Congrats to the following STIRR 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, Chairman of Sun Microsystems Speaks at STIRR’s Founder’s Mixer 2.2:
Part I
Part II
Video Courtesy of Nandor Fejer
DemoStage Presenters for 2.3 on March 21st
This months presenters span the phyisical globe and the scope of problems they’re tackling. We have one startup from France, one from Russia, one from the Y-Combinator, and one startup that we’ve been looking forward to decloaking and we’re honored they’ve chosen STIRR as their first venue to engage the public.
This month’s presenters are:
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Buxfer, Ashwin Bharambe, Founder
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Criteo, Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, CEO
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Metaweb, Jamie Taylor, Minister of Information
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Wrike, Andrew Filev, Founder
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More details about the 2.3 event here
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. More on each to follow, but first let’s visit the presenters on the DemoStage:
DemoStage 2.2 Presenters:
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Attendio, Gerardo Capiel, CEO
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Collaborative Drug Discovery, Barry Bunin, President
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Confabb, Salim Ismail, Chairman
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JobCoin, Keith Schacht, CEO
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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.
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:
Hire smart people who get along with each other.
Your business has “got to be controversial,” otherwise everybody will do the same thing you do.
Don’t cheat (even if nobody’s looking). It’s the little cheats/quiet-deals that demoralize a smart team.
Manage through slogans (aka “The Network is the Computer”)
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.
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!
Courtesy of Bub.blicio.us
Once again it was STIRR’s time to shine as the Bay Area’s premier event for CEOs, founders, VC’s, engineers, entrepreneurs, media, and bloggers.
with video. Courtesy of Brian Solis, Nandor Fejer, and the Bubbalicious Crew
But the Stirr events are really excellent. Great energy in the room. Lots of deals happening. Nice location. And good startups…
Courtesy of Rafe Needleman (one of 4 articles)
The turnout as always was high and the mix, an interesting blend of start-up entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, bloggers and those who move in a few circles…
Courtesy Jeremiah OwyangSTIRR survives and thrives through great sponsors. Mixer 2.2 was funded by Sun Microsystems, which announced on February 13, 2007 new Solaris 10 OS tools and technologies as well as an expanded, startup-friendly Sun Startup Essentials Program that make it easier for developers and startups to create Web applications. Sun announced Solaris Express, Developer Edition. the first release of a free new distribution based on the OpenSolaris project, providing developers with an integrated environment optimized for developing Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0-based applications on commodity desktop and laptop hardware. Sun also helps simplify development and speed deployment of secure Web-based applications and services with easy access to an AMP — Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python — stack recently optimized for the Solaris 10 OS. And the Sun Startup Essentials Program includes new features to help startup companies conserve cash, accelerate their development cycle on Solaris, Linux or Windows, and speed time to market. The program, which already provided discounts up to 60% on its enterprise-grade servers, was expanded to add Sun’s storage products at discounts of up to 70%, as well as free email support from Sun’s technical experts, and easy access to Sun’s free software. You can sign-up for Sun Startup Essentials here.
More Sun Startup Essentials details:
Invites will be rolling out shortly. If your company or a startup that you know is ready to launch and would like to present please see: http://www.stirr.net/apply/presenters
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.
To test the new format, we picked only three participants for the DemoStage:
DemoStage 2.1 Presenters:
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Vizu Answers, Dan Beltramo, Founder
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Stickis, Marc Meyer, CEO
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Weatherbill, David Friedberg, CEO
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Guest Host, Bambi Francisco, CBS Marketwatch and Vator.tv
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.
2.1 was sponsored by Sun Microsystems, which announced new Solaris 10 OS tools and technologies as well as an expanded, startup-friendly Sun Startup Essentials Program that make it easier for developers and startups to create Web applications. Sun announced Solaris Express, Developer Edition. the first release of a free new distribution based on the OpenSolaris project, providing developers with an integrated environment optimized for developing Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0-based applications on commodity desktop and laptop hardware. You can sign-up for Sun Startup Essentials here.
More Sun Startup Essentials details:
If your company or a startup that you know is ready to launch and would like to present please see: http://www.stirr.net/apply/presenters
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
Jingle Bells
Dishing out the dough
In the new Web two-oh way
O’er Sand Hill we go
Seeding all the way
Bells on cell phones ring
Mobile deals look bright
What fun it is when startups sell to Google overnight.Jingle Bells, YouTube sells,
Facebook’s on the way,
Oh what fun it is to do
A hot deal every day.Jingle Bells, YouTube sells,
Facebook’s on the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
The bubble of the day.A year or two ago
I thought I’d make a play
Put five million bucks
In a high-priced Series A…The team was rather poor
The business plan was weak
But what the heck, it’s AJAX-based
We sold it at the peak.Jingle Bells, YouTube sells
Facebook’s on the way!
Oh, what fun it is to do
A hot deal every day! (ka-ching!)
Transcription courtesy of Vallewag
The card matching mixer in action.
Winter Wonderland couldn’t have been made possible without the help of all of the sponsors who helped underwrite the cost of tickets down to $20. On behalf of the entrepreneurs and STIRR, a huge thank you to:
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