Sanford Barr, cofounder of the Silicon Valley networking event Stirr, pictured above, objected to our characterization of the Stirr holiday party and sent along the following letter to the editor.
Hello Wired.com, thanks for the great photographic coverage of our end
of year Holiday Soiree. Lane's photographs are amazing (as always).
The reporter appears to have been a little confused about our
organization and the purpose of the Holiday Soiree, so here's a quick
backgrounder:Stirr is a global organization that serves the founders of high growth
mobile, enterprise and internet technology startups. We've been
described as a 'brotherhood of entrepreneurs' though we'd love a more
gender neutral way to say the same thing. Stirr produces a mix of
public and private events, including the popular 'Founder Hacks'
mini-conferences and highly acclaimed private 'Founder's Table' dinner
series. We model our large events like how most of us like to attend
tech conferences: 20-30mins of concentrated relevant content and
remaining 80% is all high-quality networking at a fraction of the time
and cost involved with attending a full conference. Our focus is
founders and founding teams, but in Silicon Valley we also enjoy
strong support from 4 out of the 5 top early stage VC funds and many
top tier angels as well.For the last two years, Stirr (with the help of great sponsors) hosts
a big-tent end of year Holiday event for small startups that couldn't
afford to throw a large scale event by themselves. This year's
Holiday Soiree had 400 attendees and took place at the elegant Julia
Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco. We brought in the best swing/jazz
performer in the bay area, a top rated chef, comedy/magic, swing
lessons, poured complimentary champagne and wine for most of the
night, started the evening with a Taittinger and Chocolate toast, and
everyone looked terrific dressed up. The event sold out in 6 days and
it was a wonderful blend of fun, networking and holiday spirit. The
fun was contagious, the photographs don't lie, and we really enjoyed
wrapping up the year with new friends and old.Thanks again for the coverage and wishing everyone success in the new
year ahead.Best,
-Sanford
--
Sanford Barr | Director/Chief Stirrer, The STIRR Network |
http://www.stirr.net/
