Greg Kumparak Is Joining PandoDaily!
We're thrilled to announce our next big hire: Greg Kumparak — former Mobile Editor at TechCrunch — is joining PandoDaily. — Greg will be joining the Pando team as our editor in charge of incubators and accelerators.
Context & Ripple Effects
PandoDaily is barely a month old — Gawker framed its January 2012 launch as the tech industry buying itself a mouthpiece — and it is already staffing up by raiding the incumbent it most directly competes with. Greg Kumparak built his profile as Mobile Editor at TechCrunch, the site PandoDaily's founder left to start the venture.
The move echoes an older pattern at TechCrunch itself, which announced Erick Schonfeld as co-editor back in 2007 during its own build-out. For a startup publication whose credibility rests on assembling recognizable bylines fast, pulling a named editor from the market leader is the fastest available signal that it intends to cover beats, not just commentary.
First-order effects
- TechCrunch loses its mobile editor outright, opening a hole in one of its highest-traffic beats while a direct competitor gains the person who filled it.
- PandoDaily gets a dedicated editor for incubators and accelerators, giving the young site a defined vertical on the startup-formation beat its backers care about most.
Second-order effects
- Other newly funded tech publications can be expected to shop the same talent pool, putting upward pressure on salaries for named editors at established blogs.
- Accelerators and incubators gain a sympathetic specialist outlet courting their news, adding a second gatekeeper alongside TechCrunch for launch-day coverage.
Third-order effects
- If industry-backed outlets keep recruiting from incumbents, tech media consolidates into two camps — legacy blogs defending staff and funded startups buying credibility through hires — with editorial independence questions shadowing both.
- Beat-specialist hiring at startup publications points toward a fragmented coverage landscape where no single site owns a topic like mobile or accelerators.
The trend: Venture-backed tech news startups are building editorial teams by hiring named specialists straight out of the incumbent blogs they compete against.