Edgeio, a company co-founded by Mike Arrington, is closing down. After having burned $5 million in a year, they didn't make any profit, so the board members decided to drop it.

The Car Was On Blocks, But I Was Already Where I Want

I could never figure out what Edgeio did, and I don't think I was alone. Listing search? So it's craigslist then? Fucked if I knew.

If a business can't succeed simply by virtue of being founded by Michael Arrington, then what hope do the rest of us have? If being on TechCrunch was your startup's key to being acquired, then why didn't Arrington make a ton of money from Edgeio? Could it be that profitability and business plans are coming back into style?

Well We Scheme And We Scheme But We Always Blow It

In the comments on the TechCrunch article about this, someone has pointed to a segment of a speech by my namesake, Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Boring, boring, boring, yeah. Judge not lest ye be judged. Repurposing words works for politicians, so shit, it's good enough for me. There's another segment from that very same speech that I also think is relevant here:

Offenses against taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for debauching the community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debauchery of the public mind and conscience.

I couldn't have described TechCrunch any better. Yeah, we talk a lot of trash here at Uncov, but we speak the brutal, honest truth.

I am sure that Mike is going to catch a lot of shit for this, just as I am sure that I will catch a lot of shit for Persai when it launches. That's the nature of the beast on the internet, though. Always Be Closing.