Update: the payout for Techcrunch was upfront then earnout but totaled much more than $10m
Business Insider ran a blog post today sourcing Ron Conway where Ron said that Mike Arrington owned 85% of Techcrunch.
According to Ron Conway “There’s nothing wrong with bootstrapping for as long as you can. Mike Arrington bootstrapped TechCrunch, when he sold it to AOL, he owned like 85% of that company. That’s an awesome outcome. It doesn’t happen very often.” said Conway.
According to multiple sources Arrington had co-ownership with Keith Teare and then sold shares from time to time. In addition he handed out stock to employees including CEO Heather Harde approximately 15%.
All in all Mike had 70-75% equity in Techcrunch so he took home around $15-20m
Still not bad of a payday for Mike. Personally I never would have sold Techcrunch. Mike could have make over $100 million.
By Silicon Valley standards Mike is hardly a maverick himself compared to successful high flying exits where top entrepreneurs pull in much more and on a consistent basis. Maybe Mike could do it with his Crunchfund which starts small at $20m.
