geekosystem

Dear AOL, Congrats on your recent acquisition of TechCrunch- there’s no better team reporting on tech these days. They’ve really come into their own over the last couple of years and are producing high-quality articles and videos at scale and driving conversations forward that are important to all of us. I think you’re going to make a fortune selling ads against their content. Well done. Now that I have you all buttered up, I have a request. Within that tapestry of websites you bought is woven a gem in our little corner of the world. It's our very own anthropologic artifact that we’ve been co-creating with Mike and his team over the years. Within its hyperlinked catacombs lie hieroglyphs of startups as they rise, as they fall, as they exit into immortality and as they submerge quietly into the dead pool. It's an invaluable daily resource for many of us. Which is why I’m writing. CrunchBase is not much of a traffic driver within the TechCrunch network of sites, and it's starting to show. Look, I know it's only been a few months since the acquisition closed, but CrunchBase is already getting sad. Page load speeds are borderline unbearable, traffic seems to be sliding and content is becoming stale. As someone who has contributed data to CrunchBase and as a near-daily user of the service, I want to make sure this gem gets the attention it deserves.