Venture Adventure

I attended the CMU Alumni Startup Meetup yesterday at the District Wine Bar, in San Francisco.  As is typical for a geek oriented fest, no one realized that it was also an SF Giants game.  The District is located just a few blocks from PacHell ATT park, so the very convenient across the street parking garage was charging a $25 flat fee.  I dropped the coin rather than spending an hour circling the area trying to find cheaper parking (and in the 4Runner, it would probably cost me as much in gas anyway).

I met a lot of very nice folks there, although much less than the 52 that RSVPd.  Probably more like 25 or 30 people.  No women, and, as I didn’t see anyone else who graduated before 1990, I was probably the oldest one there.

Most of the people where dot-com folks, with a few others sprinkled in.  I met one software developer who sold his company, and now he and his friends manage and invest their personal funds.  They actively participate in their investments, so it’s more like a buy-in than an angel operation.

Another person was a died-in-the-wool New Yorker whose original company was purchased and moved to Florida, so he ended up there, and starting another company.  Not liking Florida (as almost anyone who’s spent time there learns to hate it), he moved to San Francisco last year, while still working remotely.

There were a bunch of youngsters, graduating after 2000, with one who’d just graduated (’07).  Another ’00 left Sun and took 9  months off, spending 6 months traveling the world, and was now looking for a job.

Unfortunately, I had to leave fairly early.

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