Forbes’ Erika Brown has a good summary of how Silicon Valley has turned into a mini Hollywood.
She recounts the escapades of Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founders of Yelp, the local social site for reviews of bars and restaurants, who hold parties (see pic) with inebriated young women hanging over them, including a “Yelp Elite” mixer at the San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art ending in a girls-only kissing orgy. When asked where they want to be in five years, Stoppelman responds: “Sitting on top of a pile of money … [in unison with Simmons] … surrounded by women! Yeah! [high five]”
There is the book party hosted by billionaire Larry Ellison for political pundit Arianna Huffington at his swank San Francisco pied-a-terre. Nick Douglas, writer of the valley’s gossip site, ValleyWag, attended the soiree and wrote a column about it the next day, griping about his treatment by Google co-founder Larry Page and his girlfriend. There are Valleywag’s “Hotties of Web 2.Ooh!” contests, etc, etc.
Erika concludes:
I’m reminded of a scene from Almost Famous, a movie about an aspiring reporter who writes about an up-and-coming rock band. A crusty old journalist advises his teenage protégé: “You cannot make friends with the rock stars … They’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls … I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock ‘n’ roll and strangle everything we love about it … and then it just becomes an industry of cool.”
Most of the action is moving up to the city in San Francisco, leaving the more staid region to the south — the traditional “Silicon Valley” as quiet as ever.
8 Comments
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Jeremy Stoppelman said:
My quote was taken out of context and I can’t take credit for it since it’s a Simpsons line:
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F31.html
Rainier: The film is just me in front of a brick wall for an hour and a half. It cost $80 million.
Jay: [contemptuous] How do you sleep at night?
Rainier: On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies.
Jay: Just asking. Yeesh!
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Randal Leeb-du Toit said:
Jeremy, - as I said…(http://yoick.wordpress.com/2006/10/01/web-2envy/)…methinks Erika has Web 2.envy.
Randal
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BlazeFahrenheit said:
Um … this is nothing new. It used to be my job to throw elaborate dot com parties back in 1998. We had everyone from Elvira, Matt & Trey (Southpark creators) and Tim Burton alongside a sea of free booze and schwag. I remember hiring fire eaters and contortionists. Nevermind that the piles of money were all imaginary - the women were all real and some of the friendships were too. It’s Revenge of the Nerds, baby - bring it on!
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Jim Forbes said:
it’s outrageous activites such as this from new startups playing with other people’s money that makes me believe that more pure darwinism needs to be brought into play within Silicon Valley. but a better path than that would be to cull the herd and make an example in the abbatoir out of fractious yearling bulls and cows.
Curmudgeonly yours,
Jim Forbes
Escondido, CA -
Startups.in/India said:
Now I see why Yelp needed $10mil more.. :)
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rulepark said:
10 millions of funding ended up in the bar?The web 2.0 idea and the money.We will have another BUBBLE 2.0..
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Rob Tsai said:
Great coverage as always, Matt.
If I had to guess, I’d say I smell a Smirnoff TeaParty sponsorship brewing… Wouldn’t it be great to be the Biz Dev guy (or gal) on that deal?
2 Trackbacks
9:58 pm
VentureBeat » Local review site Yelp raises $10 million from Benchmark said:
[...] We recently mentioned Yelp’s wave-making with its parties. [...]
4:59 pm
TechCrunch UK » Blog Archive » Qype reviews a European expansion. said:
[...] Interestingly Qype are not the only review and recommendation service to raise funding. Yelp, the US website has just taken a further $10 million in Series B funding from Benchmark Capital. The company had already received as much as $6 million in a previous round from Bessemer Venture Partners. What is interesting reading the TechCrunch.com (USA) comments on Yelp is the tone of the negativitiy towards Yelp needing to raise further capital. “Well, you gotta see this and read this to understand where all the $$$$$$$$ go.” [...]