A bit over an hour ago I got home from the first meeting of 106 Miles, which Joyce describes as:

a networking group for entrepreneurial engineers in Silicon Valley. The plan is to get together once a month in a casual atmosphere, have a couple beers and a slice, and ask questions of an invited guest who has good stories to tell about starting a tech company. It's basically a geek kegger with a slightly more directed chat in the middle.

And it was good.

We had time to get acquainted while folks arrived and discovered the beer. Then we moved into a large conference room where we got to hear about the experiences of Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer (of Excite, Digital Consumer, and JotSpot fame).

While they said a lot of interesting things, there are two I really picked up on. First, on the topic of keeping control as a startup grows into a larger company, Joe said that you need to decide early on what you want: control or success.

They also talked quite a bit about the importance of hiring the right people, noting that it's better to hire nobody than to hire the wrong person. And it may be a good idea to put of hiring as long as you possibly can--keep it small until you can't afford not to.

I can't really do the discussion justice--or the many conversations that sprung up over the beer and pizza that followed. But it was all Good stuff.

Thanks to Joyce for organizing and CommerceNet for sponsoring.

Posted by jzawodn at January 11, 2005 11:27 PM

Reader Comments
# Dutch Rapley said:

Actually sounds like a really cool concept. You would think someone could take minutes and post them on the site. Being on the other side of the country, I really can't make the meetings.

Cheers!

on January 12, 2005 08:19 AM
# AM said:

Creative way of spending some time off-work!

Are the meetings open to others ?
How do I know about future meetings ?

on January 12, 2005 10:41 AM
# Christopher Baus said:

It is these types of events that make me wish I could get down the Bay Area more often (to talk about the product I've been working on). I generally only get down there on weekends when geek networking events are few and far between.

on January 12, 2005 12:43 PM
# Adam said:

Actually, I took some notes on the first meeting:

http://ifindkarma.typepad.com/relax/2005/01/superhacker_and.html

It took me a month to get them on the web, but I finally got them up there... ;)

on February 25, 2005 11:55 AM
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