NYC Crashes Techcrunch Party

Last night Bill Hildebolt and I attended the annual Techcrunch Meet-up in the valley. There was a definite dearth of East Coasters there. We did meet some new folks at cool SF companies. But more importantly, we saw a bunch of old friends at even better SF companies. Here’s a more detailed run-down of some of the HBS contingent we saw there:
Heather Harde : has to be one of the classiest people in the joint. CEO of Techcrunch, and our personal ticket connection. (Heather, we should have pulled a Todor and just yelled “BUT WE KNOW HEATHER” at the doorpeople.) Michael A, I don’t know you, and while you looked like you adore Heather, as a woman I have to implore you not to give your beautiful CEO a noogie on the head during speeches. It’s a hair thing.
Tom Patterson : gets second billing because it was his “not-yet-40” birthday. He got sung to by a bunch of drunk entrepreneurs (I think the VCs were lip synching) and a free cake. I thought that big fake check was for you, too, but alas, it was for malaria . Tom’s the CEO of Wize.com, a soon to be partner of Expo.
Raj Kapoor: whose lovely doctor wife Lydia is due any day! MD at Mayfield and one of the best friends an entrepreneur could have, having been a great one himself.
Carol Linburn , group product manager for mobile authoring at Adobe and one of the nicest people in the valley. Trying desperately at the party to feel like an entrepreneur again. We asked her to go back to work that night and, for the love of all that is holy, get flash working on the iPhone.
Steve Abernethy The founder of squaretrade.com and the only guy I know that got kicked out of the Apple store during the iPhone debut because of anti-competitive practices. Steve, Expo taped at the NY Apple store without incident…
Todor Tashev: Director of Investments at Omidyar Network. His wife sings with Sting.
Erik Eklund. Stealth. I’m afraid to even link to his LI profile.
Dana Shapiro Marotto , Marketing at ExpertCEO that just launched in Q2 of this year. Dana, how did you get into HBS with a CPA? Did you just not put that on your application?
Elliott Ng in marketing at Uptake.com, who we saw in line and then completely missed the entire rest of the party.

Was great to see others, like Bong Koh, Deb Schultz, Sam Lessin (another NYC interloper, but he’s like 12 so he fit right in).

Oh, and I cannot fail to mention that as a NYC citizen (our car-related excitement is limited to flagging a hybrid taxi), despite all the change-the-world ideas at the party, the most motivating was seeing Jason Calacanis’ Tesla up close and personal. Bill was hyperventilating. Go electric.