What a Night!

Wow! What a blast. STIRR Sydney went off with a bang Wednesday night with over a hundred and twenty people coming in from local internet startups, media, VCs and service providers.What was truly an experiment turned out great, and in no small party due to the enthusiasm, spirit and general roudieness of the people who attended. Thanks!

Of course none of this happens without some behind-the-scenes stars. The sponsors: Technology Venture Partners, Atlassian, Neo Technology Ventures and Tangler (pat pat). To my fellow organisers: Mick, Rhandy, Craig, Karen, Rai, Phong, Erik, Minh and Sasha. Also thanks to Symbiation for making up the Boom or Bust board, among other things.

Hippos turned out to be a great venue, though we promise to up the air conditioning earlier next time and maybe the demo tables will move inside — certainly got crowded out there.

Half-baked with 70+ people was a wild chaotic thing compared to previous ones, but ultimately what the startups concocted was just as funny and having startup legends like Emily and Omar, Oliver Wiedlich, Alisdair Faulkner, Rhandy Lado, Alan Jones and (“Entrepreneur of the Year”) Mike Cannon-Brooks. No surprise that Mike Cannon-Brooks’ team and their idea “ShoeWave.com” — uniting people around the world in finding lost socks — won the day. Close runners-up: MidgetWidget.com, a mobile phone app that can grow with you and ParachuteVideo.com, a whole new way to drop movie content on you, literally.

On entry to the event people were given $2 million venture capital dollars which they had to distribute as they saw fit to four startups: Remember the Milk, bluepulse, StudentFace and Quotify. In a very close contest the ultimate winner was Remember the Milk who just nudged Quotify. They took home an MSDN subscription worth $5000 courtesy of Microsoft (thanks Frank).

Other games included the very popular “Boom or Bust”. Startups write their name on a pin and then blindly try to pin the best exit, which ranged from $2b buyouts, down to “Your Server Farm Really A Farm” and “Russian Clone Site Wipes You Out” — everybody loved this one.

Thanks also to Neo who sponsored the Kool-Aid shots throughout the night.

Further coverage:

• Sydney Skaken and Stirred
• GDay World
• STIRR Sydney a stirring success
• Stirr it up
• Getting STIRRed up in Sydney
• STIRR Sydney
• STIRR Sydney Wrap-up
• Heading to STIRR Sydney
• STIRR Sydney
• Rebelutionary

Photos:

• Mick (thanks to Karen)
• Marty (thanks to anybody who would hold my camera on the night)
• Yours? (let me know)

UPDATE: Cameron Reilly has released a video of the night.