Happy birthday TechCrunch!

Mike is reflecting on his first year writing TechCrunch, which is just a tremendous example of the power blogs give to individual voices. A year ago, that ex-lawyer dude started a site to review Web 2.0 companies, and wrote with passion hundreds of profiles and becoming the number one launchpad for the next generation of startups, and large Internet companies as well.

I looked back in my email archive to see when Mike and I started interacting and found our first email exchange, in which he said:

I'd like to put profiles of both up at techcrunch. We have about 500 uniques per day now after being up for only a week and a half.

Both was referring to two of my companies I recommended Mike to take a look at: Buzznet and Userplane. I then offered Mike a pass to attend VerticalLeap, the conference that Dave McClure and I organized, and then turned into the Search SIG (which is taking a bit of a break due to total overflow on my part). We then kept on bumping into each other at conferences like BarCamp, TagCamp and the likes, and I had the privilege of being one of the 15 hamburger eaters at that Sept 15th BBQ party that became TechCrunch One. And then I got involved in Edgeio, Mike and Keith Teare’s startup. The rest is history, as chronicled by our blogs.

Not only have you become a key player in our industry, you have also become a great friend. I have to thank you for both.

Happy birthday to TechCrunch, and looking forward to Year 2!