| Strange Brew |
Strange Brew
November 6th, 2000BY JOHN DICKSON
SantaBarbara.com Staff Writer
HOW many places can you go to have a beer, eat a burrito and negotiate a million dollar deal for your start-up company? Well, there is such a place in Santa Barbara - its called SB Tech Brew. Actually, its not a place - its an excuse. An excuse to get out of the office (or garage) and mingle with the Who's Who of technology and finance in Santa Barbara. SB Tech Brew was founded by Dennis Cagan, Chairman and CEO of the Santa Barbara Technology Incubator. SBTI is an incubator in the sense that their goal is to help turn small companies with a bright idea into big companies. Companies coming out of SBTI will enter the venture capital market with qualified management teams and leading edge business models. This allows an entrpreneur to concentrate on developing their ideas while SBTI takes care of the rest. Of course thats a simplificatiobn of the process but we're here to discuss the Brew. You'll learn more about SBTI in a future column here.
So what is it like at these SB Tech Brew meetings? This month's meeting (11/6/00) was held at El Paseo restaurant in Santa Barbara. I have attended each one since the first a few months back at the Bistro Med restaurant. Back then it was called "eBrew" (much easier to pronounce in my opinion).
To attend an SB Tech Brew you need to signup so you can wear one of those geek badges that hang around your neck, proudly displaying your name and company. You should signup in advance at the company web site www.sbtechnology.com. Its free for everyone attending and there is a cash bar (hence "brew") to help take the edge off of your million dollar elevator pitch.
The meeting was from 5-8pm and I showed up at 6:15. The moment I walked through the door and saw the 200+ people swapping business cards, I really wished I had been there earlier. Even though I came with no agenda in mind (beyond writing this column) it still felt like the tech train had already left without me.
Armed with my brew and badge I decided to see how much I could network in exactly 60 minutes. Networking in this case had to be more than just a casual hello. The minimum requirement was to:
A) Shake hands
B) Exchange business cards (when appropriate)
C) Learn something from each person I encountered.
D) Offer each person something about my recent events.
Start time 6:30 p.m. Ready. Set. Go....
1) I first ran into Parker Francis, publisher of the local tech newspaper "Silicon 2.0". If you want to follow Central Coast technology, this is the paper for you. www.silicontwo.com
2,3) Soon I was chatting with Gabriel Gasca, president of SurForce, Inc. and Jordan Christoff who is president of Visionary Solutions, Inc. SurForce creates research instruments for directly measuring the static and dynamic forces between surfaces. Visionary Solutions designs and markets industrial video cameras and video electronic components.
4) Next I met with Dan Gabie, president of Facilities Mgmt. Associates who helps business with work space management. Need to expand in to new facilities or shuffle people around at your existing location? Dan's the man.
5) The next person I was fortunate to cross paths with was Masen Yaffee who owns a high-end web design firm in SB called New Directions in Computing.
6) I soon spotted Dennis Cagan, founder of SBTI AND SB Tech Brew, who is in demand at these events and I was lucky to sqeeze my 2 1/2 minutes out of him. I showed him SantaBarbara.com Wireless on my Palm Pilot and we setup a meeting for the following week.
7,8) After Dennis I spoke with Brandon Bruce and Ryan Huff who works with Brandon. Brandon runs an international youth network that is based entirely on the web at www.youthnetwork.com.
9) I soon spoke with Mark who runs the local chapter of Silicon Valley Bank. Mark was kind enough to have done some networking on my behalf already that evening by passing SantaBarbara.com's name to a local restaurant reviewer at Nippers.com.
10) A good friend of mine, John Petote, came into sight. John is president & CEO of CIO Solutions. They are one of the premier total-solution companies in town that provide computers, networking and related services. In fact, SantaBarbara.com has been running entirely on CIO Solutions hardware, very reliably, for years.
11) Next to John was Dan Logan, a writer who frequently is published in the SB News-press, Silicon 2.0 and other fine papers. He told me about his recent article in the News-Press about a new Cyber Cafe & Training Center called NetGT.
7:30 p.m. Stop!
In just one hour at SB Tech Brew I met with nearly a dozen interesting and important people, most of which are CEO's of local technology companies. I was sincerely happy to meet each of them and was amazed at what can be accomplished in just an hour here. Just imagine who you'll meet if you stayed from start to finish!
As you can probably tell by now, this is not a favorite hang out of the shy-type. SB Tech Brew is the place to walk, talk and hock your stock to the flock. Until the next Brew, cheers!
Got a hot tip on hi-tech in Santa Barbara? Contact John Dickson at SantaBarbara.com, 5385 Hollister Ave #106, Santa Barbara, CA 93111, or jd@santabarbara.com