But really only if you're interested in learning about hot new spaces in trends, yea then it's ok.
Or if you want to see what external thought leaders have to say, reading on the weekends is ok.
But don't read it for funding.
Unless you're looking for funding, then maybe it's ok to read it to help you narrow your investor pitch focus by seeing who is active and wear.
But certainly don't read it for product. Yeah, that'd be stupid.
Unless, and only unless, you want to see what early adopters who see more new products in a month then most people do in a year have to say about new technology, trends and spaces.
On second thought, yea read TechCrunch.
Just be a good enough entrepreneur to know that reading or not reading TechCrunch won't make or break your company, and is a really lame scapegoat.
The only thing that will make or break your company is you and your idea.
This to me is the reason not to read TechCrunch (or at least to read it with a healthy dose of scepticism - even more than usual on the internet).
I'd expect any aspiring entrepreneur to understand the benefits and trade-offs of the different models for raising funding in the way I'd expect anyone looking for thousands of dollars for anything to understand the strings that are attached to it.
The real problem with TechCrunch is that it operates in an unclear space between journalism and PR (even more than usual) which makes everything on there questionable.
However, I look at TC as more of a gossip rag than a real tech news blog. When I want some dirt on some startup, I'll read it. When I want something with more substance, I'll read Wired or Ars Technica.
There is nothing inherently wrong with reading TC - if nothing else, it gives you a better feeling what your vision/goal might be. With that said, what you need NOT to do is follow it blindly. Use it for what it is: a news medium;
I've been meaning to stop reading TC, but the question is what do I replace it with? Already read th Verge, Ars Technica...found that TechDirty covers a lot about what I'm concerned with
i don't really agree with that. while there is overlap with TC in terms of 'heres a flashy new startup,' their general technology articles, tend to be better written and more interesting than TC.
Better yet, read only posts that are useful to you. Often thought leaders, IE Mark Suster, would release some tips on TC and reading them can help you become more successful. New companies may also have services that can give you an advantage.
i see at TC as guide for trends , best practices for start ups, of course there will be challenges, it's upto you, how do you want to handle them, blaming TC or not reading TC you will miss few things man!
His reasoning is basically "don't read TC because in the times I did read them, I focused too much on them and not my own endeavors...something that's completely MY fault."
I stopped reading TC a few years ago. However, you made a very interesting point about focusing on your own context and not benchmarking w/ other startups, wise words.
I’ve learned that glorifying money raising is a massive mistake
This, in my opinion, is what the metaphor of not reading TechCrunch stands in for. Each article celebrating a round of fundraising has a backstory about an entrepreneur who has less ownership of their company. Often that backstory is that they have less or even no control.
Jobs took outside funding. Gates did not. Both acted like jerks in the 80's. But nobody could fire Gates because nobody had the shares to bring in an outside CEO to Microsoft.
Fundraising is a two edged sword. It should often be accompanied by both congratulations and condolances.
Jobs took outside funding. Gates did not. Both acted like jerks in the 80's. But nobody could fire Gates because nobody had the shares to bring in an outside CEO to Microsoft.
Jobs got the best kind of getting fired possible, though. He walked away with half a billion dollars, which let him do whatever the fuck he wanted with the rest of his life. I've never had a job where I wouldn't resign on the spot a $500 million (or, fuck, even $5 million) severance check. I can't imagine that it being "my" company would change that. Once a company is large enough, it doesn't really belong to one person anymore.
The reality of business is that, as the thing grows, the Iron Law of Oligarchy kicks in and it becomes less "yours". That happens regardless of capitalization structure. Complex entitles are just not, under normal circumstances, controllable by one person.
The bad deal is when you take money for the business (i.e. not personally) and lose control.
"That happens regardless of capitalization structure."
Analysts, pudits, and others with a keyboard and an IP address have been calling for Ballmer's head for years. In vain, because Ballmer is the second largest shareholder after Gates. Capital structure matters a great deal.
It does, because having a small percentage of the equity accelerates the pace at which the thing becomes "not yours". My only point is that it's almost impossible to grow a complex entity to the point of "bigness" and retain total control. The Iron Law of Oligarchy sets in.
Even if you are a CEO with total control, there are information problems that limit your true power. Sure, you have lieutenants who will furnish you with the answer to any question you desire-- biased and dishonest information. I heard someone once say that the hardest thing about being a CEO is that "everyone is fucking lying to you" and that sounds about right. I would add "... and wants your job" to that.
People talk about "giving up control" as if it were a loss. Even if I built the business from the ground up, I'd rather have control of my life than the business. $10 million would mean that I own my life instead of renting it from a boss. Selling control of a corporate entity and code for someone else's use is easily worth that, from my perspective. I now own my life, you now own (partially) a couple years of my work... seems like a fair trade to me.
Mentioning the Iron Law of Oligarchy in a comments thread about Techcrunch and fundraising gets you a vote up from me.
For those who didn't study sociology or political science at some point, the Iron Law of Oligarchy describes the apparently inevitable tendency of organizations to centralize power towards leaders by a process of increasing bureaucratization, decentralization and specialization. It was developed primarily to study political parties, but it is believed to apply to all organizations.
What's most interesting to me about it is that the convergence occurs from both sides. Both autocracies and democracies converge toward an oligarchy. Democracies devolve because there are a lot of people who don't care enough about most issues, which means there are "cheap votes" that are extremely easy to sway. Access to cheap votes (control of the press, political party leadership) is not democratically distributed, but the opposite. On the other hand, even the most vicious autocrats need lieutenants who eventually learn how to take advantage of them. Either way, you get to something that looks like the "square root of N".
TechCrunch is powerful because it has a nut-hold on the cheap votes. The same goes with the prominent VCs who lead the herd.
The best you can do, often, is to create genuine competition among the oligarchs. Then there is a real market for talent, which often comes from the common people (the demos) and this means that the oligarchs can't treat them too badly, because pissing on the people is a sure way not to be able to recruit talent when you go to war against other oligarchs.
That's one thing I dislike about VC-istan. Rather than competing with each other, the VCs talk to each other about who's hot, who's not, and what kind of terms to offer. So you get vertical competition (class warfare) instead of the horizontal kind.
I can't help but think that Michels missed one strategy which can defeat "power corrupts". The solution is to structure the organization such that each agent has identical power. And better yet, organize the agents into small groups (and those groups into groups of the same size) which require consensus among the members. Perhaps even consensus at each subsequent level of groupings.
In other words, a fractal (self-repeating) organization.
Most of the data are generated automatically from SEC forms regarding the trades of insiders over the previous 24 months.
Ballmer's last transaction was 11/23/10. Hence, his name will not show up in data generated that way. In 2010, he sold 12% of his stake for about $1.3 billion. He's probably not hurting for cash.
He's still a small minority shareholder. So is Gates, and have been for many years. Last I checked, unless I'm severely mistaken, I believe Gates held something like 6%-7% of MS, and Ballmer substantially less.
The size of their holdings might make it somewhat harder to mount an "attack", in that there are no small group of large shareholders that would be able to vote a majority on their own and so any attack would require gaining the support of a large number of smaller shareholders, but he's certainly not immune from being ousted if he's actually so disliked by shareholders.
Bill Gates was the son of wealthy parents, his father was a partner in the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis, his mother was on board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way.
Bill got a sweetheart deal from IBM, in part due to his mother serving on the United Way board with Jon Opel, chair of IBM.
Steve Jobs was adopted by Paul Jobs, a mechanic and a carpenter, and Clara Jobs, who was a payroll clerk for Varian Associates. Neither of his adoptive parents had the opportunity to attend college.
Jobs sold his minivan and Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator to initially fund development of the Apple I.
If you have the option of being born to parents with extreme wealth and connections, I highly recommend it over fundraising.
One may dismiss Gate's success as due to the resources of his parents. However, Microsoft was not his first foray into entrepreneurship. I suspect that bootstrapping was always the plan. Just as Apple always anticipated taking venture capital.
Jobs had the good fortune to be raised in Silicon Valley. Had he been in Topeka, there would not have been a viable market of hobbyists for Apple I kits. Then again, he wouldn't have known Wozniak who actually built the damn thing, either.
Luck played a factor in the fortunes of both men.
The funding of Gates and Jobs is a parable. The extended version includes the prodigal son's return.
I don't completely disagree with you, a good start in life and tons of money doesn't guarantee you future success, but luck alone doesn't pay the bills either, that takes money.
You can have a great viable market and if you don't have the money to build the widgets, you are stuck pounding sand.
BTW if Wozniak hadn't met Steve Jobs, he might have spent the rest of his days working at HP, being one of hundreds of brilliant engineers nobody has ever heard about.
Woz is many things, but he is not --and was never-- an ambitious corporate leader. Wozniak built the Apple I and Apple II but it was Steve Jobs that built Apple Inc.
Nobody is "dismissing Gates' success as due to the resources of his parents." People are pointing out that taking VC funding was unnecessary for Gates due to his family's wealth. Surely you can see this.
Also, Gates was building a software company and Jobs was building a hardware company. Jobs had a lot more need for funding in the first place since his capital expenditures were higher.
Finally, Mr. Jobs made almost half a billion off of Apple in the 1980s (yes... 1980s dollars.) I hardly think that Apple is some kind of parable about how VC funding is a bad idea. Quite the contrary.
I recently spoke to a group of aspiring founders (not that I'm anything to aspire to, but they needed speakers!) and one of my slides was, 'recognise distortion fields'.
Techcrunch was my main example. A great resource, but needs to be absorbed with the right amount of perspective.
The next Microsoft is very unlikely to be a YC company because YC purchases meaningful equity upfront and its template is built to serve the needs of venture capital, e.g. demo days and more recently, convertible notes.
There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with removing the beer goggles and acknowledging it, either.
Besides their money, VCs bring little value to your company. They rarely understand the scope of your problem or why your plan on solving it that way, they don't know your customers, and it can sometimes be distracting to prepare for board meetings with your investors.
Its unfortunate that TC can only validate companies based on how much money they've raised..
I get the feeling that this is a really extreme piece of advice, perhaps made so to make a punchy Hacker News headline (or simply out of being fed up!).
I believe that everyone regardless should read widely and as widely as possible, but for entrepreneurs and technologists I believe it is part of the job description, too.
Extremes are almost never the right thing. If you're fat, is it best to cut out all fats from your diet? No. If you're info-overloaded, is it best to cut yourself off from the Internet? No. If you're interested in startups, should you read TechCrunch and forget everything else? No!
If you're feeling a bit too tied up with keeping-up anxiety from following slightly glorified versions of other startups' progress, is it best to cut yourself from what can be a useful and valuable source of content?
I say no - just moderate and keep it broad and wide, like everything else in life.
What applies to the OP doesn't apply to everybody. The benefits of reading techcrunch depends on what your interrests are.
The reason raising money is such a dominant info is because it is considered as an indirect proof of business soundness. What other objectivable info could be you use for that ?
Regarding a problem of focussing and keeping delivering, TechCrunch can't be blamed for that.
My problem with TechCrunch (which I don't read regularly, because reading about unqualified hucksters getting $8-million acq-hire welfare checks for IUsedThisToilet apps is not going to improve my life) is that it seems like an attempt to create the old, broken social regime within the new one. Instead of focusing on potential, it seems to document the whims of these wizard-priests called "venture capitalists" who, as a class, don't seem to be doing better than they would if they selected startups randomly.
For example, if you think velvet-rope parties at SxSW are a good thing, you're not a technologist and you don't belong in this century. Technologists want to make the world inclusive and prosperous, not exclusive and shitty.
More accurately, that 'college kids' wanted an exclusive place to share information with 'college kids'. 'College kids' initially meaning 'Harvard students'.
I have nothing against TechCrunch but if that's your main news source on startups, you have a problem.
I attend a lot of entrepreneur events, Startup Weekends, etc and one of the common threads is the navel-gazing or me-too startups. If I have to sit through yet another "social sharing for X" or "group-curated Y" presentation, I'm going to kill someone.
They focus on the follow-on startups and think "because so-and-so did it, I can too!" instead of actually looking at the problem and trying to understand it. They appear to be startups for startups sake.
If you read TechCrunch as if it's the center of the world, it's easy to get into that mindset. Instead what you have to realize that it is a tiny piece of the whole world and will never cover 99.99% of the startups out there who are solving major life-changing, make-everyone-rich sorts of problems.
Go out, kick ass, and don't worry about what that 0.001% of the world is up to.
>They focus on the follow-on startups and think "because so-and-so did it, I can too!" instead of actually looking at the problem and trying to understand it. They appear to be startups for startups sake.
I saw this mentality when I went to a Mountain View meetup (for a semi-related hobbyist group). One young woman there was a nurse (or related medical professional) and announced that she wanted to get involved in a startup, and could someone point her in the right direction. Immediately a group member asked her what kind of start up and she looked completely surprised by the question and said "something in medicine ... front ... end?"
I've also gone to a Startup Weekend where something like 95% of the ideas were things I had literally thought of myself already but dismissed long ago because of obvious problems, or that the proposers couldn't answer the most basic questions about. When it came time to cast our three votes, one of mine was basically to say "not really exited by this, but ahead of virtually everyone here".
I stopped reading it when Mike A got all dramatic and made it all about himself. Haven't gone back but I'd imagine it can't be any worse than it was then.
I'm reading TechCrunch regularly before entering the startup scene. Nowadays, I'm not reading it like before.
TechCrunch may provide misleading information for some. But when you're in a "startup" situation, you know will know what is right and what to believe in.
On other side, TechCrunch may mislead you, but they can be a good source of inspiration. They are talking about acquisitions, fundings, and successes. Why not use them as your inspiration? Strive hard, to achieve those.
I only read TC when their linkbait titles end up on the frontpage of HN.
Stopped following their feed, once I came to the same conclusion as the OP: being overly funded is (almost) the only way to go get featured on TC, these days. The times of roaming the edges of startup-land and posting about the nitty gritty startup struggles are long forgotten.
Besides the conflict of interest, I find the fact that a significant portion of their articles are about themselves, or other tech journalists, extremely irritating. Like when a documentary is about the filmaker making the documentary instead of the subject matter.
Those were the days when the news was about the startup itself, not the financial value of it. We are living in a time where companies are valued by their annual turnovers instead of profits. So, totally agree to what he says, don't read TechCrunch. Focus on your startup, the value you provide and the profit you make.
124 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadUnless you're interested in startups generally.
Or if you want to learn about new companies.
But really only if you're interested in learning about hot new spaces in trends, yea then it's ok.
Or if you want to see what external thought leaders have to say, reading on the weekends is ok.
But don't read it for funding.
Unless you're looking for funding, then maybe it's ok to read it to help you narrow your investor pitch focus by seeing who is active and wear.
But certainly don't read it for product. Yeah, that'd be stupid.
Unless, and only unless, you want to see what early adopters who see more new products in a month then most people do in a year have to say about new technology, trends and spaces.
On second thought, yea read TechCrunch.
Just be a good enough entrepreneur to know that reading or not reading TechCrunch won't make or break your company, and is a really lame scapegoat.
The only thing that will make or break your company is you and your idea.
> Unless you're interested in startups (that Arrington has a personal stake in) generally.
> Or if you want to learn about new companies (that Arrington has a personal stake in).
et cetera.
I'd expect any aspiring entrepreneur to understand the benefits and trade-offs of the different models for raising funding in the way I'd expect anyone looking for thousands of dollars for anything to understand the strings that are attached to it.
The real problem with TechCrunch is that it operates in an unclear space between journalism and PR (even more than usual) which makes everything on there questionable.
However, I look at TC as more of a gossip rag than a real tech news blog. When I want some dirt on some startup, I'll read it. When I want something with more substance, I'll read Wired or Ars Technica.
A more appropriate title would be the second last line of the post:
> It’s good to have context but becoming obsessed and consumed with what TC and other startup blogs and websites report on is problematic.
But that would have made the post a whole lot less interesting and click-worthy.
I stopped reading TC a few years ago. However, you made a very interesting point about focusing on your own context and not benchmarking w/ other startups, wise words.
This, in my opinion, is what the metaphor of not reading TechCrunch stands in for. Each article celebrating a round of fundraising has a backstory about an entrepreneur who has less ownership of their company. Often that backstory is that they have less or even no control.
Jobs took outside funding. Gates did not. Both acted like jerks in the 80's. But nobody could fire Gates because nobody had the shares to bring in an outside CEO to Microsoft.
Fundraising is a two edged sword. It should often be accompanied by both congratulations and condolances.
Jobs got the best kind of getting fired possible, though. He walked away with half a billion dollars, which let him do whatever the fuck he wanted with the rest of his life. I've never had a job where I wouldn't resign on the spot a $500 million (or, fuck, even $5 million) severance check. I can't imagine that it being "my" company would change that. Once a company is large enough, it doesn't really belong to one person anymore.
The reality of business is that, as the thing grows, the Iron Law of Oligarchy kicks in and it becomes less "yours". That happens regardless of capitalization structure. Complex entitles are just not, under normal circumstances, controllable by one person.
The bad deal is when you take money for the business (i.e. not personally) and lose control.
Analysts, pudits, and others with a keyboard and an IP address have been calling for Ballmer's head for years. In vain, because Ballmer is the second largest shareholder after Gates. Capital structure matters a great deal.
Even if you are a CEO with total control, there are information problems that limit your true power. Sure, you have lieutenants who will furnish you with the answer to any question you desire-- biased and dishonest information. I heard someone once say that the hardest thing about being a CEO is that "everyone is fucking lying to you" and that sounds about right. I would add "... and wants your job" to that.
People talk about "giving up control" as if it were a loss. Even if I built the business from the ground up, I'd rather have control of my life than the business. $10 million would mean that I own my life instead of renting it from a boss. Selling control of a corporate entity and code for someone else's use is easily worth that, from my perspective. I now own my life, you now own (partially) a couple years of my work... seems like a fair trade to me.
Mentioning the Iron Law of Oligarchy in a comments thread about Techcrunch and fundraising gets you a vote up from me.
For those who didn't study sociology or political science at some point, the Iron Law of Oligarchy describes the apparently inevitable tendency of organizations to centralize power towards leaders by a process of increasing bureaucratization, decentralization and specialization. It was developed primarily to study political parties, but it is believed to apply to all organizations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Law_of_Oligarchy
TechCrunch is powerful because it has a nut-hold on the cheap votes. The same goes with the prominent VCs who lead the herd.
The best you can do, often, is to create genuine competition among the oligarchs. Then there is a real market for talent, which often comes from the common people (the demos) and this means that the oligarchs can't treat them too badly, because pissing on the people is a sure way not to be able to recruit talent when you go to war against other oligarchs.
That's one thing I dislike about VC-istan. Rather than competing with each other, the VCs talk to each other about who's hot, who's not, and what kind of terms to offer. So you get vertical competition (class warfare) instead of the horizontal kind.
In other words, a fractal (self-repeating) organization.
Ballmer's last transaction was 11/23/10. Hence, his name will not show up in data generated that way. In 2010, he sold 12% of his stake for about $1.3 billion. He's probably not hurting for cash.
Fidelity reports his ownership here: http://eresearch.fidelity.com/eresearch/evaluate/fundamental...
The size of their holdings might make it somewhat harder to mount an "attack", in that there are no small group of large shareholders that would be able to vote a majority on their own and so any attack would require gaining the support of a large number of smaller shareholders, but he's certainly not immune from being ousted if he's actually so disliked by shareholders.
Just a minor error. Microsoft did raise a vc round before they went public.
It doesn't really affect your point as the control given up was pretty minimal.
Bill Gates was the son of wealthy parents, his father was a partner in the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis, his mother was on board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way.
Bill got a sweetheart deal from IBM, in part due to his mother serving on the United Way board with Jon Opel, chair of IBM.
Steve Jobs was adopted by Paul Jobs, a mechanic and a carpenter, and Clara Jobs, who was a payroll clerk for Varian Associates. Neither of his adoptive parents had the opportunity to attend college.
Jobs sold his minivan and Wozniak sold his HP scientific calculator to initially fund development of the Apple I.
If you have the option of being born to parents with extreme wealth and connections, I highly recommend it over fundraising.
Jobs had the good fortune to be raised in Silicon Valley. Had he been in Topeka, there would not have been a viable market of hobbyists for Apple I kits. Then again, he wouldn't have known Wozniak who actually built the damn thing, either.
Luck played a factor in the fortunes of both men.
The funding of Gates and Jobs is a parable. The extended version includes the prodigal son's return.
You can have a great viable market and if you don't have the money to build the widgets, you are stuck pounding sand.
BTW if Wozniak hadn't met Steve Jobs, he might have spent the rest of his days working at HP, being one of hundreds of brilliant engineers nobody has ever heard about.
Woz is many things, but he is not --and was never-- an ambitious corporate leader. Wozniak built the Apple I and Apple II but it was Steve Jobs that built Apple Inc.
He took advantage of his connections and built one of the biggest, most influential software companies ever.
He then stepped back at the height of his career, listened to his wife, and the two of them built a very innovative philanthropic organization.
There are plenty of rich kids that don't accomplish anything, Gates wasn't one of them.
Very true!
Also, Gates was building a software company and Jobs was building a hardware company. Jobs had a lot more need for funding in the first place since his capital expenditures were higher.
Finally, Mr. Jobs made almost half a billion off of Apple in the 1980s (yes... 1980s dollars.) I hardly think that Apple is some kind of parable about how VC funding is a bad idea. Quite the contrary.
Techcrunch was my main example. A great resource, but needs to be absorbed with the right amount of perspective.
The next Microsoft is very unlikely to be a YC company because YC purchases meaningful equity upfront and its template is built to serve the needs of venture capital, e.g. demo days and more recently, convertible notes.
There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with removing the beer goggles and acknowledging it, either.
Its unfortunate that TC can only validate companies based on how much money they've raised..
I believe that everyone regardless should read widely and as widely as possible, but for entrepreneurs and technologists I believe it is part of the job description, too.
Extremes are almost never the right thing. If you're fat, is it best to cut out all fats from your diet? No. If you're info-overloaded, is it best to cut yourself off from the Internet? No. If you're interested in startups, should you read TechCrunch and forget everything else? No!
If you're feeling a bit too tied up with keeping-up anxiety from following slightly glorified versions of other startups' progress, is it best to cut yourself from what can be a useful and valuable source of content?
I say no - just moderate and keep it broad and wide, like everything else in life.
The reason raising money is such a dominant info is because it is considered as an indirect proof of business soundness. What other objectivable info could be you use for that ?
Regarding a problem of focussing and keeping delivering, TechCrunch can't be blamed for that.
You'll get a broad overview of the days tech news, without the fluff or bias of an individual news site.
A few of my posts on HN on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4852081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3538189 - that was an year ago!
For example, if you think velvet-rope parties at SxSW are a good thing, you're not a technologist and you don't belong in this century. Technologists want to make the world inclusive and prosperous, not exclusive and shitty.
People will be people and technologists are no different. I have no doubt you will find some that want to be exclusive.
I attend a lot of entrepreneur events, Startup Weekends, etc and one of the common threads is the navel-gazing or me-too startups. If I have to sit through yet another "social sharing for X" or "group-curated Y" presentation, I'm going to kill someone.
They focus on the follow-on startups and think "because so-and-so did it, I can too!" instead of actually looking at the problem and trying to understand it. They appear to be startups for startups sake.
If you read TechCrunch as if it's the center of the world, it's easy to get into that mindset. Instead what you have to realize that it is a tiny piece of the whole world and will never cover 99.99% of the startups out there who are solving major life-changing, make-everyone-rich sorts of problems.
Go out, kick ass, and don't worry about what that 0.001% of the world is up to.
I saw this mentality when I went to a Mountain View meetup (for a semi-related hobbyist group). One young woman there was a nurse (or related medical professional) and announced that she wanted to get involved in a startup, and could someone point her in the right direction. Immediately a group member asked her what kind of start up and she looked completely surprised by the question and said "something in medicine ... front ... end?"
I've also gone to a Startup Weekend where something like 95% of the ideas were things I had literally thought of myself already but dismissed long ago because of obvious problems, or that the proposers couldn't answer the most basic questions about. When it came time to cast our three votes, one of mine was basically to say "not really exited by this, but ahead of virtually everyone here".
Now everyone is like "grow a beard and get back to the basement damnit"
Ironically, TC has hired away several VB writers.
http://statspotting.com/2012/12/read-techcrunch-daily/
TechCrunch may provide misleading information for some. But when you're in a "startup" situation, you know will know what is right and what to believe in.
On other side, TechCrunch may mislead you, but they can be a good source of inspiration. They are talking about acquisitions, fundings, and successes. Why not use them as your inspiration? Strive hard, to achieve those.
Stopped following their feed, once I came to the same conclusion as the OP: being overly funded is (almost) the only way to go get featured on TC, these days. The times of roaming the edges of startup-land and posting about the nitty gritty startup struggles are long forgotten.
I wish people weren't so obsessed with celebrity.