Exclusive: Meet The Writer That TechCrunch Terminated – with Daniel Brusilovsky
When I read that Michael Arrington fired Daniel Brusilovsky from TechCrunch for allegedly taking bribes, I invited him to Mixergy so I could find out what happened.
I didn’t want to do a confrontational interview where I’d either come down hard on him or slam TechCrunch. That’s not me. I want to help build people up, not tear them down.
I just have an insatiable curiosity, and to the extent Daniel was willing to talk, I was willing to listen.
I did this interview on Friday, but before I recorded, I promised Daniel that I wouldn’t publish it without his permission. After it was over, he asked me to wait till after his Teens In Tech Conference was over before releasing it. The conference happened yesterday (and Arrington even showed up) so I’m publishing the interview.
Daniel Brusilovsky is a 17-year-old entrepreneur. Founder & CEO of Teens in Tech Networks, and Special Projects Team Lead at Qik.
Andrew: Hi everyone, it’s Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart and I’ve got Daniel Brusilovsky with me and he was an intern at TechCrunch up until about eighteen hours ago. This morning when I woke up I read an article on TechCrunch about how, apparently, well, he was accused of getting gifts that he wasn’t supposed to get in exchange for articles. Actually, how’s that, Daniel, as representing what happened?
Interviewee: Yeah. That sounds about right.
Andrew: Okay, and we’re going to talk about that here, but I want to know who you are before we get into it. I want to know the person behind the pose, the person beyond this controversy. So let’s start off with: What were you doing at TechCrunch?
Interviewee: I was brought on in June 2009. School just ended and I had a job, I had been working at Quick for two years now. I was looking for something that I really wanted to do and what I was passionate about and that...
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