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:

STIRR Brings Back the Startup Mixer for 2008 with a Twist.

Join other founding teams for STIRR’s first Startup Mixer of 2008.

STIRR Celebrates It’s 3rd year with a twist on the FounderHacks series. This time we bring you two of the best early stage investors and a terrific founder for contrast in ‘Deal Hacks’. Each speaker will be sharing personal stories from the the investment side of the fence.

If you haven’t joined us before, STIRR brings together founding teams of startups to connect and forge relationships. (This isn’t a pitch session and please don’t attend if your only goal is to find funding.) We feature great short-talks from notable founders, investors, and key thought leaders around the globe. This isn’t a sit-down event.

On Stage:

Adeo Ressi, The Funded

Adeo is a serial entrepreneur. His most recent project The Funded still creates quite a stir on Sand Hill Road. Before The Funded, Adeo founded and sold casual gaming site Game Trust to RealNetworks. Adeo also serves on the board of the X Prize Foundation. More about The Funded and the 9 months of mystery after it’s launch in this article from Wired.

Jeff Clavier, SoftTechVC (Jeff is on the Right) – Photo courtesy of Brian Solis

Jeff Clavier is one of the most prolofic investors in Web 2.0, with over 40 deals executed in the last 4 years. After investing as a business angel for over 3 years, Jeff launched his $12M seed fund at the
TechCrunch40 conference in Sept 2007. He has since invested in 18 startups in social media, communities, search and discovering, gaming and advertising. A (too) frequent speaker at industry conferences, Jeff works and lives in Palo Alto with his wife and 2 children, and can be followed on twitter at twitter.com/JeffClavier.

Rob Hayes, FirstRoundCapital (Rob is on the left) – Photo courtesy of Duncan Davidson

Rob joined First Round Capital in 2006. Since joining he has led investments in companies including Mint.com, Xobni, and Get Satisfaction. Rob came to First Round Capital from Omidyar Network where he was their first venture investor. He led most of Omidyar Network’s initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group.

This event kicks off STIRR’s 3rd year. We’re celebrating by returning to the site that reignited the Bay Area demo+mixer scene back in early 2006: Bistro 412 (formerly F&A’s). The venue has a beautiful back patio and we’ve reserved the whole space just for STIRR and we’ll be feeding everyone as usual.

Tickets:

http://dealhacks.eventbrite.com

Who should attend?

* Founding Teams of high-growth Internet, Mobile, Enterprise, Software related BioTech and Cleantech
* VCs
* Qualified Angels
* Top level engineering talent
* Press (must qualify for pass: press@stirr.net)

Some of the ticket, venue and food cost have been graciously underwritten by:

Sun Microsystems
http://www.sun.com/startup

Tickets for the event:

http://dealhacks.eventbrite.com

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