Yammer is a business-friendly copy of Twitter. It's an offshoot of Geni, a Web-based genealogy site started by former PayPal COO David Sacks, which raised $100 million in venture capital last year. TechCrunch50's prize panel, composed of Arrington and a few TechCrunch insiders (shown here, in a spy photo taken at the event), passed over more promising startups like FitBit, the maker of a wellness-monitoring gadget.

Quality aside, a sense of fairness might have led Arrington to give Yammer the skip: Neither Sacks nor Geni needed the $50,000 prize. Arrington's crush on Geni has been obvious since before its launch. (Most recently, he claimed Geni had close to a million visitors a month in August; according to a link to Compete.com Arrington himself included in his writeup, it's actually 400,000, a fraction of the audience enjoyed by established genealogy sites like Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.)

The problem with events like this is no one is unconflicted. But Sacks is in particularly deep: His former boss at PayPal, Peter Thiel, now runs VC firm Founders Fund, one of TechCrunch50's sponsors. Arrington has long been rumored to favor startups backed by the VCs who sponsor his event. He brags that he doesn't charge startups directly to appear on stage. But he seems to like to have them in his pocket, one way or another.

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg
• B is for Botha, who sold YouTube big
• F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"
• L is for Levchin, who never goes slow
• P is for Parker, the Valley's bad boy

And then there's the person advancing the project: Mark Welte, a San Francisco-based copywriter whose achievements, if you can call them that, include naming Nokia's ill-fated N-Gage handheld videogame player. Welte offered me a finder's fee, which I'm afraid I must decline: I'll take my payment in publishing this post and learning what becomes of this odd quest. Welte's email:

Dear Mr. Thomas,

As you're at the epicenter of what makes life in Silicon Valley somuch fun—i.e. the people—I wonder if I might enlist a smidge of truly insightful help from you.

I'm an adopted San Franciscan, working in advertising, making a transition into the film business. My partners in LA and I have a slate of films, offers to finance, two options and three original properties, and a true team of talent, and we're ready to start making movies. We have a unique investment plan for a prospective cash-flowing-partner, one in which our deep-pocketed partner's funds are well protected by government-backed tax breaks and similar vehicles, and we're looking for $4.5MM to get the ball rolling (about a tenth of the money is for development, and the remainder is for a portion of the production, thereby earning us leverage for the back end participation.)

Surely someone in your position knows of some mad money character or two in the Valley who has an interest in Hollywood, and would love to see their name on the big screen as an Executive Producer. If you can be of any assistance in our search, it would be greatly appreciated, and we would reward you with a finder's fee if such a cash flowing partner could be signed.

We're interested in individuals or a small group of investors, only. I have a business plan to share with interested parties. The first film is an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author James B. Stewart's book, Disney War: it's about Michael Eisner.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

Mark Welte
Hainan Productions