Martin Wells

Web 2.0 entrepreneurs emerged from their rabbit holes last night to attend STIRR Sydney 2 in strength, and it went off with a bang.

Another great crowd, great atmosphere and above all, great fun.

Mick has posted all the details over at the Tangler blog, so I wont go into it here. But a big thanks to everyone who attended.

Thanks again to our sponsors: Omnidrive, TVP, Atlassian and Tangler. And a big thanks to Microsoft for pitching in with some great prizes.

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One week to go (as of yesterday) till we once again experience the chaotic simplicity that is the STIRR Sydney mixer.

Don’t forget to RSVP before the list closes.

All the presentation positions have been locked in:

Omnidrive - WebFS
Rave About It
dLook
3eep
Booking Angel

See you all on the night!

I was recently speaking at BarCamp Sydney (with Mike) about start-up lessons. Whilst it was pretty ad hoc (in the true BarCamp spirit) there were a few points I thought would be worthwhile covering here.

Since I’m as busy as Mick though, I’ll just cover them one at a time.

First one: In all the start-ups I see there seems to be a continuing unhealthy belief in two things that are best corrected right out of the gate:

1. Yes, somebody else has thought of your idea.
2. No, your idea is not special.

Trust me. Get over it.

Whilst it’s a bad idea to shout about your idea too early (I’ll talk about this more soon), you should have no fear that someone will steal it. The people who can help you are too busy doing something else, and the people who can’t really help you will try and steal it and fail miserably.

Trust me. Get over it.

The risk of actually losing something is far outweighed by the value you will get by just talking to people about your concept and pushing really hard for feedback.  And here’s the rub: the people who talk honestly and realistically about their products are the ones who succeed with it. The ones who keep it a secret whilst beavering away in the dark are almost certain to fail.

Trust me. Get over it.

Here’s an excellent quote which I saw posted in the Tangler Entrepreneurs group.

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

-Howard Aiken

I’m speaking on an AIMIA panel on Tuesday night (20/3) at the Shelbourne Hotel about  the future of TV. If you want to hear about the coming media war come along. You can register here.

When & Where
Tuesday, 20th March, 2007
The Shelbourne Hotel, Altitude Level, 200 Sussex Street, Sydney.

6.30pm for 7.00pm start.
7.30pm Your chance to ask Qs and then back to mingling
10:30pm bar is closed.

Others: Ian Gardiner, Tom Kendall, Phil Morle, Mark Pesce

Moderator: Scott Bradley-Pearce.

The last STIRR Sydney was so crazily fun, we thought we’d have to do it all over again, so I’m proud to announce:

STIRR Sydney 2

All the details are up on the wiki. Places are limited, so please be sure to RSVP.

And feel free to check in on the Tangler group to talk and meet everybody else who’s going. Email me for a Tangler invite if you don’t already have one.

We also have 2 spots left for companies wanting to demo there products. If you want your 15 megabytes of fame drop me a line.