Two years ago, Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave invited me to Lisbon to cover the event and to shadow him for several days. I jumped at the offer, especially as it had previously seemed so unlikely. He had refused to speak to me for a profile about him and his organisation and had expressed his displeasure about the idea on social media.
When the Lisbon feature was published, he texted his congratulations: “Very well written...
hard to keep the flow over that length.” At the same time, he went on Twitter to condemn the article. He texted again, with a link to the tweet.
“Just having fun...
will get a few hundred crony voyeurs clicking through to read.” The exchange came to mind a few pages into Catherine Sanz’s probing and revealing book about Cosgrave and Web Summit. “Paddy appears to regard his private and online self as two distinct entities,” the Business Post journalist writes.
“Despite privately complimenting me that a piece I had written ‘nailed’ him, he posted online that it was riddled with inaccuracies, and he was going to respond with a legal letter.” When she asked him why he felt the need to attack, he responded by sending a screenshot of the number of click-throughs his post had received and told her that “drama drives interest”. Cosgrave’s story is certainly not short of drama, and taking on the Web Summit story is no easy task.
It has had such a rollercoaster existence, with a large cast of personnel who have come and gone, and fea.
