Natural Born Bloggers

As cliche as it is to write, I need to write it: I wouldn’t be where I am today without Om Malik. He was arguably the single most important person in the push to “professionalize” blogging. He was inarguably one of them. And that, in turn, opened the door for me to switch careers, sending me down a path professionally that seemed extremely unlikely.

I’m honestly still a bit speechless about Om’s passing. But I also know he would be the first to tell me to blog about it, as a type of catharsis. And because that's what we do.

Om’s obituary in The New York Times pulls heavily from an interview he gave a decade ago with The Techies Project. It’s a great encapsulation of his story and reading it over, I was surprised and frankly, honored, to see that he mentioned me. Specifically noting that I, like himself, was perhaps part of a group of “natural born bloggers”.

I love this for a number of reasons, but reading it in this context gives me some clarity on my own life. While from the outside, it seems like we stumbled into the world of blogging — and this is what I have long told people — it was perhaps more of a calling. An outlet to do what we innately sensed that we needed to do. And again, he figured out a way to professionalize it, which paved the way for me to do the same.

I owe him a great debt for this that I can now never repay.

When I made that jump two decades ago, Om was right there from the get-go, in my ear and in my inbox, encouraging me. Even though we were ostensibly rivals — first when I was at Matt Marshall’s VentureBeat and then when I was at Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch, which all sprung up around the same time as his own GigaOm — he was always so nice to me. Honestly, it unnerved me a bit at first because my natural instinct was to compete. But the reality was that we were all part of a group that was eating the lunch of the world he came from in “traditional” publications and journalism, and forcing change upon the industry.

It was an exhilarating time to be blogging and Om was the linchpin of it all. As my inbox from back then confirms, he was the one behind the scenes pulling it along and holding it all together. Those of us more junior at the time – in tenure, if not in age – looked to him as a sort of Yoda. Blogging Yoda.

Looking at my emails and social media messages from back then is just a treasure trove. Om was always quick with a compliment about something I had written but also with a criticism at times. He clearly just read endlessly and couldn’t help but share his opinions, even if privately. In person too he was amazingly candid and honest. He would complain how annoyed he was if you beat him to some story — but complain even louder if he felt like he actually beat you but wasn’t getting enough credit. He was clearly competitive too.¹ And he was correct in his assessments, because again, he was honest.

We often had discussions about working together in some form, and I’m sad that never happened. His heart attack was sort of a wake up call for many about the downsides of the always-on, always-writing blogging lifestyle.

And that perhaps put him on a path he also helped chart for me: shifting to venture capital. His thoughts on the differences between writing stories and writing checks in that Techies interview is far better than any answer I’ve ever given on the topic. Again, because it’s honest.

To me, Om was and will always be such a singular individual. There will never be anyone quite like him. He’s the only person I know who could be both humorously downtrodden and insanely optimistic at the exact same time. Again, he just seemed to wear his emotions on his sleeve.

So I find myself sad not just about his passing but for all of us who will no longer get to read his unvarnished opinions on various topics. And that’s perhaps especially troubling in tech with AI on the verge of upending everything. That world now needs Om’s voice and pushback more than ever just as we’re losing it.

Because I moved several thousand miles away, to a city in which he once also lived, London, I didn’t get to see him nearly as much in recent years. That saddens me, but the notes continued. The last thing we spoke about was — perfectly — debating the merits of different newfangled blogging platforms.

Rest in peace, my friend. The true natural born blogger.

¹ I can't begin to tell you how upset I was back in 2010 when he scooped me in unveiling Instagram to the world. ↩