STIRR

On May 14th, we brought STIRR back to the location that started it all over two years ago. The new Bistro 412 (formerly F&A’s) is where STIRR first launched back in April of 2006. This time we gave the crowd of entrepreneurs and investors a special prelaunch sneak peak at the new Involver (and if you’re familliar with the older Involver this is something entirely new), and put a twist on our hacks format by inviting two early stage VCs and The Funded to be in the same room. The talks are included after the fold.

If you haven’t joined us before, STIRR’s ‘Hack’ talks are typically short 3-5 minute vignette’s about hard lessons turned into success from entrepreneurs who have felt the pain. Each time with give the Hack format to a new speaker it morphs a little to fit the topic. This time the VC’s turned it into more of a “do’s and don’ts” talk based on pitches they have received in the past. We encouraged stories of previous failures/deals they regret passing on, and there’s a hidden gem in Jeff Clavier’s talk right at the end: see if you can catch what deal he missed before he really groked the power of social networks a few years ago (hint: the company was sold to Yahoo).

Adeo Ressi (The Funded) and I spoke offline before the event and the stories he has to share are arresting and should be shared. He didn’t get into any detail in his talk, but we’ll invite him back to speak privately in the future so he can get deeper into the topic. For DealHacks, instead of a hack, Adeo riffed on the two VC talks before him.

Beyond the talks the crowd was great. There was a mix of pre-launch (Involver, Lipzoo, etc.), early stage (Mint, Satisfaction, Watercooler, Mixbook), post acquisition entrepreneurs (Mybloglog, etc). A huge round of thanks to everyone who made it special. If you have photos from the event, please tag them “stirr” and “dealhacks”.

Words of thanks to:

• First Round Capital for buying the first round of drinks (thanks Rob!)
• Sun Microsystems our Gold Sponsor for the evening. If you run a startup, check out their Startup Essentials program.
• Jeff Clavier, Rob Hayes and Adeo Ressi for great insights and keeping the crowd smiling.

Shout outs:

• JobScore has launched (run by STIRR co-founder Dan Arkind). It’s free and takes a bunch of pain out of the candidate sourcing process. Dan and the team have done a killer job, check it out.

Videos:

Jeff Clavier, SoftTechVC

Rob Hayes, FirstRound Capital

Adeo Ressi, The Funded

Photos from the event: