Surprise Surprise: Greg Kumparak Joins Pando Daily

by Kyle in Featured, Mergers & Acquisitions, Mobile, Silicon Valley, Startups, Tech
Comments Off on Surprise Surprise: Greg Kumparak Joins Pando Daily 0 Like 1,279

Greg Kamparak photo: Kamparak's Google+

The exodus at AOL owned TechCrunch continues. Earlier this week it was leaked that TechCrunch’s mobile editor, Greg Kumparak, was leaving TechCrunch. At the time Kumparak announced his departure he didn’t say he was going, but of course the obvious place was PandoDaily.

PandoDaily is the new start up focused site that was started by former TechCrunch editor Sarah Lacy. Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund led an angel round for the new site that was over 2.5 million dollars.

Lacy announced a couple of weeks ago that PandoDaily was holding monthly meet ups. The first of which was tonight. Arrington was the featured guest and had a fireside chat with Lacy. It was also announced that Kumparak was joining the PandoDaily team tonight.

More after the break
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Moons Over My YouTube?

by Kyle in Google, Mergers & Acquisitions, Tech
Comments Off on Moons Over My YouTube? 0 Like 1,414

YouTube Co-Founder, Steven Chen, took the stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing. Chen sat down with the queen of international start-up reporting Sara Lacy to talk about business, what’s new and of course the big YouTube deal.

Chen revealed that while they were negotiating the sale of YouTube to both Yahoo and Google they often met with both companies at a Denny’s in Paolo Alto.  Chen says he wanted to find a place that no one would think to look for them at.  Of course, TechCrunch Founder, Mike Arrington was keen to their dubious plans to get Moons over My Hammy and Grand Slam breakfasts while negotiating a grand slam of a deal.

Chen admits to having eaten Mozarella sticks while pondering over one of the biggest deals (at the time) in Silicon Valley.  Chen told Lacy that it was Google CEO (at the time) Eric Schmidt’s commitment to continue to let the YouTube founders run YouTube the way they wanted, that ultimately swayed them there instead of Yahoo.

“For twelve months, whatever we wanted to do, we were allowed to do,” Chen told Lacy “It was tremendous courage from Eric, allowing this group of 20 year-olds to run the company.”

source: TechCrunch