud when you need it and you don’t have to worry about dragging files, I think most people though are still coming at it with the Windows perspective where you have the file manager and Dropbox does a really kick ass job of doing that, where they just install the file right there, install the file directory right there and you are just able to drag stuff into it.
[00:37:41] QUESTION: Do you think in ten years we will still be clamoring for Apple products?
[00:37:45] MG: That’s a good question. Its good, but its an unanswerable question, so its not that good.
[00:37:57] Derek: That’s messed up, dude.
[00:37:58] MG: There’s a lot of variables that come into play. The Steve Jobs variable is probably the biggest one. They obviously have a pipeline of products down the road that they know they want to work on, but it still comes down to Jobs okaying this one and not okaying that one and, if and when he leaves, is there someone else who can do that. We’ll see, that’s the big X factor in all of that. But, generally I think they have the best infrastructure, it seems like, between not only Jobs but, Tim Cook, who is the CEO who does all the Apple earnings calls and that stuff, he’s on top of that stuff. He runs that thing, it seems like a --
[00:38:37] QUESTION: Do you believe that?
[00:38:38] MG: Oh yeah. The best well oiled ship that is imaginable. They know exactly what inventory they need, I know that they haven’t had enough iPads to sell, but I’m sure that’s on purpose they do that, just like when we were talking about Google plus. I think that they are set for a long time.
[00:38:57] QUESTION: So, we are taking questions from the audience tonight from our Startup Grind iWay setup, if you have iPod, iPhone or iPad you can ask questions, I’m looking at them now. We have to get to emails, but what is your favorite or one of your favorite product, hardware app, devices etcetera in that past six months?
[00:39:28] MG: Let’s see, what have I been using a lot lately. The cheating answer would be to say that the new MacBook Air, that’s the thing that I use all the time, that’s my main go to computer. I have totally replaced my MacBook Pro, which I did last year at the point when the new MacBook Air came out. I use that thing all the time, between that and the iPhone and the iPad. Everything Apple, just fill in the blank.
[00:39:57] QUESTION: How long do you think it will take, or do you think you will eventually go to just tablet?
[00:40:01] MG: I think about this a lot, when I do stop blogging what happens, you know do I need the computer there with me at all times to keep writing. When I went on vacation a few months ago I really only used the iPad and that was great, I didn’t have to, I wasn’t responding to emails and I wasn’t blogging anything so I didn’t need to write anything. The iPad is still not good for if you need to write something longer, of course you can do short little things, but if I didn’t have to write I would use the iPad pretty much all the time.
[00:40:35] QUESTION:Another question, when does Apple ship a t.v.?
[00:40:39] MG: I like that one because this really is split down the middle among the Apple fan community, which I am of course a member. I would say yes they are going to just for the fact that it seems so much a need, that we need something to disrupt that entire thing. There were numbers that came out today of the Google t.v. sales for the Logitech review unit and somehow managed to get more returns that what it actually sold, so that obviously didn’t do the trick. I think Google was hoping for, and they’ll keep trying I’m sure – but the Apple t.v. the ninety nine dollar version is a pretty good product, but they don’t have nearly the television accounts that they need right now, overall it still has to go through your t.v. and most people are still running their t.v. through a cable box and cable boxes have to most awful user interfaces and they’ve been the same for a decade now, they are all those scientific America or whoever it is that makes those cable boxes, Motorola makes a few, they are so bad and Apple just needs to do an all in one t.v. and really nail the user interface. The problem is, of course, working with the cable companies and getting them to get in line to work with them and push all this console through a nice interface. But if anyone could do it, the only person who could do it would be Steve Jobs at Apple, just somehow magically woo them.
[00:42:25]QUESTION:What about those other guys you were talking about earlier? Do you think—
[00:42:27] MG: I don’t know, I don’t know what their negotiation skills are like, but I think they are the only company that could potentially do something like that.
[00:42:33] QUESTION: So I want to ask you about a couple of random products. Give me just a quick odds of percentage, for example I think Startup Grind has a ten percent chance of being very successful. That’s just an example and its different, so the first one is Google plus. What do you think the chances are of them being extremely successful, which would be competing with Facebook?
[00:42:58] MG: I would say thirty percent.
[00:43:00] QUESTION: Okay, what about Quora?
[00:43:06] MG: I would give that more like sixty percent.
[00:43:09] QUESTION: What about Eight Bit?
[00:43:15] MG: Twenty five percent.
[00:43:21] QUESTION: Zaarly?
[00:43:22] MG: I would say fifty fifty.
[00:43:24] QUESTION: Koala?
[00:43:28] MG: Probably thirty percent.
[00:43:30] QUESTION: How about Kevin Rose’s new company Milk?
[00:43: 32] MG: Well, they’re doing a few different things, which I guess they are not talking about yet. Overall, the company being successful with at least one of the things they are doing I would say eighty percent.
[00:43:54] QUESTION: Group Me?
[00:43:54] MG: Seventy five percent.
[00:43:56] QUESTION: Okay. These are a couple of questions we like to ask our speakers. And they kind of run the gamut as well. If you’re a first time entrepreneur, which you are not, would you apply to incubators like Y Combinator and some of these other incubators?
[00:44:11] MG: Yeah, now that they’re giving away the free money, why not.
[00:44:15] QUESTION: What about the ones that aren’t?
[00:44:17] MG: I think obviously its by a case by case basis, what you need and where you’re coming from, but generally yes I would say those things are definitely really really helpful to entreprenuers, just the network alone is helpful. Yes.
[00:44:33] QUESTION: What about events like TechCrunch Disrupt or Launch, applying to it or actually going to it?
[00:44:43] MG: Yes, one hundred percent. I think TechCrunch the conference, which has evolved in names now it is Disrupt first it was forty then it was fifty, I think it has a really good track record in terms of the companies that have come out of it. There are things of course, first it was the big one Mint that won –
[00:45:07] QUESTION: They didn’t launch there right?
[00:44:09] MG: Yeah, you are right they had launched previously. There’s Yammer, there are some other things that have come out of there. I think the track record has been pretty good of it, there certainly has been a few misses, there have to be more misses than hits, but I think there have been some pretty significant hits out of it. I think those conferences are really good to launch at because its puts you on a stage pretty much in front of all the tech press that you want to be able to reach out to and really understand your product, so they’re sitting there front in center and you know that they are listening unless they are sitting there playing on their iPhone or iPad, which they probably are most of the time, but, they are at least half listening and they will perk up if they hear a key word or if they hear applause or something, so I think it is good to launch at those things.
[00:45:53] QUESTION: This is a little bit off these, but I have somebody asking about Windows mobile and Nokia. Who is that? What do you want to know about Windows mobile, I’m just curious? Just anything? We did this in the beginning, I don’t know if you were here, but how many people have a Windows mobile device, anybody? Yeah, one in the back in the cheap seats.
[00:46:20] MG: I do like Windows mobile, Windows phone seven series, eight, you know the awful name that they gave it at first. I do like Windows phone product though, I had a unit for a while, this is obviously an unpopular thing to say, but I like it more than I like Android. Android to me just feels like a cheap knock off of the iPhone, Windows phone to me seems like they are trying to do something legitimately different with the tile interface, with everything.
[00:46:51] QUESTION: Do you think, Android has been widely successful so maybe Windows should have just knocked off iPhone?
[00:46:56] MG: Well, Android has been really successful at the time of – yes, no doubt about that and that was a good strategy – the other interesting part of that though is that part of them becoming so successful they killed Windows mobile. They basically took over that, what Windows mobile had been doing so well which is working with all the different OEMs which Apple was never going to do of course so they just kind of slid it onto the market and blew it out of the water with that and I am sure Microsoft was very pissed off about that and then they came back with this, but we will see what happens with the Nokia thing, that will be really interesting if they can get any traction, of course Nokia has not done well here getting traction with the smartphone in the United States with the smartphone race, but you know maybe the combined entity of the two of them working together will do something.
[00:47:48] QUESTION: What should we look forward to seeing at this years Disrupt? Or the September Disrupt?
[00:47:57] MG: The September Disrupt, I’m not really sure yet I think we announced some speakers the other day, but in terms of companies I haven’t even seen any of them yet. We are starting to go through the submissions right now internally, but yeah we won’t, yeah there is nothing to really share there, but it will be awesome. And, interestingly enough, I should know more about this, but we are going to try to do one the following month in China so that is going to be really interesting if we can pull that off.
[00:48:26] QUESTION: Is that an exclusive?
[00:48:27] MG: That’s exclusive yes. Nah.
[00:48:32] QUESTION: So, if you were a first time entrepreneur, based on the entreprenuers that you see would you boot strap your company and build a company or would you go try to raise money and build a product later?
[00:48:43] MG: Again, it’s a case by case basis, right now is a weird time for that because there is so much money flowing around out there that its easier than it probably has been in a long time to raise money if you wanted to do that. But if you can boot strap it why not do that. Even TechCrunch did that, TechCrunch got offered to raise money a lot of times and never did when the sale happened to AOL everyone benefited because of that you know, there was no VC that owned quarter to forty percent of the company and there are other success stories like that. If you can afford to do that and really pay your own way somehow if you’re making revenue right off the bat then yeah do that.
[00:49:28] QUESTION: Besides TechCrunch, if you were a first time entrepreneur which blogs would you read every week? And Paris Lemon dot common, shameless pitch.
[00:49:40] MG: Yes, that’s the one I would read. I’m obviously partial to Venturebeat, still I like them. I still like all the things the Bits blog does for New York Times. I think they do a lot of good things and they get a fair number of exclusives there too. A lot of the Mac blogs I read are really good too, of course I read a lot of the fireball. I like Mac stories dot net, I don’t know if anyone has been reading that, they are pretty good guys. Nine to five Mac has done a really good job of breaking a lot of Apple stuff recently because a few of those guys are really good at digging into that code, which is technically breaking code but apparently Apple doesn’t care about that for whatever reason, but they are really good at digging into some of that stuff and getting scoops as a result so you know, but there are a lot of things out there that are still really good.
[00:50:41] QUESTION: If you were a first time entrepreneur and based on those that you have seen, if you were trying to get your startup going as much as you possibly could but you weren’t getting any traction, weren’t getting any ses, nobody would write about you, weren’t getting user traction, what would you do?
[00:50:55] MG: Quit. That’s what I heard in the front row. No, don’t quit, you just have to keep coming back and keep coming back and keep coming back. People ask how they get in touch with me, I mean, if I blow people off, yes I am sure in some ways I seem like an asshole, but its really not being an asshole its because of the volume, I just can’t possibly respond to everything and expect to get everything done throughout the day. I don’t have a secretary or anything who can help me off load some of that work so really just keep pounding away that’s what you have got to do if you find someone you want to write about, what you are doing and I would say really focus in on one or a handful of people that you think will cover what it is you are doing really well you know, you read their previous coverage, you know they know whatever space you’re in so, focus on those people and try to ping them by every means necessary, not just email, preferably not email, other ways, but yeah just hammer away.
[00:51:54] QUESTION: We’ll close up here, but you talked about almost a month ago about almost abandoning email. Who saw that one? So, you swore off email – do you respond to emails? From your mom or from your family?
[00:52:12] MG: I don’t, no. I haven’t respond to any from my mom, I have responded to a few emails here and there, like I said in the post, I had some things I had to respond to from work and previous things. You and I have emailed. Generally though I have not responded to emails and it has been awesome. I’ll do a full write up after the month is over of my findings of this, my very scientific findings, but it will basically be one word, which is awesome. And its obviously something that not everyone can do, but can somehow figure out a way to do it and route your interactions with people through some other mechanism I highly recommend it. Its not just that email is so much volume, that’s obviously the main thing, but there is other little things about it. Just in general its too slow, there’s all these things you have to fill in who you’re sending it to and you have to fill in a subject line, you are stuck with all these formalities that people you are used to, you know, typing thank you comma typing all these silly little things. All these pleasantries, just tell me what you want.
[00:53:12] QUESTION: One more question from the app. What do you think the next big sector will be for startups or what do you see as emerging as something interesting?
[00:53:20] MG: I don’t know how fast its going to come, I think there is going to be a lot of interesting things that come around. All the NFC technology that’s going to be built in phones, its already in Nexus S of course, I think a couple other Android phones as well, there are rumors that it might be in the iPhone 5 I don’t know if that is true or not, but eventually it will be in some similar technology and I think there’s a lot of cool things. Everyone talks about the payment aspect of it, which of course the big guys will end up handling or someone will come in and do that, but I think there’s a lot of other really cool things that people can do. NFC is not just about the payments its all short form transfers of data between devices and what not, I think there is a lot of cool things that people are going to do that kind of merge the mobile world that we know right now more into the real world.