Brian Chesky – CEO, Airbnb
Jonathan Abrams – Partner, Founders Den
Jason Johnson – Partner, Founders Den
Zachary Bogue – Partner, Founders Den
Michael Levit – Partner, Founders Den
Jeff Kapel – Assistant Coach, Duke Basketball
Ari Emmanuel & Jason Lublin – WME
Trajan Langdon – Retired NBA Basketball Player
Yuri Milner & Felix Shpilman – Startfund
Troy Carter & Allison Streuter – Atom Factory
SV Angel – Ron, David, Kevin, Topher, Robert
Crunchfund – Michael, MG, Patrick
Paul Buchheit – Inventor of Gmail, Founder FriendFeed, Partner Y-Combinator
Garry Tan – Partner Y-Combinator, Co-Founder Posterous
Alexis Ohanian – Partner Y-Combinator, Co-Founder Reddit
Harj Taggar – Partner Y-Combinator, Co-Founder Auctomatic
Paul Graham – Co-founder Y-Combinator
Jessica Livingston – Partner Y-Combinator
Tim Draper – Draper Associates
Stewart Alsop – Alsop Louie
Erik Moore – Angel investor in Zappos
Justin Kan – Co-Founder EXEC, Co-Founder Justin.tv/Twitch.tv
Emmett Shear – CEO & Co-Founder Justin.tv/Twitch.tv
Kyle Vogt – Co-Founder Justin.tv/Twitch.tv
Matt Ocko – Angel Investor
A-Grade Investments – Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, and Chris Hollod
Ronny Conway – Andreessen Horowitz
Justin Caldbeck – Lightspeed
Shervin Pishevar – Menlo Ventures
Laurene Powell Jobs & Stacey Rubin – Emerson Collective
Ram Shiram – Sherpalo, Angel Investor in Google
Shane Battier – NBA Basketball player, Miami Heat
Michael Rapino & Michael Abrams – Live Nation

Michael Arrington filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage for “Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competition, and Violations of the Lanham Act.” And below is the full statement that Fusion Garage has made against the lawsuit:

FUSION GARAGE RESPONDS TO TECHCRUNCH LAWSUIT AND
DECEMBER 11 BLOG POST BY MICHAEL ARRINGTON
COMPANY STATEMENT
DECEMBER 17, 2009

The lawsuit filed by TechCrunch against Fusion Garage and accompanying December 11, 2009 blog post by Michael Arrington are without merit. We will vigorously defend ourselves against the suit’s claims in court. The December 11 blog post by Arrington makes several hollow allegations including:

Lack of Viable Funding/Our Shareholders/Cash Flow:

Fusion Garage is a properly capitalized start up that has received $3M in funding to date and is preparing to announce a new round within the coming weeks. The Company is a viable concern whose financial status more than enables it to fully develop and bring to market its intellectual property commercialized in the form of joojoo. Fusion Garage has various angel investors that are well-respected business people in the Singapore community. Like many international angel investors, Dr. Bruce Lee is a successful entrepreneur with several profitable ventures. Additionally, Fusion Garage is proud of the other investors on its rosters – many of whom have invested in previous ventures founded by Rathakrishnan. Fusion Garage went out and secured funding – tangible proof of Fusion Garage’s “doer” status relative to the alleged yet intangible claims of investment by TechCrunch. Pre-sales have indeed begun and, with or without them, the Company has sufficient funds to bring the joojoo to market and defend itself against the baseless claims of TechCrunch.

Pegatron IP Ownership:

Another example of Fusion Garage “doer status” in bringing the joojoo to market is the Company’s now defunct relationship with ODM Pegatron. Fusion Garage established this relationship after Arrington’s promises of hardware development support proved to be hollow. Fusion Garage is now working with another top tier ODM to develop a completely new board and mechanical layout that is the basis for the joojoo. To state, as the lawsuit and accompanying blog post do, that Fusion Garage’s joojoo is based on any Pegatron IP is false.

As for the ongoing personal attacks against Rathakrishnan, they do not deserve a point by point
response. Arrington’s attacks on Rathakrishnan’s past business activities are unfounded. The points he raises are old news and raise the question of why he would want to do business with Rathakrishnan if his past was so controversial. Dredging up old and nebulous material only reflects his desperation for material.

Fusion Garage is proud to have introduced the joojoo last week and is equally proud of the positive feedback the product received by industry influencers and media. We have received more than 6,000 email inquiries to our website and pre-orders to date have exceeded our expectations. We have no reason to believe that the legal action taken against Fusion Garage will prevent the joojoo from reaching market.

Since our first public statements on the joojoo, we have taken the high road regarding past interactions with Arrington and TechCrunch. We find Arrington’s ongoing attempts to bully public opinion and members of the media to be the sad rants of a person championing a losing cause.

Arrington has filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage through a company called Interserve Inc. Interserve is doing business as TechCrunch and CrunchPad Inc. Below is the document of the filed lawsuit.

For more details, check out what Arrington has to say about the case on TechCrunch.

The device was supposed to hit the market by Black Friday, but it kept getting stalled. About a week ago Arrington gave an update about the project by saying that it wasn’t going to happen. The Crunchpad would not be released due to the fact that he owned the trademark and Fusion Garage, the manufacturing company contractor he was working with kicked him out.

Earlier today Fusion Garage CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan said that Arrington was “unable to deliver.” Rathakrishnan also criticized Arrington for putting up pictures of the Crunchpad, publicizing news about the product, and talked about how important his role was in the product about what he was going to do while Fusion Garage was doing all the work.

Fusion Garage renamed the Crunchpad to JooJoo and plans to sell it for $499. The device will only work with a WiFi connection and supports HD video. JooJoo has a 12.1″ touchscreen and boots up in 9 seconds. Arrington said that he would not comment on what is going on with the CrunchPad going forward, but assured that there will be litigation involved going forward.

The shareholders decided to sell the CrunchPad through Fusion Garage without his involvement. Below is the e-mail that shareholders forwarded over to Rathakrishnan:
“We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavor…If he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.” Arrington plans to file a lawsuit against Fusion Garage along with Rathakrishnan as a result of the failed project.

Intel and a retail partner (who I believe is Best Buy given that their CMO praised the device) helped facilitate the CrunchPad project this far. I would have loved to see the project come into fruition too because at the $300 price point that was set, the CrunchPad would have been an amazing netbook competitor.

Judge tweeted “Just met chief blogger at Tech Crunch.  Talked about the Crunchpad and saw a prototype.  Great looking device, think it will be a real hit.”  This just tells me a couple of things.  The Crunchpad may actually have a chance against a rumored upcoming Apple tablet computer.  And this also tells me that Best Buy seems to be a bigger fan of TechCrunch than he is with Gizmodo.

An hour before Judge tweeted meeting Arrington, he tweeted that he met YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley to discuss ways to better leverage the video website.  He also asked his followers for ideas on what other retailers do to use YouTube well.  Here’s my two word answer for Judge: viral videos.  The Improv Everywhere group hit over one million views in their viral video of sending a bunch of blue shirt, khaki wearing agents into a Best Buy store.

Crunchpad is an uncoming tablet device that was rolled out of a project by technology blog TechCrunch.com.  It turns out that the details of his project have been leaked by the Straits Times in Singapore.  Arrington was not very happy about the leak as he wrote the following message on Twitter:

re crunchpad, obviously i’m completely rips**t mad about all this unauthorized bs press: http://bit.ly/2dVjBQ wtf.

The news story by the Straits Times reports that the Crunchpad will be available starting this November, but Arrington denies it and calls the Strait Times b.s.  I think that the news story sounds credible because the paper actually met with Fusion Garage, the company behind the Crunchpad production.

The device is expected to retail for $400.  Some of the features include WiFi, 3G access (meaning TechCrunch needs to sign a telecomm deal), custom OS based on Webkit, and one USB port.  The applications on the tablet will be web-based.  Rumor has it that the measurements are 13×8 inches and weight is 2.6 lbs.

More details as they become available.

Michael Arrington launched the TechCrunch network about four years ago and now it generates about $6 million in revenue as of last year from advertising, events, and other sources.  This year the company expects to bring in more than that.

Now Arrington is turning his focus into the hardware sector.  He is working on a new device called the CrunchPad and has registered a company called CrunchPad Inc.  The CrunchPad is a touch-screen tablet made for surfing the web and using video chat.

“We’re going to make some really big announcements,” stated Arrington in an interview with the San Francisco Business Times. “We’re full on. These prototypes are real.”  CrunchPad Inc. now has 14 employees in Singapore.

Angel Investor Ron Conway said that Arrington “understands the inner workings of Silicon Valley, and because he’s been around the valley so long, people trust him and trust his judgment.”  Conway himself is considering to invest in CrunchPad.