If you haven’t heard the information, TechCrunch has a shiny new house. After years underneath Yahoo’s possession — which, in flip, is backed by Apollo Group — the model is now in recent arms. Its new father or mother firm: Regent, a dynamic non-public fairness agency with a various portfolio spanning media, retail, and manufacturing. Regent was based 12 years in the past by Michael Reinstein, a personable one-time startup founder who rapidly realized he may need a brighter future as a PE govt and who has an simple ardour for TechCrunch.
While the monetary phrases stay undisclosed, one factor is evident: Regent is buying an iconic model. TechCrunch isn’t only a tech information website; it’s essentially the most influential voice chronicling innovation in Silicon Valley and past. Getting featured in TechCrunch has lengthy been a ceremony of passage for startups, however our mission extends far past the trade insiders who make up our core readership. We intention to offer completely everybody a front-row seat to the way forward for know-how. Whether you’re a founder, an investor, or somebody who’s interested in how tech is reshaping the world, we enable you to see what’s subsequent by reporting the information, then placing the items collectively to share the larger image.
The better part: This deal is structured to make sure minimal disruption to TechCrunch’s operations. You can nearly consider it extra like a software program replace moderately than a system overhaul. In San Francisco and New York, we’ll be transferring into new workplaces leased by Regent. (Goodbye, Financial District; good day, SoMa!) And Yahoo isn’t severing ties fully — it’s conserving a small curiosity within the firm. (What can we are saying? It’s laborious to let go of TechCrunch.) Relatedly, my private due to Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, who has been an unimaginable mentor and sounding board and to whom I’m deeply grateful.
But right here’s what actually issues: The identical group of knowledgeable journalists you recognize and belief will proceed bringing you the must-read tales of the tech world. Without a doubt, that is the strongest TechCrunch group we’ve ever had, and we’ve been lucky to work with some wonderful expertise over time.
TechCrunch has been on the coronary heart of Silicon Valley since Michael Arrington and Keith Teare based it in 2005. With the continuing help of our readers and advertisers, we’ve lined each main tech development, each billionaire brawl, and each trade shake-up. And we’re simply getting began. Many of the founders and executives we’ve written about over time are actually shaping insurance policies in Washington, and we’ll be proper there, reporting on what occurs subsequent.
Yahoo determined to promote TechCrunch as a result of, ultimately, our DNA is solely totally different from the remainder of its portfolio. While Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, and Yahoo Finance excel at aggregation, TechCrunch has all the time been about authentic reporting and information evaluation. The timing of the sale additionally is sensible. While a lot of the information trade has been punched within the face by a bunch of challenges — from AI-generated summaries to Twitter’s evolution into X — TechCrunch has bucked the development during the last yr, steadily re-growing its readership. Our secret? We put readers first, ship must-know information with out bias, and showcase the wild, typically ridiculous, human aspect of the tech world.
As shut followers of TechCrunch already know, this isn’t our first rodeo in the case of new possession (all of us nonetheless have swag from AOL and Verizon). But what mattered most on this transition was guaranteeing that our group retains the liberty and help to do what we do finest. With Regent, we’ve got precisely that.
So to Yahoo, thanks for standing by us via some more durable instances. And to Regent, we love your enthusiasm for what we do and we’re excited to embark on this subsequent chapter with you. Now let’s do that thang.
