About Pando
Some of you may have read Sarah Lacy's post today stating that I'm no longer on the board of Pando Daily. — This wasn't a complete surprise to me, the company notified me last week that they weren't happy that I and MG Siegler (my partner at CrunchFund) were going to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt this coming May.
Context & Ripple Effects
The split lands three months into PandoDaily's life. Sarah Lacy launched the site in January 2012 after leaving TechCrunch, and Gawker framed it from day one as the tech industry buying itself a mouthpiece — an outlet backed by the same VCs it covers, arriving just as TechCrunch adopted strict new conflicts-of-interest policies under new ownership. The day before this post, PandoDaily published its Investor Update restating its pact with readers, so the site was already on record defending its funding structure when it moved to drop Arrington from the board.
Arrington's account makes the trigger explicit: PandoDaily objected to him and his CrunchFund partner MG Siegler speaking at TechCruff Disrupt in May — the rival conference run by the publication Lacy left. The story traveled fast, picked up by Business Insider and echoed across Twitter within hours.
First-order effects
- PandoDaily loses its highest-profile investor-board connection, and does so publicly — Arrington chose to narrate the removal himself on Uncrunched rather than let a quiet exit stand.
- The stated cause draws a line around TechCruff Disrupt: PandoDaily treats participation in its rival's flagship event as incompatible with a governance role at the site.
Second-order effects
- TechCruff gains a symbolic win — its founder and a CrunchFund partner appearing at Disrupt despite the investor ties — while PandoDaily's investor base must now decide whether the editorial-independence stance is worth friction with its most famous backer.
- Every other investor-hybrid outlet launched by departed TechCruff staff now faces the same test PandoDaily just applied: how far to enforce conflict lines against people who fund them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, venture-backed tech media consolidates around explicit conflict rules — investors accept limited roles and outlets publish their pacts with readers — as the price of claiming credibility against incumbent publications.
- The episode hardens the January 2012 question Gawker raised about whether industry money buys coverage: governance separations like this one become the standard rebuttal, whether or not they resolve it.
The trend: Venture-funded tech publications are formalizing separation between their investors and their journalism, with conference appearances and board seats becoming early fault lines.