Author Archive
Images from STIRR USA 2.5
Image Courtesy of Brian Solis / Futureworks PR Image Courtesy of Brian Solis / Futureworks PR Image Courtesy of Brian Solis / Futureworks PR
Image Courtesy of Brian Solis / Futureworks PR
Image Courtesy of Brian Solis / Futureworks PR
Image Courtesy of Brian Solis / Futureworks PR
STIRR USA Mixer 2.3 in Photos
Photography by Lane Hartwell
STIRR USA Alumni in the News!
Congrats to the following STIRR USA Alumni for making some noise this month! (STIRR 1.8) has received $1 million in funding (STIRR 2.3) is profiled in a NY Times story, “Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching“ (STIRR 1.1) is profiled in a Forbes story, “The Ebay of Loans“ (STIRR 2.1) is profiled in [...]
Congrats to the following STIRR USA Alumni for making some noise this month!
(STIRR 1.8) has received $1 million in funding
(STIRR 2.3) is profiled in a NY Times story, “Start-Up Aims for Database to Automate Web Searching“
(STIRR 1.1) is profiled in a Forbes story, “The Ebay of Loans“
(STIRR 2.1) is profiled in a Forbes story, “Send in the Clouds“
Scott McNealy’s Talk at STIRR USA 2.2
Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems Speaks at STIRR‘s Founder’s Mixer 2.2: Part I Part II Video Courtesy of Nandor Fejer http://bub.blicio.us http://www.future-works.com
Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems Speaks at STIRR‘s Founder’s Mixer 2.2:
Part I
Part II
Video Courtesy of Nandor Fejer
http://bub.blicio.us
http://www.future-works.com
STIRR USA Founder’s Mixer 2.2 60 second Video Spots
Founder’s Mixer 2.2 60 Second Spots from: Attendio Confabb Collaborative Drug Discovery JobCoin
Founder’s Mixer 2.2 60 Second Spots from:
STIRR USA Founder’s Mixer 2.2 Wrapup
Photos Courtesy of Ammie Wang Photography STIRR Mixer 2.2 wrapup: This month we had three firsts. Our first talk by a Silicon Valley legend, the first time the room was so silent for 10mins you really could hear a pin drop, and our first time someone gamed the Audience Choice Awards. The guest host for [...]
Photos Courtesy of Ammie Wang Photography
STIRR Mixer 2.2 wrapup: This month we had three firsts. Our first talk by a Silicon Valley legend, the first time the room was so silent for 10mins you really could hear a pin drop, and our first time someone gamed the Audience Choice Awards.
The guest host for 2.2:
Rafe Needleman, Editor at Large
To keep STIRR events free for the entrepreneurs and the presenters, STIRR relies on generous sponsors. This month’s sponsor was Sun Microsystems and their Startup Essentials program. More about Sun and the Startup Essentials program at the end of this article.
Scott McNealy’s talk:
Valley legend Scott McNealy joined us for 2.2. When Scott took the stage, it was the first time in STIRR’s 11 month history the room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Scott’s reputation proceeds him. In the valley he’s been known for being controversial, brash, loved by his employees, outspoken and not afraid to make enemies of his competitors. Besides helping bootstrap the entire workstation market from zero, in the web 1.0 timeframe Scott took on Microsoft, and unlike Netscape, Sun survived to tell about it. For STIRR Scott put on the charm and had some solid advice to share. Our only regrets were not getting a longer Q&A to talk about the early days of getting Sun off the ground. Here are some of his insights paraphrased:
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Hire smart people who get along with each other.
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Your business has “got to be controversial,” otherwise everybody will do the same thing you do.
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Don’t cheat (even if nobody’s looking). It’s the little cheats/quiet-deals that demoralize a smart team.
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Manage through slogans (aka “The Network is the Computer”)
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Your competing firms are your enemy, but not their people. “They threaten our existence as a company”
and more gems and anecdotes in the talk. We’ll get the video online shortly for all to share.
Audience Choice Award:
Starting in January, the STIRR audience has been selecting one lucky winner to win a SUN x2200 M2 Server. This month there was a surprise in store for everyone and being the social engineers at heart that we are we were impressed with some blatant social engineering. As we were gearing up to measure the audience applause, one of the contestants shouted “and we’ll buy everyone free drinks if we win!”. Well, they won by a landslide, a score 10db louder on the meter than the other 3 contestants. Right after receiving their award the winner shouted “ok, but we’ll buy drinks _after_ we get funding”. The crowd let out a resounding ‘Boo’ and we all had a chuckle watching the mock drama unfold. We’ve talked with the winning team, and they are going to live up to their original promise. First round of drinks are free for
everyone at Mixer 2.3, and we’ll hit ‘em up for free drinks all night the month after they get funding, so come on down.
Thank you Confabb!
Video Coverage:
Courtesy of Bub.blicio.us
STIRR USA Founder’s Mixer 2.1 Wrapup
Photos Courtesy of Ammie Wang Photography Fresh from the New Year and STIRR’s 120 Startup Winter Wonderland Holiday party, STIRR starts the year with a packed house at Illusions in Palo Alto. There were three firsts that happened: first is our pleasure to work with SUN Microsystems as the sole sponsor for the event (Sun [...]
Photos Courtesy of Ammie Wang Photography
Fresh from the New Year and STIRR’s 120 Startup Winter Wonderland Holiday party, STIRR starts the year with a packed house at Illusions in Palo Alto. There were three firsts that happened: first is our pleasure to work with SUN Microsystems as the sole sponsor for the event (Sun has STIRR’s Mixer booked exclusively until April). The second is our ‘Audience Choice Award’ which the crowd chooses the winning 60 Second Spot. And last but not least we’ve started experimenting with letting the presenters use slides on stage.
Guest Host, Bambi Francisco, CBS Marketwatch and Vator.tv
Audience Choice Award and Raffle:
Dan Beltramo from Vizu Answers accepting the audience choice award.
A new feature at the main event. The audience selects one lucky presenter to win a SUN x2200 M2 Server. How do we measure the response? STIRR’s new trusty portable DB Meter.
This month’s Audience Choice Award went to 
, by a whole 5 db on the meter. Congratulations Vizu! (And a double congratulations on raising a successful round of financing).
The only downside of using a portable db-meter approach is that we don’t have visual feedback on the display screen for everyone to see while they’re whooping it up. We’re noodling on it, but if anyone has some experience with data capture equipment and display tools, please contact us.
STIRR USA Winter Wonderland 2006 Wrapup
A sample of some of the logos from STIRR’s Winter Wonderland event. On December 15, 2006 STIRR brought together over 120 startups for Winter Wonderland a full-scale holiday gala and sit down dinner for small startups that couldn’t afford a big end of year event for themselves. The event took place at the Exploratorium in [...]
A sample of some of the logos from STIRR’s Winter Wonderland event.
On December 15, 2006 STIRR brought together over 120 startups for Winter Wonderland a full-scale holiday gala and sit down dinner for small startups that couldn’t afford a big end of year event for themselves. The event took place at the Exploratorium in San Francisco with a live Acapella group, Swing Band, terrific sit-down catered dinner and a space full of wonderful interactive science exhibits.
Gabriel Venture Partners brought together over 22k worth of amazing giveaways during the evening including a 42″ plasma TV, 150 high-end ipod stereo docks and more additional goodies than we could count. No one left empty handed.
A huge round of thank to the Gabriel team and all of the event sponsors that helped make the event possible. Also a special shoutout to Brian Solis for inspiring the name and hooking us up with Four Vines (including driving the bottles to us), Brian you’re the best. We look forward to next year!
Tim Chang and the Uprounds
The card matching mixer in action.
STIRR USA Founder’s Mixer 1.8
Sponsored by: Presenting: Frucall, Nasser Manesh, Co-Founder & CTO Kongregate, Jim Greer, Co-founder & CEO Krugle, Steve Larsen, Co-Founder & CEO Liftopia, Evan Reece, Co-Founder Our guest host for the evening is Rafe Needleman, CNET Editor at Large
Sponsored by:
Presenting:
- Frucall, Nasser Manesh, Co-Founder & CTO
- Kongregate, Jim Greer, Co-founder & CEO
- Krugle, Steve Larsen, Co-Founder & CEO
- Liftopia, Evan Reece, Co-Founder
Our guest host for the evening is Rafe Needleman, CNET Editor at Large
A STIRR alum gets bought by Yahoo!
This morning, Founder’s Mixer 1.2 alum Jumpcut announced that it was purchased by Yahoo! Congrats to the Jumpcut team and good luck in growing your venture under the Yahoo! umbrella!
This morning, Founder’s Mixer 1.2 alum Jumpcut announced that it was purchased by Yahoo! Congrats to the Jumpcut team and good luck in growing your venture under the Yahoo! umbrella!
