Dinner 2.0 October
Last night I had the pleasure of hosting another Dinner 2.0 in Sydney. Once again it was a terrific night with a great bunch of people in the ‘next web’ scene in Sydney.
Some great conversation around the current state of the industry, especially on the recent Bulletin article and the supposedly poor state of web 2.0 VC in Australia – Mike Zimmerman notably said he was misquoted in the article – and of course, more on the YouTube acquisition and what it means for the ‘bubble’ talk.
Yorke Hinds gave an update on Zookoda’s progress towards a sale (22 interested parties, 3-4 very serious bidders); negotiations underway. Chris from Smoothbudget discovered a whole new world. Remember The Milk forgot to come – actually that’s not fair, Omar ended up in hospital, but thankfully it wasn’t too serious. Alistair Smith had some great stories of wild patents he’s been approached about, including: a teleport device (only worked if you walked into it though), a dancing blow-up doll and tracking diseases using missile guidance systems (this one is actually pretty serious).
Everybody else managed a healthy consumption of steak and beer. Our only serious issue now: no girls! Damn I hate IT for that.
Attending last night was:
- Phong Mai (Tangler)
- Alex von Kotze (Tangler)
- Andrew Joyner (Dot Communications)
- Peter Crowe (Quotify)
- Mike Zimmerman (Tech Venture Partners)
- Marc Woodward (NEO)
- Nick Gonios (3eep.com)
- Yorke Hindes (Zookoda)
- Randal Leeb-du Toit (NICTA)
- Craig Baker (Tangler)
- Rory Brennan (Dot Communications)
- Michael Liubinskas (Tangler)
- Alisdair Faulkner (NICTA)
- Alistair Smith (Davies Collison Cave)
- Chris Hulbert (Smothbudget)
- Erik Miller (Tangler)
- Rhandy Lado (Tangler)
All the photos are available over here.
15 Megabytes of Fame 
[…] The topic for Thursday evening’s Dinner 2.o in Sydney was the question of whether the traditional venture capital model is broken. Marty Wells covers the discussion here, and there are photos up here and here. […]
Great evening!
My comments on the topic are here:
Cheers mate. It was certainly eye-opening!
It will be good if we can organize this in Melbourne. I’m more than happy to cordinate this
here.
There seems to be a lot of activity from Perth as well. Someone from Perth might come as well.
Vishal
Yeah, plenty of interest for a melbourne event. It’s only a matter of picking a date now. I’d say early Dec at the moment.
When’s the next one in Sydney? :)
Working on it… Maybe first few weeks of Dec. Though it’s clashing a little with Dinner 2.0 Melbourne.
Great night with a bunch of great guys making it happen in the web 2.0 front in Oz!
Thoroughly enjoyed it and looked forward to the next one….
[…] Was cordially invited to Dinner 2.0 on Thursday night and had a great time ‘geeking it up’ with a wide range of industry men. Yup, no ladies (and few gentlemen) in the group this time. Sad I guess, but I don’t think it’s from a lack of trying. […]
How do you crack an invite to the Melbourne event –
The next gen Yellow Pages beta runs on our Grid Application Platform… check out:
http://www.yellowathome.com.au
plus I know a few girls :o)
I’ll let you know as soon as it’s scheduled rob.