Who said North and South Korea couldn’t get along? Last Wednesday night at Startup Grind Los Angeles, two-time exited entrepreneur and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis talked about his former partner and relationship with the equally controversial Michael Arrington.
When asked about his relationship with Arrington, Jason spoke about the founding of TechCrunch 40 while at a dinner with Steve Gilmore in 2007. “I was telling Mike about Demo conference and how they were ripping off entrepreneurs. He said in the only way that Mike can, “we have to take them down.” He turned it into a holy war against the Demo conference. He started blogging about how Demo was evil and had to go. Soon thereafter TechCrunch 40 was born.”
They originally planned to take 20 companies, but eventually expanded it to 40. The partnership lasted through several very successful events including TechCrunch 40 and eventually TechCrunch 50. These events became the best Bay Area pitch events of the year and launch many successful companies including Mint, Yammer, Dropbox, FitBit and others.
Jason said that he and Michael haven’t spoken in the past year but expects to reconcile in 2012. “I hope that Mike and I go to dinner sometime this year. I wish him the best.” With Jason spending more and more time in Silicon Valley this doesn't seem too far off.
Last year Jason accused TechCrunch of banning their reporters from writing about LAUNCH startups. Wednesday night he added more fuel to that fire saying the publication also threatened potential judges and startups not to attend or face being banned from receiving any future TechCrunch coverage.
LAUNCH already appears to be ready to match or beat last year's event with an impressive judge lineup that includes Kevin Rose, Naval Ravikant, Tony Conrad, and Dave McClure. Tickets for the March 7 event are available here.