"What I did right, and this is important, is I hired Heather to be my boss. That gave her the authority she needed to run the company. A lot of our competitors seemed more ego driven, with the blogger demanding to stay CEO. That meant they hired less awesome people, and then those people didn’t have the room to maneuver. As a result, we grew much more quickly than they did. Revenue was marginal when she joined, maybe $500,000 in 2006. By the time we sold TechCrunch revenue was $10 million a year. And this last year under Aol Heather grew revenue by another 50% or, based on what I’ve seen reported. Other than dial up, TechCrunch is/was the most profitable and fastest growing business unit inside of Aol. That, ultimately, is why everything fell apart."

I’m not a fan of long tumblr posts but…I just had to reblog. One for one in the women leaders in business category. There are always three sides to a story, but I’ve heard of the power struggles over at AOL with Arianna Huffington before this piece in Uncrunched.

Is it just perception and employees having a hard time dealing with a powerful woman, the hard, unemotional decisions she has to make as an AOL executive, or simply overexercising her executive powers to control the whole ship? Hmm.

changetheratio:

Whoa Nelly, is there a lot in here: Mike Arrington is a huge fan of Heather Harde and is…less so of Arianna Huffington. Why don’t you just read it. 

Why Heather Matters [UnCrunched]

(Related: Arrington’s blog is addictive reading.) 

Source: changetheratio

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