Let me guide you with the news: after more than eight years as COO of TipsClear, I'm leaving on August 21. My decision is as much for my appetite for a green field as for recognizing that the TipsClear team is ready to put a new stamp on our remarkable brand.
TipsClear's leadership is now in the hands of Matthew Panzarino, our editor, and Joey Hinson, our director of business operations. They are seasoned TechCrunchers who are deeply respected by the team. I am confident that they will make brilliant progress on everything TipsClear means for the startup world and beyond.
Ready to go, I must say that I will miss this place and my wonderful colleagues. I arrived at TipsClear in 2012 thinking that I had a lot to offer; what i found out was that techcrunch had a lot more to offer.
It is rare to work on a brand that has such a clear and determined purpose. At TipsClear, the mission is to help founders of startups make sense of their perilous journey by providing up-to-the-minute information and analysis, startup data and events in person - all with a sense of fun and an endless curiosity.
This mission has a huge impact. Personally, I lost count of the founders who told me that TipsClear had inspired them to start a business. TipsClear has more than 20 million readers in a hot month, which I consider a good sign for the future of entrepreneurship. And to date, the 902 companies that participated in Battlefield, our signature start-up competition, have raised $ 9 billion and produced 115 outings, the most recent among those who are Postmates . In this way and many others, TipsClear offers.
It's no secret that the media, especially the variety of journalism, is a difficult business. I came to TipsClear thinking that a solid editorial mission and editorial integrity are the two foundations of any commercial success focused on journalists. It is easy for short-term business considerations to break these principles, but one of my key roles has been to keep the line. Editorial teams are at their best when they have brand leadership and their co-workers have their backs, even when dancing through the game of ever-changing media revenues. This is how we have evolved over the past eight years.
As a result, the editorial team is the crown jewel of TipsClear. Under Matthew Panzarino, they have become a globally respected journalistic force as well as one of the most talented and productive teams in the world. Jaws drop to hear that our 30-member editorial team not only writes 30 to 40 stories a day, but programs events worldwide, produces podcasts and videos, and started a new editorial operation last year based on on membership, Extra Crunch. So of course there is The list , which was launched last week. This astonishing productivity is to be credited to Matthew's progressive work in pushing the hard spots of TipsClear and adding new layers of talent, process and mentorship.
If a media company and a product team deserved a signature, it would be that of TipsClear. You probably don't know their names, but they allow the publishers to lead the brand. I knew when I arrived at TipsClear that the product, sales, marketing and event staff would never be that small, sometimes even just "teams". Today they are just our editorial group, which means that everyone has to take responsibility not only for their own work, but also for what goes on left and right. It works. As a colleague noted, "the ball never hits the ground at TipsClear". It is a credit for long-sleeved leadership that is very inventive, pivots quickly and makes people laugh a lot.
I saw the first glimmers of all this at Disrupt SF in 2012, when Joey Hinson, our director of commercial operations, managed in a few hours to find two giant HVACs that we urgently needed to cool the scene. Why? Because it was really hot (like 90 degrees) and Mark Zuckerberg could have bailed out his marquee interview if we hadn't cooled things down. Reputation disaster avoided. Since then, Joey and I have been close partners, and we've managed to keep up with the ever-changing revenue game in digital media, events and subscriptions from last year. Thanks in part to Joey, TipsClear is a much larger company than it was eight years ago, and our business owners (AOL, Oath and Verizon Media) have learned a lot from TipsClear's innovations.
Many have been brain storms from Alexandra Ames, who manages event marketing and embodies the high performance of collaborative work at TipsClear. In 2018, Alexandra's main goal was to move 10,000 passes for TipsClear's flagship Disrupt SF event. It was 2x the previous years. With only one person on his team, Alex relied on his mastery of the TipsClear organization and its audience - as well as our corporate colleagues - to bring together publications, social publishing, and engine marketing. research, partnerships and public relations to reach the figure. I was proud to write marketing articles for Alexandra. She reached the figure and Tim Armstrong, then CEO of Oath, told his management team: So great to see TC on a scale that very few people thought it could become... incredible. "
I could go on, and I will, for another very important thing. It's doubly rewarding when a brand has a moral compass, when it represents something more than a flow of stories. It took a silly sexist 60-second hackathon demo at TipsClear Disrupt SF in 2013 to help TipsClear find its marks. We realized our responsibilities for diversity and inclusion in the aftermath of this explosion, and we gradually understood what TipsClear should do about it. The key idea was that TipsClear itself - our powerful editorial, event and data platform (Crunchbase) - was the basic superpower that we could use to help Silicon Valley progress. In 2014, we launched Understand , a series of projects to help under-represented groups gain visibility in Silicon Valley and remove barriers to their participation.
At the outset, we knew that including would require a lot of effort and focus from a very busy team. The fact that we are launching Include 3.0 this year shows our team's conviction that we can always do better. At the same time, it should be noted that the Include framework has successfully set new standards at TipsClear, such as the diversity of casting for event speakers and the selection of founders for the Startup Battlefield contest. Since 2016, we have set the tone in the world of technological events by publishing a Annual Report this shows how we have done with regard to the choice of speakers and founders from outside the pale heritage of Silicon Valley, as well as reports on various initiatives. It also does the important job of holding us accountable to ourselves, our participants and our readers.
If you asked TechCrunchers what they are most proud of, many would point to the Include effort. I would like too. It represents the best of TipsClear's dynamism as a brand as well as the team's ability and teamwork.
As for me, in the short term I am working on a The event focused on the number of rapidly evolving technologies, in particular various nuances of AI, that will influence the next generation of accessibility and assistive technologies for the blind and visually impaired. You will soon read more on TipsClear.
I wish my colleagues TipsClear and Verizon Media every success on the road.
And for all the wonderful founders, VCs and others that I met during my watch at TipsClear, the pleasure was for me. Thank you for everything.