With each experiment I run, often times I fall on my face. But that was not the case with our After Hours event which we had last night. Not only was it a great first event, but we had a massive turnout 90% of which were people I had never met or seen. We love bringing in new people. As we have in the past, we had lots and lots of people who just arrived to the valley, car packed full of their stuff - pursuing the dream. We want more of those people. Make sure to tell your friends to come and meet smart entrepreneurs and start to get informed on everything.
There was quite a controversy about the Ping Pong match that we planned. I agreed to write about anyone that was able to beat me at Ping Pong. This was less of a competitive challenge as it was just a friendly and easy way to meet more people. Well if you read the comments from my post you'll see that several people came ready for battle. We had several people that showed up just to watch the Ping Pong. I played several interesting founders including Michael Castellano (CEO at v-Pitch), Andrew Okunev (CEO at MediaLooks), Alex Nedvetsky, and Windows mobile developer Paras Wadehea.
Ultimately I did prevail going 5 for 5 against founders, and lost my last match to a very good player and founder named Kuldeep Dhanjal. 5 wins and 1 defeat isn't a bad winning percentage to start the event with. The offer still stands although I'm sure I will get creamed next week. I've attached some pictures of the event below. Please make sure to RSVP for the next event held in Mountain View the day after Valentines.
Andrew Okunev the CEO of MediaLooks looking comfortable.
Shaun from oLyfe, John Boitnott, and Brian from RapidLeaf among others.