Techcrunch’s NYC Party
10:41 pm November 16th, 2006 by Sal Cangeloso
Well, tonight was Techcrunch’s big NYC hoedown. The event was not so much a celebration as it was a chance to get all of the right people in a room together. The mash up of founders, editor, sponsors, investor, marketers, and coders would be a surefire hit, right?
The event was held at BED, a hot club on the west side of Manhattan (27th and 10th). This was my first time there, but what normally must have been a somewhat exclusive club was reduced to a steaming hot, soaking wet, mass of web entrepreneurs. In addition to the open bar the main attraction were the sponsor companies lined up on the sides of the club (there was no food worth mentioning aside from a few servers with snacks). The sponsors were sites like Compete.com, Blogtalkradio.com, Helium.com, Genius.com, and a few others. I had a chance to talk to a few of these people and it was a pretty horrible experience. They all had the next big thing and were more than happy to tell you, at length, how great their site is and how huge it will be. So what if it is still in beta, has no profit model, and there are ten competitor who do it just as well? Some of the more notable companies involved were Snap.com, HitTail, Me.dium, AOL, and DoubleClick.
As for the attendees, I was not as extroverted as a should have been but everyone I met was pretty cool and had a lot going on, or at least could talk the talk. If the event was not so dark and the music was not so loud it would have been a great chance for networking (I am sure a lot of this was done by people more gregarious than myself). Though I do a lot of events like this in New York, I only recognized a few people there, which is further proof of how far the Web 2.0/web entrepreneur community is disconnected from hardware scene. I guess this should be no big surprise, but I figured their might be some crossover.
The party started at 7PM but did not really get going until about 8:30. Later on (9:45?) the man of the hour, Mike Arrington had some words to say. It was very hard to hear him and it was even harder to hear the people talk spoke after him, but Arrington was presented with a bobble-head doll of himself.
All in all, the event was fun, but I can’t say I got much accomplished. It would have been nice to do some real networking but this was not really my scene. I guess I fit in well at the hardware events, where I know a lot of people and have more to say, but when it comes to angel investors and financing and appointing board members, some guy with a hardware site is not exactly Mr. Popular.
Good Day Techcrunch Blogger,
It is most unfortunate that the ambience of the space did not allow for a more progressive experience. It still must have been wonderful and beneficial to be able to speak with the more successful companies ie: Doubleclick , Snap.com.
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