Last week, I had the fortune to attend two startup events, Webguild’s “Startup Idol” and Startup Drinks, an offshoot of Startup Weekend. I met some cool people at both events, and it’s interesting to compare the people attended each.
Webguild
Webguild.org is an organization of internet professionals which operates a slightly “old school” membership site. You get an account, log in, upload a picture, specify a web site, you’re done. Very simple. I kind of like it. It doesn’t seem to get as much traffic as it ought, because I found the information on the site reasonably high quality. Didn’t see any spam. Go check it out if you’re an old-schooler. Or even if you’re not! I went ahead and subscribed to the mailing lists. Looking forward to seeing what they have for me. Go register at Webguild.org.
Evidently, Webguild sponsors an ongoing event called Startup Idol, where they select 5 startups to present to the audience and a panel of judges, which selects the best startup to award the Startup Idol trophy. The judges this year were Philip Kaplan of Adbrite (formerly of F’ed Company for you dot com 1 folks), Jonathan Abrams of Socializr and Daya Baran, the president of Webguild.
I was very impressed with all 5 startups.
Unfortunately… I didn’t take any notes! But I recall the gist of most. The winner was PixelPipe, the runner up Indinero.com, with Jibe delivering cross platform data, a search company out of Berkeley doing some very good work with real time results, and one other. I’ll add the last two names when I remember later, after I publish this article I’m sure.
Startup Drinks
So, Webguild was at a major hotel in Silicon Valley, with a reception poolside, hot digs, burgers and beer.
Startup Drinks was at Swig, which is sushi and cocktails in the Tenderloin.
Big difference in venue, and big difference in crowd! I did know a few people at already though.
Here’s interesting observation: the Startup Weekend crowd is on average considerably younger than the Webguild crowd: early 30s for Startup compared to mid-40s mid-50s for Webguild, with an overall wider age range of people at Webguild. Here’s another difference: the Startup crowd isn’t as “social media” oriented as Webguild, fewer business cards, fewer Linkedin contacts. I noticed this same difference with Google Open Social, which was much more social media oriented than Startup Weekend. At Open Social, everyone was madly exchanging Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter information, whereas at Startup Weekend, it seemed to me very little of that was transpiring. I recall mentioning this to another attendee at Startup Weekend who was at Open Social, and he noticed the same thing.
Very curious indeed!
In any case, both of these events are excellent, and if your interest points in the entrepreneurial direction, I highly recommend you attend any event sponsored by either group. I’ve met really great people at both, and look forward to attending more in the future.
