Bangalore Open Coffee Kick Starts with Bang

What do you call a meet where about 60+ people interested in entrepreneurship drop by to share ideas? That's Bangalore Open Coffee Club for you all. I am speechless at the number of people and the quality (many of them are people who run their own start ups, a few VC's) . When me and Vaibhav started the marketing of this event, we expected about 15-20 to be a good number to call this event a success. Now the numbers speak for themselves of the success of the inaugural meet. Read on for more details.

I was there at Brewhaha a few minutes before 11:00am, and man there were about 10 people already over there. There was a bit of silence and I felt a bit awkward, but the talk started rolling out and then there was no stopping. By about 11:15am, there was fairly a large crowd(yes yes!!), and then I started out with an introduction of what we were going to do over the next two hours. Then it was Vaibhav's turn to speak and then the ball rolled on to all others. More than 55 folks introduced themselves, and there expectations from OCC Bangalore. Jace, Hari tried to live blog the event thanks a lot to them(i guess, there was some issue, but do check out for their version). I will mention some of the folks who were present, at the end of this post (the rest of you please excuse me and my memory, I will include the link to you, if you send across a mail).

Some key people for the event apart from all the interested and enthusiastic folks were Laura A. Perkin from the finance of NEN Online, Mr. SameerKanth a consultant at NEN Online, Yiting Shen a MIT Sloan student (she manages a fund, more details later). It was really wonderful to have you here at OCC Bangalore, thanks a lot and hope to see you more at the event.

The introductions were mostly about who they were? what they do? and what they expect from OCC Bangalore? To summarize the expectations, my key takeaways are as follows(please feel free to comment/add to these)

There were three kinds of participants at the meet.

1. Those who jumped (Entrepreneurs who are already doing it).
2. Folks who are about to jump.
3. Those who heard about OCC and trying to find out what it is all about!!

The key expectations from OCC (not in any particular order)

• Meet like minded people.
• A meet where techies meet people from other sectors(eg. law, finance, marketing etc)
• Discuss/ Bounce ideas.
• Discuss issues that startups face.
• Meet VC's.

Then we had a discussion on what people want from a regular meeting like this. Rajan tossed of his ideas from organizing MoMo Bangalore. Then there was a flowing discussion where Tejas, Bhaskar V Kode, Sandeep, Amit, Guna(was there at Chennai Open Coffee) and lots of others pitched in on what could be the direction for this event.

• Some wanted discussions.
• Some wanted VC's etc to come in and speak.
• Some wanted small discussions ensuring in forming of small groups where things can be discussed
• Some wondered if it was right sharing the ideas in an open house (share the basic idea, and talk to relevant people was my take).

There were a lot more ideas that were tossed in but thankfully my memory again deserts me at the moment of writing.

Finally we concluded with the idea that we will meet again on 2nd September 2007 at Brewhaha from 11am to 1pm. This time we will have an agenda over which we will meet. Post your thoughts on what you want here on the group (opencoffeeatbangalore).

On a personal note, there were so many folks whom I knew by face from barcamp who were here, Harish, Hari, Jace, Aashish, Amit, Mansi, Shivku, Manoj, Piyush, Rajan, Keshav, Himanshu, Saurabh, Anand, Sandeep,Akshat (If I missed someone whom I knew, memory dump!!).

Some of the others who were there (mentioning those who run companies,others whom I missed out please let me know)

• Deepak Shenoy and his partner (moneyoga.com)
• Prateek (Muzicboo.com) (Name is wrong)
• Aashish Solanki (Yulop)
• Guna (Medical Equipment)
• Karthik (Picsquare.com)
• Keshav (DigitalStraits.com)
• Akshat (Activemobs)
• Venkat (Outsmart)
• Prashant (Model Design)
• Rohit Bansal (Jasper)
• Parvez (Water purification and bio diesel)
• Aditya (Authme, presented at proto.in)
• Piyush Gupta (Routeguru, presented at proto.in)
• Shiv Prasad (p2p lending space)
• Pooran Prasad (Zealousnet)
• Vishwanathan (People2meet)
• Kunal and Kalyan ( iHipo)
• Harinath aka. Hari (Softrel)
• Meera (runs something for local communities)
• Sandeep ( i forgot which company)
• Ashwin Nandakumar (i forgot which company)
• Harish (again forgot which company)
• Tejas (again forgot which company)

It was really interesting and to meet you all. Bangalore Open Coffee Meet is your meet. It's a place where you want to meet others, learn with others and grow.

Spread the word, drop by, share your experience, and grow.
See you at the next meet.

PS: Thank you all for paying up for the coffee/snacks you bought. In the scale of the event, some of you have missed out on paying your due. Thanks to Vaibhav for sharing the spoils.

Releated Posts:

• Open Coffee, Wanna Have a Coffee in Bangalore
• Bangalore Open Coffee Club Meetup
• More on Open Coffee Club Meet Bangalore

Post Event Blogging:
Vaibhav at Technofriends
Himanshu Sheth at Thoughts Prevail
Harinath at Harisays
Jace on Livejournal
Saurabh at the100rabh
Piyush at Silicon Tryst
Sid at Siddhi

Liked this Post: Subscribe to the RSS feed to get the posts to you. You have the advantage of getting my deli.cio.us links on the feed.