It seemed like the tech industry’s flusher days sort of.
A crowd of 200 or so gathered for two recent reunion events for the Venice Interactive Community, a group of techies now known as the VIC Network.
They met at VIC’s old haunt, the Victorian in Santa Monica, and while there was much reminiscing over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, there were also new business cards to exchange.
“It’s like the difference between a teenager and a young adult,” said VIC founder and tech entrepreneur Brad Nye. “There was a certain hyperactivity around the industry in ’99. This frantic nature of moving your company forward, getting the killer job with the killer salary and stock package.”
Many are still healing from the tech bust and are determined to approach things more cautiously this time around. They’re older now, too. An Apple laptop played mellow grooves, not thumping beats. Some members showed off baby pictures.
Even so, that familiar optimism creeps in when Nye and others start talking about going national and setting up satellite networks in other cities. VIC has become a corporation bent on networking and marketing its name. The group has already held two events in San Francisco.
“We’re trying to capitalize on the brand value of VIC,” said Tony Winders, an original VIC board member and now director of marketing for ValueClick Inc.’s ValueClick Media unit.
There’s reason to celebrate these days: $330 million of venture capital money flowed into Los Angeles and Orange County tech firms during the first quarter of this year, according to the most recent MoneyTree Survey.
“This is great news for the L.A. technology and digital media communities,” said VIC Network board member Mariana Danilovic, managing director of incubator Hollywood Portfolio LLC. “Top-tier capital is seeking L.A.-based deals.” She would like to see the new VIC Network provide access to capital sources.
VIC plans to appoint an executive director within a year. Annual membership dues will be $125, with a focus on making business contacts.
The group will use some form of social networking software providing members-only access to other members, job postings and partnerships.
Contact information has become a commodity, and VIC is placing a value on it.
“It will be our version of LinkedIn and Friendster for technology professionals,” said Nye, who spent the past several years in San Francisco working on a non-profit arts organization. There will also be a private blogging network, also members-only.
Party crowd
In the late 1990s, VIC threw great parties, boasting attendance in the thousands. It had a paying membership of 3,000 and a mailing list of 10,000. Though it also hosted educational events a breakfast series at the Four Seasons Hotel where chief executives of Fortune 500 tech companies were regulars that’s not what people mostly remember.
“VIC was known in the heyday because it was a party scene,” said Benjamin Kuo, keeper of the Socaltech.com newsletter. “It was the up-and-coming dot-comers. Other organizations were more professional, less social, more educational.”
VIC board members don’t deny that the group focused on the social aspects of the industry, but they say plenty of business partnerships and collaborations came out of those events, too.
“At the old parties, you could shake someone’s hand and five minutes later you’d have funding,” said Michael Terpin, chief executive of Terpin Communications Group and a VIC Network board member.
Of course, many of the companies folded and people sought other opportunities. Funding also faded, as did the hard-charging atmosphere.
VIC stopped meeting as a community. “There wasn’t much more you could do beyond work out of your basement for the first half of this decade,” Terpin said.
Besides mining its membership, VIC Network will produce events and charge for attendance. Some think it will work because of the need for networking.
Los Angeles is different from Silicon Valley, Kuo said. “You don’t bump into people on the street who are in the business.”
