From Amsterdam and Israel to Silicon Valley and Seattle, TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington has made it his mission to spend nearly every waking hour profiling the latest Internet startups.

Michael Arrington

Since starting the enormously popular TechCrunch blog last June, Arrington estimates that he has reviewed more than 600 Internet companies. The reviews of startups such as PageFlakes, Feedblitz and SuperOyster – which spark plenty of debate and traffic – have made Arrington a rising star in the emerging world of online publishing.

The 36-year-old former corporate attorney – whose parents live in Anacortes – was in town this week getting to know Seattle's technology scene. On Wednesday, close to 500 people showed up for a beer and pizza party in Arrington's honor at Consolidated Works in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood. I spoke to Arrington about the Web 2.0 buzz, a possible bubble and how he keeps track of so many Internet companies.

On the differences between Seattle and Silicon Valley:

"There is definitely more pure enthusiasm (in Seattle) and less snarkiness or sarcasm or irony. It is just pure: 'hey, let's get it done, let's do a new innovative and interesting thing.' It is almost an innocence that is being beaten out of people in Silicon Valley right now and I like seeing that (in Seattle)."

On what motivates him:

"I get kind of worn down sometimes, because a lot of people say we are in a bubble or they say that all of this stuff is stupid that we are writing about. But when I see the entrepreneurs and see how passionate they are, it reenergizes me."

On covering the global Web 2.0 industry:

"I certainly write about companies anywhere, with one exception. I usually write about startups that have English content. There are a lot of great startups, particularly in China, that are doing absolutely incredible things, but I am incapable of reviewing them myself because I don't know the language."

On the most interesting startups:

"I think my favorite startup right now, at least one of them, is AllPeers. It creates peer to peer networks on the fly.... They are based in Prague of all places and have raised money from the same guys that put money into Skype very early on. It is pretty cool."

On the most interesting Seattle startups:

"I love (Redfin) because it is disruptive to a pretty inefficient marketplace, Realtors. So I love stuff like that. I think Farecast is on to something pretty interesting.... But I got to tell you what I am most excited about in Seattle right now is none of those, it is what Microsoft is doing with Live.com. I think there is some real innovation going on there."

On the number of companies he interviews:

"Dozens by e-mail, but on the phone or meet with in person: two or three a day."

On how he stays on top of the new companies:

"I keep track of them just because this is what I do. It is my passion, it is my hobby, it is my job, it is everything. There have been a couple of times, though, that I have seen a new company by e-mail or somebody's recommended I look at it and I will start writing about it. Maybe two or three sentences in I say 'man, this sounds familiar.' I will do a Technorati search on them to see who else has written about them and I will see that I have already written about them, so there have been times where I have sort of lost my focus. In one instance, I actually had a completely different opinion the second time around, so that scared me a little bit."

On the amount of time he spends on TechCrunch:

"From the second I get up to the second I go to bed."

On life as an attorney:

"I liked being a lawyer but it requires very focused, very careful detailed work. I was able to do it, but I like a lot more getting to know people, learning about their business in a broad way and thinking about it in terms of competitors and the general marketplace and writing about it. I am having a lot more fun now than back when I was a lawyer."

On the ethics of blogging and consulting with startups:

"Even if I keep things straight in my own mind, it is hard for people to understand if I am conflicted or not. So I stopped doing all of that – no sort of outside work at all right now. And I am focused just on TechCrunch."

On the TechCrunch business:

"The revenue that comes in is through advertising and that is doing pretty well. I have four sponsor boxes up on the site that sell for $7,500 a month. They are selling out way in advance, so there is enough revenue coming in that I can hire a couple of people."

On expansion plans:

"TechCrunch only writes about new Web startups, and I think there are a lot of topics out there that are really interesting to people obviously. I would like to hire dedicated and obsessive writers to cover those areas, things like games, gadgets, pure tech news, maybe a wine blog. Who knows? I might try anything for a while and experiment. But I think we can grow a lot of traffic internally by referring readers among the blogs."

On blogs:

"The blog format may break and what I mean by that is that (you write) one headline and as soon as you write something else it pushes the headline down, and so you have this constant stream of data coming in but no way of saying this is a headline, this is a side story or a page two story. It just doesn't work with blogs. You also have the problem with comments, where the whole social structure tends to break down at a certain point where you have so many people commenting anonymously that it just starts to turn ugly and real discussion breaks down. I am not sure there is a way to fix that, so we might see blogs start evolve in the near future more to what you see on a Wired.com today and a blog. I am not sure how that is going to work, but I am going to be experimenting with things."

On bubble 2.0:

"There are a bunch of differences between 98, 99 and today, but that doesn't mean we are not in a different kind of bubble. In 98 and 99, there was a real push to grow revenue in anyway possible... For the most part, your exit strategy (today) is either build a sustainable business or get acquired and there is no way that a Google or a Yahoo! is going to do an acquisition of company that is burning a couple million dollars per month.... I see a lot of healthier growth and a lot of cost controls that I didn't see in 1998 and 1999 and that is the biggest thing. What I would be worried about is if the Nasdaq started to explode again and people started to go public, then I think we could be in trouble."