TechCrunch+'s founding editor about its launch to complement TechCrunch's ads and events revenue and its failure due to issues with finding business reporters
SecuritiesDanny Crichton
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch+ was conceived as a subscription complement to TechCrunch’s advertising and events businesses, but the account of its failure identifies staffing—not simply product positioning—as the limiting factor. That makes the episode a test of whether a specialist paid product can be built without a reliably staffed specialist newsroom.
The difficulty fits a broader pattern in adjacent media ventures: Tech In Asia’s staff cuts after a planned ICO was canceled showed how quickly expansion plans can collide with a weakened funding model. Here, the constraint was the ability to recruit the business-reporting capacity the product required.
First-order effects
TechCrunch+ loses the editorial capability needed to sustain its intended paid business offering, leaving TechCrunch without that planned complement to advertising and events revenue.
Business reporters are the immediately scarce input: failure to hire them prevents the product from delivering the specialist coverage on which a subscription proposition depends.
Second-order effects
Other publishers pursuing premium verticals face a sharper build-versus-buy choice for expertise; recruiting specialist journalists can become a gating cost rather than a routine operating expense.
The result reinforces the opportunity cost of diverting scarce reporters into exclusive products, especially when the core newsroom and events businesses also need differentiated coverage.
Third-order effects
If this pattern persists, subscription publishing will reward organizations that can sustain distinctive reporting teams, while general audience scale alone will be less sufficient to support paid add-ons.
Media diversification may increasingly hinge on labor-market access as much as on audience demand: premium products can fail before pricing or distribution is fully tested when specialist talent is unavailable.
The trend: The episode is part of a broader shift in which subscription-media strategy is constrained by the supply of exclusive, specialist reporting rather than merely the ability to erect a paywall.
Good read: “media company that cannot convince enough readers to pay for it has a very limited time horizon in today's world. Subscription offers a path to true sustainability” https://www.luxcapital.com/...
@Techmeme @DannyCrichton Danny is spot on here, but failed to mention TC+'s *horrible* tech stack and Yahoo's unwillingness to invest in the service. The TC+ subscriber-only newsletter launched last month because that was the first time the TC+ team had the ability to email only …
Excellent piece by @DannyCrichton on the trials and travails of our joint alma mater TechCrunch. If TC—which was, as Danny notes, in its heyday a site where one could reasonably expect ~100K views on a post—can't make it, you have to wonder who can. https://www.luxcapital.com/...
Great analysis and meditation on the media business. As a one-time contributor to TC+, this saddens me. As a big reader of all types of journalism, this frustrates me. As a firm believer that a healthy, sustainable fourth estate is crucial to an open society, this worries me.
@DannyCrichton ... This is, by a fair distance, the best thing I've read about why media is struggling right now. Just detail and insight after detail and insight. “A media company that cannot convince enough readers to pay for it has a very limited time horizon in today's world.…
@DannyCrichton ... too many somehow miss this -> “The unique economics for TechCrunch around advertising and events funded the organization well, but they have an obvious flaw: they don't really scale”
@DannyCrichton ... Sorry one more quote from this banger of a piece: “Passion plus perspective plus precision is asking a lot of one person or even a small band of reporters. Even if you can find that talent, then the challenge becomes one of compensation.”
Excellent by Lux's @DannyCrichton on malestrom of media hellscape I hope MANY talented writers + journalists will ping Danny to spend time w/our growing Lux team (riskgaming, freelancing, coauthoring, working w/Lux co's)—to not just tell stories but to WRITE THE FUTURE with Lux
Must read for anyone thinking about launching paid subs to compliment a healthy advertising business. In depth analysis that people will pay for requires deep industry expertise and context - very few have it. Many can crank out rewritten press releases. Two different...
I am saddened that @TechCrunchPlus, where I was founding editor, is being shuttered. Here's a reflection on the past and present of @TechCrunch's economics and business model within the maelstrom of the media hellscape: https://www.luxcapital.com/...