Last night a company called gritwire threw an open bar launch party at Syndicate. Another startup had an open bar party in the city tonight. From what I hear the parties were full of very happy people who couldn’t have cared less about the product but were enthralled with the free booze.
The rumors are flying that Meebo, all of 13 weeks old, has raised money at a $10 million pre-money valuation. I wrote about this at TechCrunch and the first comment is “Bubble 2.0?”.
I think I may be starting to agree. All these blowout parties and easy venture capital certainly don’t strike me as a good sign.
On a related note, the party tonight that I mentioned in the city was a total zoo. I’m not going to say what company it is, but I’ve written about them numerous times. I was invited, and drove 25 miles to get there. The door person said I wasn’t on the list. I called someone inside the party to see if I could get in. A very large bouncer got right in my face and “asked” me to leave the area since I wasn’t on the list. I looked around and saw at least a dozen people trying to get in, to the free alcohol. I shrugged and left (and got phone calls all the way home asking me to come back, they were sorry, etc.).
I don’t care about not getting into the party. But I do think it’s crazy to have these open bar type things hoping that it is money well spent. It isn’t. Especially if you don’t let the bloggers in. 
Man, this is turning into a gossip column quicker than you can say Joan Rivers. So many secrets!
i like how you have to install flash 8 to even view one sentence about what gritwire is. nice.
Agreed! Anyone who says this isn’t happening again is crazy. It’s amazing how so many smart people fail to learn from their prior mistakes. All in the name of the mighty color green.
I feel the problem with web 1.0 was not lavish parties but a lot of money/investment thrown at unsustainable ideals.
I believe parties are essential to attract people that can help spread the word about the service. I found it to be ineffective when parties are attended by groupies or has-beens and not the movers and shakers.
You didn’t pull the “Don’t you know who I am?”
I could not agree more that these so called parties are a waste of precious resources. However, when resources are plenty, people start to spend money lavishly and it sure sounds like we are seeing that again.
However, the once key difference appears to be that Bubble 2.0 is so far happening with far less money at stake than during web 1.0 when you had the likes of Web Van blow through hundreds of millions vs. just a couple of millions.
[cough][cough]
Well, I agree with you (as you know) that some of that mentality is coming back. And, well, this post confirmed some of my fears.
To be sure there is a surfit of funds in the US VC market.
Point – In web 1.0 you could take a dog with the word Internet painted on the side public.
Point – The scenario today has not caught the general investing publics attention.
Point – Sorbanes Oxley has mad it very tough to IPO.
Point – Ebay paying an enourmous valuation for skype has caught the attention of many VC’s
Conclusion IMHO is that this might be called a temporary phenomenon and yet bubble does not have the right feel as a true capital markets bubble generally takes out a large chunk of the world’s networth.
I forsee this as meerly affecting the balance sheets of some of the less cautious venture funds.
Also web 1.0 affected the globe we recently raised capital at openBC in Europe and the process was no where near as easy as the web 1.0 days.
Bill
a properly thrown party can run less than 2-3,000$… this is nothing compared to buying advertising in a newspaper or magazine. When you’re throwing 100,000$ parties… then we have problems
I like hollywood parties more because at least we KNOW its all smoke-up-the-ass-stupidity, and for no reason, rather than hiding under the “launch party” ethos.
Hollywood parties are fun. Valley launch parties are hilarious.
Dude, you have to expose them. This is so ridiculous that they should at least get some crap for it.