If you’ve lived in the Bay Area as long as I have, you most certainly remember the “dot-com era” (which is definitely a funny term considering it lasted about 18 months, whereas a more typical era, such the Victorian Era, spanned about 70 years). In those times, gobs of money was spent on startups with visions of grandeur. Delusional visions, but visions nonetheless.
Then things got bad. And darkness covered the land. Entrepreneurs sought out MBAs while Web producers took sales gigs where they had to gain some tangible work experience if they wanted to ever be employed again.
But now, things are good again. The flow of money from the VCs to the entrepreneur is finally more than a trickle, and new companies seem to pop up virtually every day. And again, visions of grandeur, many inspired by a recently-very-wealthy-after-working-for-about-16-months Chad Hurley (now rumored to buying disposable yachts). This time, it’s not dot-com, it’s Web 2.0.
During dot-com, we had crazy launch parties catered by the fanciest restaurants in San Francisco, with huge giveaways and gift bags, costing obscene amounts of money. In Web 2.0, we get some non-open bar parties and the occasional free lunch. NETGEAR, where I’m still having fun with my guest blogging stint, has teamed up with the organizers of Lunch 2.0 to have a cool event at the end of the month. The deets:
Location: Netgear, Inc.
Address: 4500 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Date: Wed, May 30th 2007
Time: 12:00 – 1:30 pm
Some highlights:
- Tour the company’s Digital Lifestyle House (which I’ve seen and video’d for the blog, but is apparently getting a touchup right now)
- Enter a raffle to win a “Smart Network makeover”
- Meet some key folks from the NETGEAR team (including their wonderful guest blogger!)
- Opportunity to get video interviewed by the PodTech people
Oh, and did I mention there’d be barbecue?
hi jeremy… fun post, especially since I was around for the dot-com implosion & I used to work with chad. at the moment i’m making this comment i’m sitting across the table from you @ gordon biersch. weird commenting on your blog while i’m listening to you real-time 😉
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