J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news.
Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1993), and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. His clients included idealab, Netscape, Pixar, Apple and a number of startups, venture funds and investment banks. He also co-authored a book on initial public offerings.
In 1999 he left WSGR to join RealNames as VP Business Development and General Counsel. In 2000 he cofounded Achex, an online payments company. Achex was acquired by First Data Corp in 2001 for $32 million. Achex is now the back end infrastructure to Western Union online.
Arrington worked in an operational role at a Carlyle backed startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada (Zip.ca and Pool.com), was COO to a Kleiner backed company called Razorgator, and consulted to other companies, including Verisign.
He founded TechCrunch on June 11, 2005.
In May 2008 Time Magazine named Michael Arrington as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.
