Welcome To CrunchFund, MG Siegler
I want to welcome MG Siegler as our newest general partner at CrunchFund. MG, who I worked with for several years at TechCrunch, will join me and Patrick Gallagher in the next couple of weeks. — More on this shortly. — Enter your comment here... Email (required) (Not published)
Context & Ripple Effects
Michael Arrington only announced the launch of his venture fund a month ago, and the firm is already staffing up: MG Siegler, who worked alongside Arrington for years at TechCrunch, joins as general partner alongside Patrick Gallagher within weeks.
The move lands differently because of the second hat — per TechCrunch's own announcement, Siegler keeps writing as the site's Apple columnist while investing. That dual role extends a tension TechCrunch has been managing all year: in May 2011 the site disclosed financial conflicts of interest tied to its editor's investments and reaffirmed transparency toward readers as its primary duty. Loic Le Meur's syndicated take cuts through the hand-wringing — whether Siegler is 'a journalist or a VC' matters less than the influence he carries into deal flow.
First-order effects
- Siegler will cover Apple and the startup beat at TechCrunch while holding a general-partner seat at CrunchFund, making disclosure — not separation — the operative safeguard between his reporting and his investments.
- CrunchFund gains a partner whose public platform and source network are the asset: a month-old fund converts media influence directly into early access to founders.
Second-order effects
- Startups seeking TechCrunch coverage now face a fund-affiliated gatekeeper on one of the industry's most-read beats, sharpening questions about which companies get written up and why.
- Rival investors and other media figures will read the hire as validation that audience influence is investable capital, pressuring peers to formalize similar journalist-investor arrangements or defend the line they draw.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the boundary between tech journalism and seed-stage venture capital keeps dissolving, with disclosure policies rather than structural separation becoming the industry's standard answer to conflicts of interest.
- Media personalities with concentrated reader trust become a distinct class of seed investor, shifting how very early deals are sourced and priced around attention rather than check size alone.
The trend: Prominent tech journalists are crossing into venture capital, with public disclosure replacing editorial separation as the accepted way to manage the resulting conflicts.