Sorry to Disrupt: Valleywag Is Back
You're doing it again. It's only been a few years since we last met here, but you, Valley venture capitalist and Alley opportunist, are worse than ever. There will come a day when all the coddling and cheerleading you've become accustomed to curdles …
Context & Ripple Effects
The relaunch executes Nick Denton's January plan to resurrect Valleywag, and the opening post makes clear the revived site is picking up where it left off: a direct taunt at Valley venture capitalists and 'Alley opportunist' operators, framed as a warning that their accustomed cheerleading will curdle. The choice of target matters — the site's founding shtick was antagonizing exactly this class of people.
The format returns with baggage. Back in 2007, when Owen Thomas was installed as Valleywag's editor, the site's own camp published a self-mocking confession of its errors, Robert Scoble tallied its hit rate at 17.3% while defending it anyway, and Paul Kedrosky asked outright whether VC bashing had gone passé. The 2013 revival has to prove a model whose viability was already contested six years earlier.
First-order effects
- Silicon Valley VCs and New York tech operators regain a dedicated antagonist: the people the post addresses by name-class ('Valley venture capitalist and Alley opportunist') are once again subject to daily gossip coverage, and the immediate pickup by VCs like Dave McClure alongside reporters Jay Yarow and Sam Biddle shows the audience it aims at is already watching.
Second-order effects
- Rival tech blogs face a tone decision: Valleywag's return re-legitimizes adversarial gossip as a traffic strategy, forcing competitors to either match the snark or differentiate on sobriety — the same fork the 2007 'is VC bashing passé?' debate laid out.
- Founders and their PR handlers must price gossip risk back into launch and fundraising plans, since a resumed Valleywag converts missteps into mockery with a ready-made audience.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, adversarial gossip titles function as a countercyclical check on tech hype — they die down when the industry is chastened and revive when exuberance builds, meaning the health of snark media becomes a rough sentiment indicator for the funding cycle itself.
The trend: Tech's watchdog-gossip press revives in waves alongside venture exuberance, with each relaunch re-testing whether audiences reward antagonism toward the industry it covers.