Union Sqare Ventures' Fred Wilson took news site TechCrunch to task yesterday for listing failed and troubled startups in a section of the web site called "The Deal Pool".
The venture capitalist who is heavily invested in consumer Internet companies wrote in his blog entitled A VC:
"I have to shake my head at the resurrection of the dead pool, which was made popular last time around by Fucked Company. Do we really need to celebrate when companies fail? It's hard enough for everyone involved to deal with the dashed hopes and dreams of a failed startup. But now we are counting them like notches on a sword handle.
The whole thing, starting with overhyping young companies that are nothing more than a few people working their butts off to make something happen, to throwing them in the "dead pool" when they fail is not healthy. Just ask Britney Spears."
Wilson is one of the best VC bloggers out there. He's one of the best bloggers out there period. But, he fails to recognize that Fucked Company in its day provided an important service by providing information to shareholders, employees, partners and others about the travails a company they may be interested in is going through. TechCrunch's Dead Pool is no different.
When you clicked through to the Dead Pool, and some cheery music played on the page or an animated image of the failed startup CEO's head with a guillotine cutting through it was affixed next to each story, then that could be considered to be "relishing" those companies' downfalls. But, simply describing the troubles is valuable information. It's journalism.
For more on this debate, see:
A VC comments
TechCrunch forums
Zoli's blog
Technorati tags: techcrunch, fred+wilson, web2, vc, venture+capital
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