/Mr. Arrington, I also want a TechCrunch50 recognition

Mr. Arrington, I also want a TechCrunch50 recognition

The post that TechCrunch’s Michael Arrignton wrote about Jason Calacanis‘s threat to sue them for launching a new competitor for TechCrunch50 startup competition, really called my attention. It was extremely personal (this type of things do not happen in Europe) and sounded like a bloody battle about who had the idea first.

Actually the first FREE startup competition was launched by Jesús Monleón, then at Spanish savings bank La Caixa, and me and it’s still running. We called it Startup 2.0. We saw an opportuniy in giving Web 2.0 startups an opportunity to show what they were doing. We thought they should not pay to be there and should compete against each other. We even approached TechCrunch to help us with a price to the best startup: exposure.

We launched in April 2007 and TechCrunch50 did the same thing after summer 2007. There was only one difference between them and us: they were showing American startups and we were giving a chance to European ones. Result: they were profitable and we were not. Probably their startups were also much better, but this is difficult to measure. In any case, please, Mr. Arrington, give us a small recognition 😉