Paddy’s Valley

Congratulations to Tourist Republic, Putplace, Nubiq, Spoiltchild and Pix.ie for being chosen by EI to pitch in front of some VC panelists during the evening of December 4th.

Details of the event:

5.00-5.45 pm Wine reception and registration

6.00-6.10 pm Welcome from Mr. Michael Collins, Irish Ambassador to the United States.

6.15-7.00 pm Panel Discussion on raising capital for Irish Web 2.0 / SaaS companies in Silicon valley
Conrad Burke of Innovalight will moderate the event. Aidan Connolly of Idiro will speak of his experience of raising funds here and other panellists will be Richard Irving, Tim Danford, Patrick Ennis and Dino Vendetti.

7.00-8.00 pm The Pitch Forum

8.00-8.30 pm Networking

Firstly, hello Scoble and Jeremiah traffic!

So below is what we’re doing for the week from December 2nd to December 9th.

December 2nd – Fly in from Ireland. We are based in Palo Alto.

On Monday the 3rd at 8pm we will be meeting Robert Scoble, Maryam Scoble, Loic Le Meur, Halley Suitt and lots of random folks as Scoble hosts a get together for us in San Fran, details here. Invite anyone you want to this.

On Tuesday the 4th we’ll be visiting, Facebook and SocialText and at 430pm on Tuesday afternoon, there will be an Enterprise Ireland event, opened by the Irish Ambassador in Mountain View where some of the Paddy’s Valley companies will pitch in front of invited VCs from the Valley. This is invite only so you’ll need to chat to the Enterprise Ireland California office if you want to come along.

On Wednesday morning we visit the Microsoft Campus and then some of us will go to Google for lunch. On Wednesday afternoon we’ll try and visit the Computer History Museum around 2pm.
If we are don’t have anything else we may attend the WorkIT networking event on Wednesday evening.
We hope to meet the folks from Twitter on Wedn evening.

On Thursday we’ll be meeting Meebo. Some of us may visit this co-working facility www.sandboxsuites.com during the day too. Update: We will tour the United Layer hosting facility after lunch. On Thu evening we will be going to the Irish Network in San Francisco event. All are welcome to this.

If you are here because of Jeremiah or Robert and want to meet up with us, our email is paddysvalley@gmail.com or Skype me (Damien Mulley) on DamienMulleyMobile

Given that there is only a very small group discount available, it makes sense for each person to make their own arrangements to attend the mixer. It is $30 each to attend.

Via the always excellent Jeremiah Owyang blog, he has a list of really interesting groups in the Valley/San Fran area that run various networking events. If any of these groups interest you, then give them a shout to see about going along to one of their networking events. I’ve fired off an email to SF Beta, blurb:

SF Beta is San Francisco’s largest monthly startup mixer. Since launching in September, 2006, our event has brought together thousands of people from hundreds of startups, creating innumerable connections along the way.

David Smith in EI Palo Alto sent me information on an exciting sounding event that is on December 5th.

It is called the Silicon Valley Mixer and is happening in The Tech Mart in Santa Clara. They say it’s a major opportunity to mix “Silicon Valley Style” with Founders, CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, CMOs, VPs & Directors, Investors and Influencers. They generally have 350+ in attendance.

Tickets go on sale on October 25th and go here to book them ($30) and find out more.

David also pointed out that workit.com is a great resource for finding out what events are happening in the Valley, particularly in the weeks running up to the trip.

Fly in on Sunday the 2nd and get our bearings and relax.

Monday: Mobile Monday in Silicon Valley. The biggest mobile event in the Valley. It is on in the evening, so the morning is free to meet any big names/investors you have contacted to meet with.

Tuesday Morning: E.I. will organise a half-day morning seminar with local Silicon Valley people who will give us the lay of the land and how business works over there. This will include Irish-friendly VCs. Pitches will be checked-out and even done for real at at this event.

Tuesday Afternoon: Free but ideally you will have set-up some pitching opportunities either in advance or from the morning sessions. Possible sub-group visits to local companies.

Wednesday Morning: Free for you all to do your own thing, meet contacts and people you know in the Valley. Also sub-group visits to local companies.

Wednesday Afternoon: E.I. will organise a tour bus and will be bringing us to the geeky places we want to go to. A highlight will oviously be a visit to Googleplex and meeting some of the folks there. In addition we will do photo-ops at HP Garage, Infinte loop etc. If there are sites where you think we should all go as a group, let us know.

Thursday Morning: Pitching practice

Thursday Evening: Irish Network in San Fran networking event. Irish ex-pats and potential investors should be attending. This will be a night to really work your networking muscles.

Friday: Free day for anyone to meet up with contacts made from night before and any meetings you have arranged yourself in advance. Sub-group visits to local companies.

Saturday: Free to shop and do what you want before you pack and leave. We’ll look into some touristy things to do here. Golden Gate, Bay Bridge maybe. Computer history Museum?

We are aiming to have social dinners on most nights and invite guests to them. We can discuss this in more detail at the PV Meetup on September 13th.

The DemoBar guys have finalised their time and location so we can can now slot in nicely. Our meet-up is now:

Thursday September 13th at 5pm in Ely HQ. See Upcoming.org to insert in your calendar and for maps.

This is followed by DemoBar from 6.30pm. I highly recommend you apply for Demobar as it would be great practice for pitching in the Valley. Mashup Camp is looking pretty cool earlier in the week too.

We may have more activities on before 5pm, we’re just waiting for feedback from Enterprise Ireland. We’ll keep you posted.

Funky new embeddable GMaps:

View Larger Map

The week of Sept 10th-14th is looking like the busiest for the Irish web community this year. It has rightly been christened Web2Ireland Week. From the web2ireland.org blog:

• Mashup University – Monday 10th/Tuesday 11th
• Mashup Camp – Wednesday 12th/Thursday 13th
• DemoBar and FOWA Road trip – Thursday 13th
• OpenCoffee – Friday 14th

We’d like to add to that by having a Paddy’s Valley Meetup on the Thursday. Once the time/location for Demobar/FOWA has been nailed down, we’ll just fit in around it. We should kick it off with a meal and then continue the conversations at Demobar. Let us know in the comments if this does/doesn’t suit. Some of the topics for discussion include:

• More detailed itinerary
• Status of meeting/visit arrangements
• Swapping of contacts info/requests for further visit arrangements
• Concerns/Queries
• Anything else?

We aim to get some Enterprise Ireland people involved on the night and kick off the VC Pitch Prep.

Ideally we would have had a Curry 2.1 in there too but Paul Walsh is on vacation at that time. It looks like there are still opportunities for dinners to be arranged for some of the other nights which fit into the Web2Ireland theme.