Marty, Mick and the Tangler team pulled together the first Sydney chapter of STIRR last night at the Hippo, in Ultimo.
In true Tangler style it was a hot, loud, casual, friendly, shouty kind of evening in which some of Sydney's most interesting Web 2.0 people and their potential backers and partners mingled and played some fun party games, including a cool 'pin the tail on the valuation' game, and an episode of 'half-baked' where thrown-together teams of people take a random two words from a keyword list (like 'sausage' and 'cowboy', make it a domain name (like 'sausagecowboy.com') and then come up with a business plan, marketing plan, logo and (crucially) a revenue model (users build their own custom sausage recipe from sausage.com's list of ingredients, get their custom sausages shipped to them, then share their recipes in a sausage-related social network, where popular recipe writers get a share of sausage sales revenue.)
Emily and Omar of www.rememberthemilk.com were runaway winners of the demo competition, where audience members were given green 'funny money' ($1m denomination notes printed with the ugly mugs of Cam Reilly and Mike Arrington) to 'invest' as they saw fit in the startups showing off their products in the demo area.
Audience members loved the shy, slouchy seriousness of Emily and Omar, and how that contrasts with their dynamic, innovative task manager app that integrates with Google Calendar and Google Maps.
Personally, Remember The Milk scores points from me for having a toy monkey, Bob T. Monkey on their team. But nobody could dislike their humble, quiet, serious intent on building a better Web 2.0 app.
I was there demoing, illustrating clearly and irrefutably how in the future, every 15-25 year old in the world will use Bluepulse.com on their mobile phone every day. Bluepulse CEO Ben Keighran was there briefly to deliver some of the last of our Bluepulse tee-shirts before returning home to pack for his relocation to the Bay Area this Friday.
Paul McCarney and Peter Crowe from Quotify.com.au were demonstrating how to save a heap of time and money when getting quotes from tradespeople of various kinds.
Jahangir Shagaev and the lads from Studentface.com.au were also there, showing how Australia needs a Facebook-style social network focusing on Australian youth. I didn't get enough time to get a good look at their product, but I'll check it out in the next few days.
This morning, I'm tired, hoarse, wrung-out, and smiling. I'd say the inaugural STIRR Sydney event was a stirring success.
Thursday, December 7
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