From: Calley Nye
Date: Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:35 PM
Subject: I could really use your help :)

Sorry for the mass email, but I wanted to keep you all informed about something I'm working on, and to ask for your support.

Today, I launched a social media fundraising experiment that I'm calling Start Me Up. Most of it is explained here http://calleynye.com/post/52663867/start-me-up

The accompanying post is pretty self-explanatory, just an explanation of my startup and why I'm raising money. But I wanted to share with you my real intentions.

In Jason Calacanis' email the other day, he talked about the startup depression. Several other people have been talking about it as well, and I think it could be a real problem. In a failing economy, it's not hard to lose faith in business and in part, yourself.

I hope that this can be a demonstration that there is always another way. The message is that it's not the end of the world if you can't get institutional capital, and that you hold some control in these troubled times. Entrepreneurial spirit is why we all wake up in the morning, and I don't want to see that die or suffer in anyway.

I would really appreciate your support in this, anything would help. Donations, tweets, blog posts, Facebook bulletins or forwarding this email.

Thank you, and if you have any questions you know how to find me :)

Calley Nye
Entrepreneur/Blogger/Marketing Consultant

(Photo by Andrew Mager)

Conference

• Connectivity still an issue. Wifi out on Monday and the major celebs showed up to kowtow to King Arrington and Jason
• There is a secret mutiny going on with startups in the pay-to-play Demo Pit. They gave out poker chips to ticket holders to vote for their favorite startups, there 3 colors one for each day to decide. A single company, through the use of hot and semi naked booth girls has managed to monopolize Day 1's chips (80). The winner of the chips would get a review and extra publicity. So to counter the startup — which does something stupid — there are now alliances going on where other startups are grouping together and sharing their chips so that one company doesn't win. So far about 20 companies are in this coup.

Dinner

• Showed up for Nicole Jordan's dinner party at Lulu's. The bill was like $3k and I had to pay like $100 when I thought the meal was free.
• Calley Nye showed up, brought by Larry Chiang, but very quickly cozied up to Barney Pell of Powerset. They were hugging and cuddling and the guy had his hand on her thigh/knee the entire time.

Party

• Held at club Temple, they intermixed the TC50 crowd with the young kids that just randomly showed up. Music was loud and obnoxious and the crowd was a weird mix of uncomfortable geeks and drunk kids.
• snuck into VIP floor with Mark Cuban and entourage, bought him a beer
• Met [former FuckedCompany blogger] Pud and spoke to him about startups and AdBrite. he's finally very happy with with the way it's working right now.
• Jason calacanis showed up and he was pretty drunk most of the time.

After party

• At the W Hotel bar/lobby with Jason Calacanis, Mark Cuban, Frank Gruber.
• Mark had a gaggle of blondes surrounding him. Most look 18. He kissed and rubbed quite a few them right next to me as I tried to get drinks. One was very upset that Mark wasn't giving her enough attention.
• Jason Calacanis is blizted enough to be stumbling everywhere
• Met a drunk girl that work for Geni/Yammer. She's apparently David Sak's BFF, some major assistant to the producer of Rush Hour or something. Got recruited from LA to handle "book-keeping and HR." says she's under NDA but eventually figured out that she has stock and they're working out a way to sell Yammer, a side project, by the next month.
• Calley showed towards the end of the night and approached Jason Calacanis while his wife was standing next to him but then Mark Cuban.
• As the party ended she's managed to convince him to let her hold his hand while he's hugging and kissing the other blondes.
• When we got kicked she managed to get herself into the front seat of Mark's surburban along with his entourage and left.
• Jason left in a limo at 2:30am with a very disgruntled wife and most likely not able to wake up for TC50 Day 3

"This was not going to be your mommy's website ... I wanted it to feel like a fashion and beauty magazine but with tremendous depth," Notkin told the Post blog. For "depth," read "Twitter," which Notkin credits with leveraging her brand or whatever nonsense phrase we're using today to excuse egolinking.

SavvyAuntie was among the most oft-Twittered words on its launch day — "her marketing is genius," said TechCrunch's snackiest flack, Calley Nye, before her own post got pulled, for, we guessed, overdoing the PR-speak. TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's unpublishing of Nye's post, not the brilliance of SavvyAuntie's business plan, was likely what launched it into Twitter microfame. But Notkin is a genius for spinning the snafu as an event that promoted her "visibility." Someone else's baby, someone else's blunder — it's all fodder for Notkin's marketing event. That's really savvy.

(Photo by Kelly Sue)

Shortly after discontinuing her own blog, Nye's byline appeared on TechCrunch, where she's become a regular contributor.

But her latest article on startup SavvyAuntie got pulled from the site shortly after being published. Despite the yanking, it still went out over the RSS wire and into a syndicated spot on the Washington Post's Web site. Could Arrington have reconsidered the wisdom of giving a professional startup rep space on the masthead?

Maybe Nye has taken off her publicity hat and decided on another career change — before marketing bands and startups with social media, she also bared all in work as a model. We can't help but admire the youngster's chutzpah, but Arrington should know that ostensible journalists laying down with their public relations enemies has traditionally been considered an ethical taboo. Next thing you know, the site might feature articles about companies written by people who've invested in them.