Tag Archives: Startup2Startup

By Miiko Mentz and Alison McNeill

Earlier this week, Alison and I attended and shot the video for Dave McClure’s Startup2Startup holiday party over at Automattic, makers of WordPress (btw, they have quite the kick-ass space over at Pier 38 in SF). The December Startup2Startup was not only a holiday party, but it was the “Roast of Robert Scoble.”

It was a lot of fun, so we thought we’d share the video that we did for Dave with our Bubblicious readers. You can watch the pre-roast interview below, but head on over to Startup2Startup’s YouTube channel to watch the entire roast (note: as of 6:30pm PST the videos of the roast were still uploading and probably won’t be available until later tonight).

In addition to the pre-roast video, you’ll definitely want to watch David Hornik’s video, which was played during his roast of Scoble. We loved it and it’s sure to entertain you, too. Check it out. But first here’s the pre-roast interview with Scoble:

RELATED POST: December 2: The *Real-Time* Holiday Roast of Robert Scoble (aka The 2009 Startup2Startup Holiday Party)

Follow us on Twitter: @miikomentz @alisonmcneill

words and pictures by Brian Solis

Every month, Dave McClure organizes Startup2Startup, one of the most helpful and valuable events designed to help startups excel through connections, advice, insight, and experience.

This month, S2S featured none other than Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. Hsieh, as you may or may not know, transformed a meager startup into a $1 billion brand phenomenon.

Tony is a gifted individual. He has the ability to captivate and engage people through heartfelt, peer-to-peer interaction. His simple message of spreading happiness and memorable customer service is powerful as it resonates throughout the business sector. His vision of a people-focused, service enterprise will transcend the company from an online shoe wholesaler to a global brand that may one day rival Virgin – a company that serves as inspiration for Tony.

I recently had the opportunity to work with Tony and the Zappos team, along with Stephanie Agresta (my partner in The TechSet) and Steve Rosenbaum of Magnify.net. Our mission was to showcase ecstatic customers who capture and share the happiness that Tony Hsieh and the Zappos team have worked so hard to package in every box. The result, Zappos BoxBreaks, which debuted at SXSW.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story…

Dave McClure

Tony Hsieh shares his company culture

Mazy Kazerooni, uStream

Beth Kanter

Daniel Brusilovsky, TeensInTech

Loic Le Meur of Seesmic

Larry Chiang

Cyan Banister of Zivity shows us her new ring

Christine Lu and Dave McClure go barefoot for SamaritansFeet.com and the Charity SMACKDOWN

Mark Schulze of Quantcast

Frank Gruber

Pascale Diaine

Tony Hsieh and Brian Solis

For more pictures from Startup2Starup, please visit my album on Flickr.

Also, please read Mark Hendrickson‘s post on Tony Hsieh’s presentation on “Delivering Happiness.”

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

By Alison McNeill

The bub.blicio.us crew was on hand at the latest Startup2Startup dinner in Palo Alto, hosted by Dave McClure. The night’s speaker was Naval Ravikant, an experienced entrepreneur and startup investor, and occasional contributor on the Venture Hacks blog (which he co-founded).

Previously he was a co-founder or investor at Genoa Corp (acquired by Finisar), Epinions.com (IPO via Shopping.com), Chainn, Hive7, and Vast.com; also an advisor to Bix.com, iPivot, and XFire, among others.

Here guest reporter, Leonard Speiser of Yahoo!, asked Naval a few questions about his experiences as an entrepreneur and investor and his advice for startups.