Michael Arrington Is Starting A Venture Capital Firm

Michael Arrington is best known for being the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a technology blog that sold to AOL for roughly $30 million. Now Arrington is planning on starting a venture capital company with Patrick Gallagher of VantagePoint Venture Partners. Their plan is to raise roughly $20 million and fund companies that are a seed or early stages. The company’s limited partner will be AOL. Several people believe that this will cause a major conflict of interest for companies written on the TechCrunch blog, but the the writers on that blog disclose all investment information if Arrington holds equity in the companies being profiled.

Arrington recently invested in companies that were started by Kevin Rose and Shawn Fanning. Arrington also became a limited partner in funds managed by Benchmark Capital and SoftTechVC. This was considered a violation in AOL’s code of conduct, but Arrington received an exemption.

[Fortune]

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