To the tunes of….
Those Were the Days, My Friend…. I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles…. and Seems like Old Times….
Rafat Ali’s Paid Content had its first mixer in New York tonight and it was wonderful news for him but, I fear, frightening news for the industry and economy. More than 500 people signed up and sold out the place in three hours. It was jammed with guys in nametags making pitches for their companies to anyone who would stand still and even those who would notIt .
Jane, stop this crazy thing.
It’s deja vu all over again.
Mr. Welk, turn off the damned bubble machine.
It was absolutely spectacular to see the the value, influence, and respect Rafat et al have built from the ground up, on their own. Bravo to them!
But watch out, guys. No party lasts forever.
Here’s a photo from the event. I swear that I did not (a) have a drop to drink, (b) piss of Nick Denton, or (c) goose Spencer Reiss. I just dislike those party photos.
June 28th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Jeff,
It was jammed with guys in nametags making pitches for their companies to anyone who would stand still and even those who would notIt
YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG!!. THERE WERE A COUPLE OF HUNDRED PEOPLE IN THAT ROOM SMARTER, WISER AND REAL RISK TAKERS THAN MOST PEOPLE WILL EVER HAVE THE COURAGE OR ASPIRE TO BE.
AND THEIR PUT THEIR SWEAT AND FINANCIAL RESOURCES TO MAKE THEIR VISION INTO A REALITY. I AM APPALLED THAT YOU WOULD MAKE SUCH RIDICULUS COMMENTS. AND YOU SAW THE NEXT GREAT THING GO BY YOU AND DID NOT EVEN NOTICE….SO MUCH FOR THE BUZZMACHINE.
June 28th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
How I missed this thing, I’ll never know. Was the food good?
July 6th, 2006 at 5:48 am
[...] Speaking of Rafat, he’s pissed about David’ Carr’s spun piece about Denton, Inc. and the PaidContent mixer. I, too, made bubble gags after the event but I agree that the bubbling has nothing to do with blogs (or with PaidContent). What I noted was the guys with startups pitching anybody who would or wouldn’t listen. That’s what was deja vu for me. [...]
August 28th, 2006 at 5:52 am
[...] Now see John Battelle, Paul Kedrosky, and Fred Wilson ruminating over whether there is a VC bubble. Kedrosky leaves the TechCrunch bash — as I did after a PaidContent bash — fretting that the equilibrium is off. Too many companies are getting funded — Battelle says there are 200 video search companies with bucks in banks — and not enough are failing, which means that business success — audience, revenue, growth — is not concentrating sufficiently to anoint winners (or, I’ll add, in the cases of, MySpace and YouTube it is perhaps concentrating too quickly). Wilson says fret not, for the bad companies will die. But because they are cheaper to start, it will take longer. And because they are cheaper to start, I’ll argue, more bad companies can get funding. And because the VCs have to fund more companies to invest all the money they’re handed, they as a group are now going to be less picky and more stretched and less able to watch over the companies in their portfolios — but, for a while yet, they’ll be less worried because each investment is less of a big deal. In this case, less could be more trouble. Small is the new big headache. [...]