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DEMO v. TechCrunch 50: plagiarism?

August 10, 2008

Mike Arrington posted an email from his TechCrunch50 partner, Jason Calacanis offering advice to web startups who want to make their demos better.  I thought the advice was helpful and timely so I reposted it here.  The folks at DEMO didn’t appreciate the fact that I posted it suggesting that ‘1,893 of the words in your blog were DIRECTLY lifted from DEMO’s website’.  I didn’t have a chance to review DEMO’s website prior to writing the post, but I can’t imagine that Jason Calacanis would plagerise DEMO’s website, I would love a response from Jason and/or Mike.  Here is Deb McAlister’s email to me this morning:

From: “Deb McAlister”
Date: August 10, 2008 9:48:06 AM CDT
To: “‘Alexander Muse’”
Subject: VERY familiar advice from Startup Blog

This “advice” on demos is almost a verbatim lift from a piece I wrote over 10 years ago for David Coursey, who was Chris Shipley’s predecessor as host of the DEMO Conference.  Our piece was called “What the DEMO Gods Know that Smart Entrepreneurs Should Learn”.  David was the host of DEMO when Google and many, many other top products launched there – and he’s my business partner in a new start-up that’s at the seed-round stage.

Our original tips were in a slightly different order (the first tip was the same, we put the taboo about PowerPoint in at #2, etc.), but we covered EVERY one of these points in the written piece (which was on the DEMO web site for three years), in our coaching sessions for DEMO demonstrators, and in articles published in a range of magazines.  Of the 2,200 or so words you included in your blog, 1,893 were DIRECTLY lifted from our piece.  Am I claiming a copyright violation?  Not against your blog.  I feel certain you published it with no thought to who owned the source material.

So why write to you on a Sunday morning?  Because I wanted you to know that whoever this person is, he’s probably not someone you want to put a lot of faith in if he’s borrowing this heavily from old material.   If he plagiarizes old DEMO material while trashing DEMO, can you trust him to honor NDA’s?  To keep your embargoed information safe until launch date?  Not to share financial information with potential competitors?  I think not.  Really, just FYI only – I truly enjoy your blog posts, and thought you might want to know the original source of the material that came across this morning.

Deb McAlister-Holland

For background, earlier this year Mike and Jason scheduled their TechCrunch50 startup conference around the same time as DEMOfall 08.  This pissed the DEMO folks off, specifically Chris Shiply who suggested ‘Imitation is flattery? Or just bad for entrepreneurs?‘  Mike and Jason did fire a shot across DEMO’s bow, but anyone who has the gaul to charge an entrepreneur $18,500 for a ten minute pitch should have a thick skin.

Jason explains, “Chris and DEMO are abusing startup companies. The DEMO conference has been unchallenged for years and they have spread a horrible virus in the industry: conference payola. Their $18,500 fee for a six minute is so abusive it’s criminal. Startups had no choice in the market until last year, and DEMO’s horrible treatment of entrepreneurs lead “pay for your speaking gig” virus to spread to other conferences like Web 2.0. John Battelle himself hated doing the pay for play thing and he STOPPED DOING IT last year thanks to TechCrunch4050coming into the market. We are killing the payola market for fellow entrepreneurs.”

I am on Mike and Jason’s side of the DEMO vs. TechCrunch50 debate, but I can’t really support plagiarism - if Deb is correct (it is so easy to attribute credit and still post the advice).

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog, Startups 

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