Where the Web Masters Link Up
Cyber party virgin Calvin Naito has just arrived, and already he’s running out of time. Two hours. That’s all the time he has to connect. To sell himself. To seal that deal.
He hates this feeling--like an animal on the prowl--but what choice do you have when your Internet company needs an infusion of cash? As in seven figures. And then some.
Quickly, the crowd of Web-heads swells and this mid-June Santa Monica party is buzzing. If Naito works the rooms, he’s sure to run into CEOs, CTOs, VCs . . . and, maybe, if he decides to come back another time, romantic prospects.
High-tech execs and pretty young things mingle easily here at the town’s best-known Internet bash, hosted by the town’s biggest Internet networking group, the Venice Interactive Community. The town’s ultra digital schmoozefest, VIC Night takes place each month at the quaint converted house that is the Victorian restaurant.
VIC has given birth to a new culture among its members--one that combines the unrestrained entrepreneurialism of the dot-com world with Hollywood-style schmoozing.
From Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley, the work is defined by long hours and constant electronic communication. As face-to-face interactions have become a luxury, organizations like VIC have become a necessity.
The group’s cocktail mixers, parties and conferences offer Netizens a chance to meet in person, land high-stakes deals or recruit each other for coveted jobs. In some cases, they even find love.
Naito, however, confesses he wouldn’t be at VIC’s most popular party if he didn’t have to be. He’s a “purposeful” guy, he says, who’d rather be “networking” in front of his computer screen than schmoozing over drinks. But Naito’s priority is helping his boss find financing for the company. And if that means tearing himself away from his computer for two hours to chase down some deep pockets, so be it.
Naito, former press secretary to L.A. Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, is vice president of public relations for IntraCom, which produces a device that can transmit ultrasound images live over the Web. IntraCom will probably not survive if it can’t find some capital fast, says Naito.
“Do you know who Brad Nye is?” Naito asks, scanning the room for VIC’s co-founder. It’s important to know the ponytailed and gregarious Nye, because Nye knows everyone. (“VIC is the six degrees of Brad Nye,” jokes one of his 20 staffers.)
A former television and documentary producer, Nye is no techie. But he’s engaging, and he’s been to enough Hollywood parties to know how to throw one.
Back in the cyber Stone Age--1995--Nye, who was working as a consultant to an Internet publisher, saw the Internet industry in Los Angeles as sprawling and as disconnected as the city itself--”a community without a center.” He gathered eight techie friends for sushi and sake in Venice in 1995 to talk. The second time the group met at the restaurant, Chaya Venice, it had grown to 15, and two of them struck a multimillion-dollar deal.
“A light went off in our heads that, wow, something immediately tangible had just happened,” said Nye, 43, whose co-founder, Larry Roth, was an executive at MGM and is now chief operating officer of SuperSig.Com Inc., which develops e-mail software for businesses. “It was an epiphany: Maybe there was some real purpose behind our group.” The group quickly grew by word of mouth to 100 and moved its gatherings a couple blocks north to the World Cafe in Santa Monica. As it continued to grow, Nye turned his hobby into a nonprofit organization, and found the Victorian.
“That’s when we found our clubhouse,” Nye said. With VIC, Nye has created the ultimate portal into L.A.’s Internet world. Today, 2,000 members have paid $125 to $250 for an annual membership, which allows them to attend VIC’s monthly parties at the Victorian, some of which draw as many as 1,200. (Non-members, such as Naito, can attend the parties for a $20 admission fee.)
Cyber events in Los Angeles reflect their proximity to Hollywood in size (they’re bigger) and venues (they’re hip). They are also well attended by people in the entertainment world who want to become bigger players in the digital arena. The effect is a glitzier gathering of techies than one might find in other cities.
“Where San Francisco is sleepier than New York, and Austin is considered the friendliest, L.A. has that major infusion from the Hollywood realm, the glitz and the slickness,” said Courtney Pulitzer, who publishes the Cyber Scene, a national online newsletter.
It’s a natural fusion, said Joel Kotkin, senior fellow at the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy. The Internet and entertainment industries attract the same type of personalities--creative mavericks who want to be stars.
“They both suffer from arrogance, but the Internet’s arrogance is in being involved in something nobody’s ever done before. It’s an industry where 25-year-olds become legends and companies go broke in a month. And it’s more fun.”
Still Scouting Out Potential Investors
Naito, who is too sensitive about his age to divulge it, doesn’t seem to be having fun yet.
Twenty minutes after his arrival, he moves to an outside terrace, where waiters offer appetizers and partygoers line up for drinks. He scans the room, reading name tags, looking for investors. He spots a very tall man in the center of the room, with the letters “V.C.” under his name.
The man, a venture capitalist named Lon Langdon, is surrounded by a group of men and women who range in age from about 25 to 50.
“Lonnie!” Naito calls out. (Thank goodness for those tags.)
Langdon it turns out, is happy to hear Naito’s pitch for $3 million. But later, Langdon, managing director for a Playa del Rey-based leasing and finance company, allows that only one in 100 of these spontaneous meetings winds up in a business deal.
Inside, a band is playing upstairs. The crowd has grown to 800.
“There’s the VIC guy!” one 20-ish Webbie announces to his pal as an oblivious Nye whisks by. “He knows me, but he didn’t see me.”
And there’s Ben Mendelson, sporting a chic cream-colored suit, by the bar.
“VIC saves me a lot of time,” said Mendelson, the 44-year-old vice president of Winterberry Group, which develops direct-marketing strategies for businesses. “I don’t have to make as many phone calls. I can see what’s going on and eat and get drunk in public, which is more fun than getting drunk at home.”
Near Mendelson, reclusive techies mingle with outgoing marketers, designers and writers. The former wear business suits; the latter prefer casual slacks, summer dresses or miniskirts. A handful of glamorous Hollywood model-types, complete with entourages, also scope for opportunities. The models are not unnoticed.
“Did you see the teal girls?” says Jonathan Casson, product manager for a software maker called PeopleLink, pointing out two blonds roaming the rooms in a particular shade of blue-green.
“They did that for effect,” he adds. “VIC is the best shopping for any woman. It’s like, ‘Who wants to meet a millionaire?’ ”
Oh please! says his 28-year old friend, a woman who didn’t want to give her name along with her criticism: “Men at the Victorian are too cool to be nice. Half of them aren’t from L.A., so they haven’t had therapy and they don’t know how to engage in a conversation or how to flirt,” she says, making faces at Casson. “If they realized they’re all geeks and broke down that wall, we’d all have more fun.”
And fun seems to be exactly what these people need.
“In this industry, people are working hard because they are committed to what they’re doing, not because their boss is demanding it,” says Bonnie Wolfe, a 31-year-old account executive for All Bases Covered, which provides computer support for businesses. “VIC gives you a reason to get out of the house, unwind, talk about great, new projects and meet people who are like-minded. I’ve come to VIC and thought that I might meet somebody special.”
Unlike Casson’s disappointed friend, though, Wolfe is pleased with the men she’s met through VIC’s breakfast conferences, cocktail hours and parties. For starters, they understand the demands of her 80-hour workweek. They share her pioneering passion. And, she says, they’re sweeter than, say, “lawyers who have reputations for being sharks.”
But the blending and blurring of business and pleasure does make it trickier to be romantic. Behind almost every interaction, members agree, is The Question: Should you hit on them or should you network?
Depends on what you need.
“Everybody comes here to decompress,” says Casson. “We all have such screwed-up social skills as a result of sitting in front of a computer all day. If we were really cool, we’d be hanging out at industry parties with Puff Daddy. We put in insane hours. We all rely on Matchmaker.Com.”
Still Looking for Capital
But what Naito, who is single, needed was cash. After two hours at the party (which he left for a 9 p.m. business appointment), he ended up with nine business cards from prospective investors, 11 from other Webbies, literature about new companies and fliers about other events. And, if the truth be told, images of dozens of pretty women in his head.
“That surprised me,” he said. “If my objective was to meet women, there would have been enough for me to approach during the entire evening.”
A month later, Naito hasn’t found the $3 million he needs for his company. The venture capitalist he approached, Langdon, had turned him down gently.
And though Naito hasn’t attended any other VIC events, he’s planning to.
“For one evening, that was a great orientation,” Naito said. “I learned that in a short period of time, I can be more wise and savvy about the industry and its operators if I continue to attend the events and seminars.”
And what about love?
“Right now, my life is intense and the company is at a critical point so I’m not relaxed,” he said. “But if that changed, if my employer was prospering, then VIC would be a great place to have a peer network, make some acquaintances, a few friends, and it would be that much easier to meet single women.”
