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Here’s the program.
Hey everyone, it’s Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy. com home of the ambitious up-start. How do you lead the conversation into tech space? Joining me is Alexia: Tsotsis a blogger at TechCrunch. TechCrunch is stories, of course, often determine what others in the startup space are talking and writing about. I’ve invited Alexia: here to find out how she writes the articles that lead the conversation in our world and how she got her job at TechCrunch and find out about her background.
Andrew Warner: Welcome.
Alexia: Tsotsis: Hey, Andrew. How are you?
Andrew: Good. Hey, so what’s the post that you’re proudest of?
Alexia:: I don’t know. The one I did today, I’m pretty excited about.
Andrew: Which one?
Alexia: This article, ‘You Must Read.’
Andrew: Tell people about what that is. I was going to ask you about it. I’m surprised that you jumped right in with that one.
Alexia: Well, that’s, I mean it’s my favorite post. It was inspired by a Tweet from a New York Time’s editor about Steve Jobs and outsource. Like, the fortune had a source that told them some interesting information about Steve Job’s cancer treatments. A New York Times editor tweeted out, “Tom, your – or whatever his name is – was a great source. I promised I would never reveal him even if he died.” But she tweeted out that she would never reveal her source and the tweet actually revealed the source. Mike was talking about how this was circular logic and wrote a post on TechCrunch about sources and how you should keep sources quiet even if they die.
I was, like, wow, this reminds me of this one tweet that I saw, that said this tweet links to itself. Mike was, like, we should just a post, I think we should toss it out there. We should just do a post that says, “This post, this article is a must read.” I said, I’m going to do it, this is going to piss a lot of people off. I did kind of as an experiment in not pissing people off but in what writing and online writing has become now. Like, it’s no content, it’s a bunch of comments, it’s bunch of angry people, and it’s linked to every headline. Already, whether you’re writing about, like, apples or a earnings call or Justin Beiber a lot of blogging is this type of format.
The post I’m going to be even prouder of is the post I’m going to do this afternoon explaining what we did and how much traffic it got and the reaction and seeing it, like the precedence, if you type percussion into Google I think you actually get did you mean recursion? Which is . . . but it’s hard to, I mean, yeah, percussion did you mean recursion? It’s hard to have that stuff come across immediately online and not everyone has a sense of humor. Not everyone understands recursion. I think.
Andrew: You created a blog post that links to itself. Why not just avoid the whole topic completely instead of using it to get more traffic by making the point that – by being what you’re criticizing.
Alexia: Let’s see. I mean, I never think of traffic. I don’t look at our analytics as much as I should. I’m by far not thinking of that necessarily. I do, or by . . . I do look at our traffic stats, I would be stupid if I didn’t. When I do a kind of post like that, I don’t of it in terms of, like, oh this is going to get a lot of hits. I think of it, like, all right, this would be fun. Some people laugh, it will be . . . right now you can’t critique something without, in the media sphere, without being a little vendetta, right? Why do it at all? If you have a great idea and the feasibility to publish. This is the difference; you couldn’t do this in a print newspaper because it would take a while to publish. I mean, you couldn’t click on it. I mean, you couldn’t do it in print media. It would go through four billion people that would say ‘no’. Not cool, can’t do it, stupid I don’t get this, uh, uh, not happening. Whereas in blog world, you have an idea and you post.
Why do it all? I mean, the answer to that is like why do you get up and do Mixergy, dude? Sorry, I have a sense of humor and I, and I want to inflict it on the world.
Andrew: So, this is you having fun with the audience?
Alexia: Yeah, and talking about the nature of blogging and talking about the nature of media while we’re doing it, riling some people up. Getting some people, like, I’m about to post on a startup and I’m sure a billion more people. Like an unheard of startup that sent something to the slush pile and I’m sure a lot more people will click on that and get the news of the small little company trying to survive and be interested in it. Just because I posted something stupid that a lot of people got pissed about. The more pissed off people get, the more likely they’re to click on the second thing that you do that’s conventionally substantial. Do you understand the definition of conventionally substantial? Like this is substantial to me because, like, it says something about this infinite viral loop that we’re living in. The echo chamber of blogging and of tech blogging in particular, it’s not substantial until a random person wants to get tech news.
Andrew: All right. Fair enough and I don’t know if I made it clear enough this is a post that the only thing on the post is a link back to the post itself and, of course, a bunch of angry commenter’s who are criticizing you for creating it.
Alexia: Somebody actually made an anagram of my name. It’s amazing, like, they took the letters of my, I think it’s called an anagram. They took letters in my name and said, like, I’m useless. I understand the sense of it. I would, like, why are you wasting my time. Why don’t you get that you clicked? Your clicks are your vote. You don’t have to click. If you see an article that says, this article is a must read, do you really think that’s it’s going to be something amazing like some breaking news? No, dude, it’s a trap. I think that most people on the internet have the sense of humor to realize that’s it a trap.
Andrew: All right, you said that essentially you, we all as bloggers, can just post. Is there any type of process at TechCrunch to have somebody else look at? Is there an editorial process where others look at your posts before you hit submit?
Alexia: We have a yammer and we talk about posts before we hit submit. Like, we talked about this one and then we talked about it afterwards. It’s like process journalism in the sense that you have an idea, you post it, and do yammer. People talk about it. People are like, oh, that’s great or no, that’s not cool. If you want to have somebody look at it, you can. It’s not necessary. Because we have so much attention on us, things get super-refined. You’re not really, you want to do your best because if you don’t you’re accountable to it. Like you’re accountable to yourself, you’re accountable to your readers, you’re accountable to Arrington, who is really formidable, like, you don’t want to make him angry at you. Then, most of all, because of the great work, the excellent work that happens at TechCrunch you’re accountable to all of your colleagues. You know, if you do something that makes the rest of the site look bad you have to deal with 33 people that also are part of the brand. You, generally, editorial process is collective and it’s ongoing. It happens even after a post is published.
Andrew: When have you done that, where you felt that something has disappointed other people at TechCrunch?
Alexia: I’m not going to get into specifics, but quite a few times. I’ve had a post pulled. Everyone knows this. This one wasn’t the most popular choice after it got published. Quite a few times and what you do then is you talk it through. If you’re wrong, then you update it. I mean, I think the biggest mistake that I’ve made is actually in the beginning when I posted something about Facebook photos updating. Jason had posted the same thing in a post the week before and I was, like, oh, man. You tend to want to read TechCrunch if you write for TechCrunch. That can be prevented by just asking. I mean it’s the [Amber] process.
Andrew: So, you posted something Jason had already written about it on TechCrunch. What’s it like afterwards? What’s that conversation like afterwards?
Alexia: Well, he’s like, hey, this is already written about and I wasn’t [inaudible] specifically about the photos it was just another post. I was, like, oh, okay. Like, I owned into it.
Andrew: OK.
Alexia: It was not an egregious error. It was just, it was something that had already been written about but hadn’t shown up on Facebook yet. So, I saw it on Facebook and I was, like, oh, Facebook photos. Like their changing their interface. I mean, it wasn’t wrong, it was just already covered.
Andrew: What about the headlines, the headlines in TechCrunch are so good at getting my attention. How do you guys come up with that? By the way, I want to make sure that you’re fully in the video so if you lean forward can you lean the lid of your computer back for that? If you lean backwards, that’s good too. I just want you to be comfortable and to get the whole you in the video. OK.
Alexia: OK. Does that work?
Andrew: Yeah.
Alexia: Well, everyone comes up with their own headlines. It’s a combination of being informative and wanting to get readers attention and wanting to look good on aggregators. I mean, it’s a combination of . . . we tend to now because of stuff like [techneen] put a lot of information in the headlines and a lot of numbers. Some of us are really, like MG’s really creative. I try to be more simple. I try to . . .
Andrew: How long do you spend on it?
Alexia: On headlines?
Andrew: Yeah.
Alexia: Let’s see . . . I tend to know the headline before I write the post. So, it’s instantaneous. Like, oh, this will be a great headline. Put the headline up and, like, today was a perfect headline. Good. Putting it up. But on stuff like Groupon, that the Groupon raises like a billion dollars, and Groupon’s worth like fifteen billion dollars, that’s a joke. I mean, I think a lot of people read TechCrunch because we have a sense of humor. Like, again, going into the post I did earlier. Groupon’s press release for their fund raising said Groupon raises, like, a billion dollars because Andrew Mason is an interesting guy to put it lightly. Mike saw that and said, “This is amazing. How funny.”
It’s kind of like a big inside joke in the tech community. The tech community is, like, ten million people or whatever at this point, like our readers. Mike saw that, wrote a post on it. Then I saw it and wrote a post about another startup’s funding. I wrote, like, on swipe raises like a million dollars, so that took the joke further. Then Sarah Lacey did it and then I did it again. A lot of our headlines try to be funny. It’s, I mean so much is boring. There’s so much boring tech news out there. For me personally, I can’t speak for anybody else, I try to be funny. I try to be informative when I’m writing something serious. I try to be creative if I have the leeway to do so.
Andrew: What kind of back and forth goes around the headlines on yammer?
Alexia: I mean, it’s, I can’t really get into it, we post them but, oh, cool, that’s great. It’s not a collective thing. It’s really your own thing and if we have feedback we’ll give it to you. Like, if I misspelled something and somebody will call it out. It’s some big conspiracy to get people to read. We’re a bunch of . . . I mean there’s a bunch of talented writers and writers are going to be writers. They’re going to try to be funny or be whatever to the best of their ability.
Andrew: I hate to spend so much time on this little point instead of getting into the whole tech world or talking about technology but I’m fascinated by this. How do you get to a place where you can clever headlines that get clicks that get people’s attention and get them talking. I mean, it’s not something that comes naturally to people, it’s something that writers have to spend time working on, isn’t it?
Alexia: You know what I think, like, what have I learned? Sometimes when I do post about, like, startup growth. Like, hipster? I saw it, I’m like wow, this hipster startup has gotten so much buzz, I wonder why. I’m, like, is it because of their name? I’m like, I wish somebody would about, I wish somebody would write a post about whether this decision was genius or just dumb. Is it stupid to name your startup hipster? I’m, like, I wish somebody would write this post, I’d love to read somebody’s thoughts on it. Then, I’m like, hey, wait a minute, I’m a writer. I don’t have any breaking news that I’m on right now, why don’t I write this post. I write this post. Startup gets tons of coverage, it’s gets coverage in Fortune, and I, like, I think Forbes, Washington Post, Hipster Run-off. I mean, like, across the board people wrote about it. Just on the name, not even knowing what it was. I mean, I know what it is, I saw it yesterday.
Then the guy emails me and is like we got 10K users in two days. I’m like how did you do it? He’s, like, this is our viral model. Then I thought, wow, I really wish somebody would write a post on this viral model. I think startups, people starting out trying to get traction and are having the chicken and the egg problem, like, trying to get users. It’s a huge struggle if you have a business and you don’t know anyone in the valley which is what these Hipster people were doing. They were unknowns out of LA. I always like helping LA startups because I’m from there. They were unknown outside of, like, I don’t know, they had kind of launched.
I think another startup could really learn from this model. The [for key] model of getting three people to sign up and giving people a higher, more access to the data, the more people they got to sign up for it. On that post they got buzz as well and got recovered and re-blogged. Most of the times, I’m like what would I want to read? I try to really challenge myself and be, like, all right. If I want to read this post and it doesn’t exist, use that. Like a new Groupon evaluation, you have to post. You want to get news. That’s how you win the news game by just breaking stuff that people don’t know. In terms of more analytic things and things I just find, I tend to write what I’d like to read and let the chips fall where they may. If people don’t share that, it’s hard but most of the times they tend to think that I make good calls on what would be interesting to somebody starting out in the startup world.
Andrew: What about posts like this? I see on December 28th you wrote Groupon evaluation is $7.8 billion. Then Michael Arrington comes in a few a minutes later, maybe it was a few hours late, saying it’s $4.75 billion, less than what you said. Then a couple of weeks later a Groupon valuation I think is $15 billion. Aren’t there something’s they just don’t know what the numbers are but you come in with convection anyway?
Alexia: Well, I mean, does that a look like a convection headline, to you? What does say? Look at the, I’m going to go get the whole headline for you.
Andrew: Go for it, it’s December 28th. Before the update . . .
Alexia: Yeah, that was hard, that was an interesting day . . .
Andrew: Why was that an interesting day, while you’re searching, what happened that day?
Alexia: It was Christmas, it was the day before Christmas, or a day or two after, it was during vacation and there’s no tech news during vacation except for this interesting document that, I think some VC publication came up with. This Delaware business report that . . . so, it wasn’t in SEC form which I’m really familiar with. It was a amended, restated, certificate of incorporation, OK?
Andrew: OK.
Alexia: We, you never, I’ve never seen one of these in my career. I actually called them, what was the document, please tell me, a lot of people reported it wrong. I think in the first draft – it’s process journalism. I think in the first draft of this, I reported it wrong. This headline is “Groupon’s Evaluation Could be as High as 7.8 Billion.” All right, that’s not . . .
Andrew: I see . . .
Alexia: It’s like, you really don’t and that’s what the document says, it says that it issued voting common shares, 250 million shares and if the share’s are 31.59 per share, that’s how they got that number. If all of the shares were issued, then it would be 7.8 billion. That’s what that is reporting. Now, the update is we have the document and the actual evaluation. Because Mike, after you write a post like this there could be . . . all sorts of people come out of the woodwork. Like, all sorts of sources. They’re like that’s not what it is.
Like, after Hipster, somebody sent me all their images, somebody sent me a detailed analysis of all their Java script code telling me what it was. We do this kind of stuff, like, report the information that’s out there. In a way, it’s like this is what’s happening, this is the info, this is what it could be – we don’t know yet. The story is in progress. I’m sure that brought out a source that told Mike, hey, no, it’s actually this. Then, valuations are something that change over time.
Have you seen that graph that I made of the Facebook valuation? That it went from like zero to 50 billion to like 56 billion on second market to 70 billion on second market. Some people are still reporting it as 50. Until a company goes public, it’s really, it’s really hard to speculate on valuation but people do it anyway. You have to or there wouldn’t be value creation.
Andrew: All right. I see the way you guys work and it’s fun for me as a reader. I think some people take it a little too, they that, I guess you want to be compared to the New York Times though, right? You want to be considered better than the mainstream media. Maybe even more reliable than the mainstream media because they don’t it, they don’t get the industry. They don’t have sources you do. Doesn’t it make it harder for you to be taken more seriously if you write headlines where you don’t know the facts but you add a ‘could be’ in front of them?
Alexia: I don’t think, this is so loaded, dude. I don’t think that, ‘a’ we’re trying to be the New York Times. The New York Times pulls a lot of interesting stuff as well or rather. The New York Times has been in existence for hundreds of years. We’re a new medium and we’re a medium in flux blogging. I can’t speak for, I can only speak for myself, like, I can’t really speak for all of TechCrunch Understood?
Andrew: Right, completely.
Alexia: I don’t think that we’ve ever, I think that everything that happens on TechCrunch is truth. Whether it’s written, like, an amazing sell or not, we try really hard to not lie. That’s the point. Like, to not publish things that are wrong. If we do publish something that’s wrong, we’ll update a post in realtime. Like, you can watch a TechRun being written in realtime. I never want anyone to Google my name and see a post that I was just dead wrong about. Like, there will be an update; the truth will be amended to the post. There will be something that shows, like, hey, this all the information that we know and we’re presenting it in a raw form.
I don’t think traditional media publications have that flexibility and have that raw format that lends towards that kind of a process of getting the truth out. The New York Times prints something, it stays in print they can’t update and be like we were wrong. They run corrections all the time, it’s just not in realtime. It’s not something that you guys can see. Like the New York Times can be wrong in a print story and wrong the correction a day later. Whereas on TechCrunch stories if we have an update, we do it in a minute. If I find out that something in my post is not the facts or not correct or a typo or something, I’ll fix it and I’ll be truthful to my readers in terms of being committed to fixing it. You don’t want anything attached to your name that makes you look bad or your colleagues look bad or your publication look bad.
Andrew: All right, let me step away from this part of the conversation. I’m not good at being hard-hitting because that’s not what my curiosity and my nature is. I’m much more into hard curiosity and hard learning, so what I’m curious about, the other thing is . . . you said earlier you’re going to blog about a company that’s going to have it’s profile raised and have a lot more people looking at it because TechCrunch and because you have gotten such a big audience. How do you decide which startups get that kind of attention? Who to write about?
Alexia: Well, startups come from all over the world, from all sides, like, all levels of coding experience, all levels of marketing experience. . .
Andrew: I’m sure they all email you and they flood your inbox with requests for attention with expectations that you’ll post. How do you decide which one gets it?
Alexia: Most of the time it’s a feeling. Most of the time, I’m like, oh, this really cool. I had a friend of mine who I really loved pitch me a startup. I went through the whole process, I was like, all right, we should do an interview without . . . being too tired and not seeing the startup. Then I saw the startup and I’m like, I thought, okay, this isn’t ready for primetime. We can’t, sorry. We can’t post on it. I’ll give you advice. You should post it to [why commentator], if you’re a startup and you haven’t gotten the attention that you need from blogs or you don’t think that you’ve gotten the feedback that is crucial to you making a really good product.
Go to Hacker News and post on show HN and post your startup and you’ll get amazing feedback from people who are way more experienced in that world than I am. From other people trying to build something just like you are, that’s what I told him. I’m like please . . .
Andrew: So, in that case the site just wasn’t ready. The product wasn’t ready for TechCrunch. How do you . . . assuming the product was ready, how do you decide something is cool. What makes it feel cool to you?
Alexia: Well, I mean, there’s certain spaces that are blowing up right now. Like, the Q&A space is blowing. I think the user interface space is really also innovative. So, like, anything, how do you pick a startup? It’s kind of like, how do you pick a shirt? You’re like, this feels good, this works, it’s cool, it’s part of the Q&A space, we’re seeing a lot of investment in this space. People are interested in it. Just like G Location was six or seven months ago, you’re like this space is blowing up. Let’s see how these people have managed to attack this problem.
Andrew: I see, so if there’s a space that’s especially hot, like you said, Q&A, you guys are interested in what’s new in that space, who’s jumping in.
Alexia: That and also if you do something that’s useful. I love writing about the photo sharing startups or a startup called Wylio. They made it so you could search Flickr creative comments for photos and then take an indent code and put the indent code in your blog. I was like this is so useful, it might not have the Facebook trajectory, it might not become like the next Twitter. It was useful for bloggers and I think a lot of people read that post because they were like, yeah, I need an easy way to get photos.
I still use Wylio, I’m like, oh, I need a photo fast, oh, Wylio. It’s almost like you’re doing people a service. You probably want to see this startup because it just made my life a little bit easier.
Andrew: What was it about them that helped that got them to stand out in your inbox?
Alexia: They sent it to ‘Tips’ at TechCrunch which is something that everyone, if you want TechCrunch coverage, please, we check ‘Tips’. It was really, just like, they sent it to ‘Tips’ and I was like, hey, I actually need this tool, let’s try it. Then I tried it and trying it is when you get the feeling, like, this is perfect. This is perfect, I think that people will love it. I think I will use it continuously. Sometimes you make the wrong calls, like, I’ve written about things, oh, I’m going to use this everyday and then don’t. I mean, that’s the area you get in any profession. Wylio, I still use and so, it is that feeling that when you try it out and you’re like, bam, perfect. This will work. This is good.
Now it’s up to the startup to keep it’s servers happy and to do everything past the TechCrunch post. I, personally, tend to look for things that are useful. I think that I’m, because I’m newest, I look for startups a lot. I will, Shervin Pishevar, CEO of SGN or founder of SGN, tweeted out like this startup is great. I love it. I went to it, it was a thing called “Drive Safely.” It let’s you hear your text while you’re driving. I’m from LA, I’m like, oh my god, I’ve gotten in an accident so many times because I’m looking at my phone texting and trying to see emails – or I’ve almost gotten in accidents so many times because I’m trying to, like, pay attention to my phone and drive. This startup solves a problem.
I mean the biggest thing is what problem does this solve? If it’s a micro problem, like, I can’t post photos fast enough. Is it a macro problem like, I’m driving and my phone, my Smartphone is taking up most my attention and it’s dangerous. It’s a combination of being like in a hot space or being interesting, like being an interesting concept, being something that somebody’s never done before. That I’ve never seen before, that’s just a challenge. There are a lot of things that are really technical, like all the cloud stuff. That’s really technical, I don’t particularly get it but when I do cover one of these startups – Cloudera- okay, you’re trying to accomplish a difficult problem. Great, you deserve some attention for this. Then the utility, like whether it’s a day-to-day utility or like a world changing utility, that’s always a big, big plus.
Andrew: Here’s another thing that I always wonder is, you’re very prolific, you can pump out a couple of dozen, easily, right? Blog posts a week, how do you do it, how do you get to write that much?
Alexia: You have to get addicted to it.
Andrew: Addicted to blogging?
Alexia: You have to be addicted to writing.
Andrew: To writing?
Alexia: There are times where I’ve been like, oh, I give up. I wrote a post about Yahoo like an info-graphic posts, early days. It was like, what does your mail say about you? It was just so much hatred. I was like, this sucks, all I want to do is write about news and startups and cool things happening in the tech sphere. Why do I have to read that I’m stupid all the time? It’s, sometimes demoralizing to read how much people hate you. Then the next day, I was like, hey, this is a great product, I want to write about it or cool, I just found this amazing video, I’m posting. Or hey this news just happened, I have to . . .
Andrew: I looked at your old blog posts. Your old blog posts use to be here’s something funny, here’s a sentence of my observation on it. It wasn’t a fully developed article. It wasn’t a set of them. I guess, it was San Francisco Weekly, you also wrote for LA Weekly before that but your personal blogging wasn’t lots and lots of text the way it is now. There’s more work involved.
Alexia: Well, my personal blog, I’ve been writing the whole time. This is the same answer to why I don’t even answer questions on Cora. When I started writing about Cora, people would say, ‘You’re not even on Cora.’ Yeah, I am I just don’t write, I watch you guys. Same with my personal blog. If your career is writing and you’re writing, I don’t know, a couple of thousand words a day. You don’t want to necessarily write at the end of the day. You want to see, I’m trying to transition a personal blog from just like writing to writing about cool comments that I see on TechCrunch or Tweets or things that readers do that I find interesting. I’m trying to make that more about the readers than about me.
You don’t want to come home, unless you’re MG who’s just amazing. You don’t want to come home and write another 2,000 words. You want to come home and read a book or surf the internet or talk to your boyfriend or girlfriend, cook a meal. It’s hard for me to use my personal time to write since I’m writing so much at my job.
I know a lot of bloggers write about their personal struggles or their personal events in their life, I’m not really like that. I’m kind of private. Not many people know about what I do or where I live. I try to be private. I know that in this day and age it’s hard to do.
Andrew: All right, how about this? Can you say what a job a TechCrunch pays? Not your job but roughly a reporter job.
Alexia: I think it pays industry standard for tech reporting which compared to most writing really good. Compared to what journalists are . . .
Andrew: What’s industry standard? I’ve heard some of Jason Calacanis people complain that they got paid 12 bucks per article, that’s nothing.
Alexia: I think Jason Calacanis is doing something, in the Hollow? That’s not a tech.
Andrew: I mean his previous company.
Alexia: Oh, no, it’s not . . . I mean inflation has taken care of that.
Andrew: So, it’s that plus inflation?
Alexia: No, I’m . . . ha, ha, no . . .
Andrew: You’re counting everyone else’s billions. Can you say about what a tech reporter earns?
Alexia: I think we earn, comparable rates to what a tech blogger earns is . . .
Andrew: Can you say this, more or less than $75,000 a year?
Alexia: I’m not going to comment on that.
Andrew: All right. Let’s go back to sources. When you came in there at first, TechCrunch, how did you get sources who’d give you information about the valuations of their companies or about what was about to happen to their businesses, where’d you get your sources?
Alexia: You develop trust. I mean, I’m new so I’m still, I’m new to San Francisco and I’m to the tech scene. I’m new to the startup scene. You develop trust relationships with people over time and you just do that by not breaking the trust. Like, the thing that we started this conversation with, the person, the New York Times, this why I think we’re better than the New York Times. New York Times editor Tweets out the name of a source, Tweets out publicly . . .
Andrew: By mistake though, wasn’t it?
Alexia: No, no, she, I can actually show you the Tweet.
Andrew: OK. So you don’t tweet out the name of a source but how do you get your sources? How do you make the connections that will give you information?
Alexia: You seek them out. If you’re interested in something . . . many, many emails. Easily, in the, I don’t know . . . easily like 10,000 emails over a lifetime, so many emails.
Andrew: Emails, what? Is there a process? Is there some kinds of sales funnel that takes a stranger and ends up . . . that leads a stranger, what am I trying to say? Is there a sales funnel where a stranger becomes a source?
Alexia: Yes, there is.
Andrew: What is it?
Alexia: I’m not a journalist in the sense that I’m not trained, didn’t go to journalism school. I’m genuinely interested in people. It’s like I’m interested in this thing that you do. You . . . hey, do you have anymore information about this thing that you’re an expert on? Kind of like (inaudible 35:15), this is why we like (inaudible 35:16). I’ll send off an email to somebody, a cold email to somebody I don’t know, to some founder. He’ll be like yeah, sure, this is what we’ve got going on. This is our user stats. This is new product developments that we have going on and you’re like cool, thanks for the info. You’ve made meaningful relationship. If you ever need information about that specific startup or another startup in the space or something, like a trend that that guy or girl might be familiar with, you go back to that person. That’s a source. It doesn’t always have to be like a source for the Twitter leak documents. It doesn’t always have to be something that’s controversial. It could be as simple as Google analytics for traffic. Some other person’s phone number that will get you to a specific product development or like information on somebody else’s funding. I mean, you don’t . . . it doesn’t always have to be something that is spicy. It’s just things that are usually informative to readers. That being said, like, I’m so new that I’m at the beginning stages of those relationships and learning. You . . . it’s a process for both people. People love to give TechCrunch information. They see posts that they contributed to and they feel cool about it. Whether that’s something that they’ve tipped us or whether that’s a post about their startup or their product or news that they’ve made. People are really, really happy and really thankful to be part of the blog. People love us for the most part except when they hate us.
Andrew: Except for the few people that hate who, they love you. I’d even say the people that hate you love you and want to be on TechCrunch. Am I the only one, I don’t see too many people actively say that they love TechCrunch. I read it everyday. I feel like most people if they comment about it, they say it’s useful. They say that they’d like to be on it but mostly they seem to criticize.
Alexia: I think they love because we give them a venue for criticism. I know that a lot of New York Times articles and publicists don’t have comments. Imagine if they did, nothing gets people more riled up than Apple versus Android. Everyone’s reporting the news, we’ve just got a huge readership that’s allowed to comment on this. I think they like because it gives them. . .
Andrew: You guys are also good at tweaking people and you’re good at getting them to talk and getting them riled up.
Alexia: I mean, they, we give them here’s a topic, discuss. We try to give them all the information. This is what I’m going to write about in the post about This is a Must Read Article. Like, that, This is a Must Read Article was like, here’s the topic. I clearly linked the headline that’s like a criticism on lined headlines. What are you guys going to talk about? I think they’re going to talk about how much they don’t like me but also it’s recursion and all. So how TechCrunch isn’t the first person to do it and how somebody brought up, like this is the best post on tech. I mean, they’ll get into a conversation; I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned into an Apple versus Android. I think it’s kind of like, what’s that law? Everything will evolve into somebody bringing up Hitler.
Andrew: Oh, yeah, I just heard of this one. I just heard it this morning and I can’t think of the guy’s name. It doesn’t matter. Someone in the comments to my site will come with the answer to that. How’d you end up getting a job at TechCrunch? How’d you go from San Francisco Weekly to a job at TechCrunch?
Alexia: Well, I actually wrote, I wrote a post about; I was web editor at SF Weekly. I went to All Things D, which is amazing. I would totally recommend anyone who can go to All Things D. It’s a great job space. I went to All Things D and I watched the Mark Zuckerberg speak and he was on stage with Kara Swisher and he got hot and took off his hoodie. On the inside of the hoodie was a logo. Nobody got a good picture of the logo. I was like, what is this strange emblem on Zuckerberg’s jacket? I think we should recreate this. I went to SF Weekly and I asked our assistant art director, Audrey Pittman, hey we should just recreate . . . can we do this, can we recreate the logo? I did and we recreated the whole image of it. I got a couple, I got a source at Facebook, or familiar with Facebook – they actually were familiar and at Facebook – but I got a source familiar with Facebook to show me what each of the symbols meant. To talk to me through like how it fits into their culture. I ran an analysis of this logo and it was huge. It made the New York Times, I mean their blog. It covered everywhere. It was on New York Magazine. It got covered on TechCrunch and then after that, I got a lot of, I pretty much had . . . I had tech job offers. Like, I was talking to blogs about working for them. The only blog I hadn’t talked to was TechCrunch. My friend was like why don’t you talk to Arrington? TechCrunch is the best blog, best tech publication on earth. This was a really trusted friend. I was like oh, really, do I have to talk to Arrington. He said he’s great but he’s intimidating. I went and talked to him. I said I really want to work for you. I love TechCrunch. Everyday at SF Weekly, everybody knew, I had a big TechCrunch poster in cubicle. Everybody knew that I wanted to work at TechCrunch. I talked to him and was, yeah, of course, I love your work.
Andrew: That was it?
Alexia: Hop on. I mean I had to go through the interview process and talk to Heather.
Andrew: What was the interview process like?
Alexia: Oh, it was, with Mike it was interesting. I think he knows that I tell this story. He called me and he’s like, are you on an iPhone. I was, like, yeah – he hung up on me. Just like that. I think dealing with Mike sometimes it’s amazing because you’re like, yeah, he has a point. When he hung up on me for having an iPhone, I was like, yeah, actually, you know, I think he’s right. He’s right about this iPhone call thing. I had to call him from a landline because . . .
Andrew: So, he hung up on you and you went and called him from a landline then what happened?
Alexia: He texted me and said call me from a landline.
Andrew: OK.
Alexia: Then he asked me about what I wanted to learn. He said this is the best place to do it and I agreed with him. I was on. Then Heather was, like, what’s your vision? Writing, I think tech culture has become, the tech internet culture has become pop culture. Like, everyone is interested in the new iPhone. Everyone is . . . Apple’s . . . since when is a first quarter earnings call like the Super Bowl? Did you what happened? People are really excited about tech news and so am I. I think a lot of the interview process was just me being a total TechCrunch fan girl. Being excited about where tech news was headed. Like, everything originates . . . the pace of news is set by tech reporters because we’re the ones that have to do it the fastest. I think that all news is slowly turning into this kind of fast paced, news about news, coverage about coverage. Like, all news is turning towards this but it starts in reporting on tech. It starts writing about tech. Some of the smartest writing out there has to do with, like, advancements in technology because it’s changing human behavior. Digital culture has now become mass culture.
Andrew: What was the first post you had on there? Was it the chat roulette post?
Alexia: No, it was . . . it was a great post. It was about CowClicker which is a send up of Farmville. It’s just a game. I’m really big into like making people aware of the fact that they can what I call click monkeys. Like, our clicks are our votes, right? CowClicker was a send up of Farmville. Where you just clicked on a cow, that was the game. You got points for clicking on the cow. You had go back and click on the cow a certain number of times a day. You competed with your friends on how many clicks the cow got. It was so pointless. It was a hilarious satire of Farmville. I remember Mike being like, I don’t think that’s the kind we . . . that’s like a weekend thing. C-net covered it too and it actually, I think the computer scientist name or the game three guy was Ian Bogost and he got put on a list of best tech writing. He got put on the switch list of best tech writing of the decade. It was so spot on. What have we become? We’re a nation and a world of people who just click on cows for fun, that’s our fun. It was brilliant. If anyone wants to see this game, it’s CowClicker, just google it, find it.
Andrew: So, you’re thinking of writing this post. You get feedback from Michael Arrington saying maybe this isn’t really the right post for us today. It may not be the right post for this site at all. How do you convince him that this is your first post?
Alexia: I mean, it wasn’t, I had thought about it before . . . I retract that statement. I think he was just, like, that is not breaking news. That’s like, this is a great post but it’s not covering breaking news at this moment. You don’t really try to convince him. You just take his feedback and internalize for the next thing that you write.
Andrew: OK. You had it written, you were ready to roll. Even though you didn’t full support or full encouragement, I should say, you hit the post button.
Alexia: It was after I posted. It wasn’t . . .
Andrew: Ah, I see, OK. So, you just went, you just went for it.
Alexia: Yeah.
Andrew: First post and you didn’t feel like you had to get somebody’s okay. You didn’t feel like you had to run it by someone, get some feedback.
Alexia: I think I ran it by Jason. It was like, you know, it’s your first day, you just go and do it. Okay, I’ll post. I think Jason saw it but I’m not sure because I was . . . like all the events of this day – don’t take them with a grain of salt because I was so nervous. I was nervous on my first day that I don’t think I really remember the chain of events. All I know is that I showed up at TechCrunch. I post a post, I had this CowClicker idea. I really loved it. In retrospect, it is more of a weekend post. Now, when I, and this is what I’m talking about by internalizing feedback. Now, when I’m looking at stuff and I see something like CowClicker, I’m like, oh, I’ll save this for the weekend. I have this amazing idea, it’s not so fast-paced on the weekends. You can kind of post longer analytic things. I think we post our guest list. I have this amazing idea for a post that’s a sequel to You’ve Got Mail because Borders is now shutting down because of Amazon. I think that really needs an update. It’s going to be called There’s an App for that. I’ve been waiting for the weekend where I can just sit there and spend four hours like writing this hypothetical on, I hope nobody steals this. Writing this hypothetical movie update about what the world is like now. Long culture stuff not that it’s not cool to post on weekdays. It’s just you’re probably taking up time, you’re taking up so much time doing it and you’re not covering a startup launch or around of funding. You’re not covering things that are time pressing. I think the difference between CowClicker and You’ve Got Mail Too is that they’re not time pressing so you can do them whenever.
Andrew: Let’s end with a piece of advice for other bloggers.
Alexia: God, just keep doing it. Keep waking up and doing it.
Andrew: Just keep blogging everyday, that’s the advice you’re going to give them?
Alexia: Isn’t that the blogging advice. People ask, why do you keep doing it and I don’t know. I think the secret to success in something that you want to do is not stopping. I think a lot of bloggers have expressed the same idea. There are times where, I’m like, oh, man, I don’t want to do this anymore. Yet, I can’t stop. It’s actually because I really love it. I’m interested. I’m almost like infinitely interested in the tech space and where we’re all heading as a society. Like, with these technological advancements and it’s like an explosion of startups. I think the mistake that a lot of writers make is they’re write a post and they won’t get the feedback that they need or they won’t have anybody read it . . .
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Alexia: . . . Or they’ll get something negative. They won’t keep going. It does take a lot of fortitude and a lot of belief yourself to keep going after somebody like. . . to keep going after either you’re ignored or somebody slaps, or somebody blows you, metaphoricaly, obviously. But if you keep at it, it’s such common sense, but if you keep at it you’ll learn more, you’ll get better. You’ll eventually get to the level that you want to get to. Maybe you did suck in the beginning and that’s why people said you suck. I’m sure. . . it’s the process thing. I’m sure a lot of the things that I’ve done haven’t been my best work but I’m definitely, everyday, learning something both about being a writer and about the world and that’s what keeps me engaged and keeps me posting. I don’t know if I’m successful yet. I don’t know what success looks like as a blogger. It probably looks like not being asleep. All I know is that if you want to be a blogger and be a blogger as a job and as a career you have to keep writing. Even for VCs that like blogging occasionally, just keep writing. Like Suster, Suster’s an amazing example of this. Suster’s addicted to writing.
Andrew: Yeah. Mark Suster will write long blog posts that are well thought out. He does seem very addicted to it. Did I just lose you?
Alexia: He’s a natural. He doesn’t always get, he gets positive feedback but he doesn’t always get positive feedback. He keeps getting up and finding things that are interesting about the world and posting his thoughts on it.
Andrew: Venture capitalists seem to give up on blogging a lot.
Alexia: Yeah, they do.
Andrew: Every time I research them I see four blog posts, one really good, three that are just kind of crappy, and then nothing else. Crappy because they just didn’t put enough effort into it.
Alexia: I wish that more VCs blogged because they really have an in-depth knowledge of a kind of . . .
Andrew: Yes, yes.
Alexia: I would love to see more finance writing and more, more startup writing from venture capitalists they know a thousand times more than I do about that specific part of the industry or maybe less than a thousand. They’ve got world experience behind them. I wish Conway blogged. My wish for 2011, write a blog post Ron.
Andrew: You’re saying just one, we start with one.
Alexia: Just one, maybe there is, I’ll go Google it. I wish more venture capitalist blogged as well.
Andrew: All right, me too. Thank you for doing the interview.
Alexia: No problem.
Andrew: I’m looking forward to reading your blog posts.
