Gawker: valleywag, camp cyprus

Which founders frolicked in Cancun while you cleaned out your desk?

Paul Boutin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:53:53 EST

Last weekend, around 60 entrepreneurs under age 35 flew to Cancun for a retreat informally dubbed Summit Series. CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy was one of the press attendees who agreed not to name names. Nice try. The list of attendees identified below includes Dave Morin from Facebook, Joe Green who roomed with Mark Zuckerberg in college, and Sam Lessin who just got back from lip-dubbing Journey at Camp Cyprus. Tony Hsieh just laid off 8 percent of his Zappos staff. Ex-Googler Chris Sacca may or may not be rich, but I'm jealous of him anyway.

Dustin Moskowitz, Facebook co-founder with Mark Zuckerberg
Tony Hsieh, Zappos, CEO
Sam Lessin, Drop.io, CEO and co-founder
Chris Sacca, Venture Investor and former Google BD/M&A
Michael Chasen, Blackboard, CEO and co-founder
Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon, CEO
Jud Bowman, Motricity, CEO
Jia Shen, RockYou CTO and co-founder
Duke Chung, Parature, CEO and co-founder
Josh Abramson, Collegehumor.com, co-founder
Ricky Van Veen, Collegehumor.com, co-founder
Kamo Asatryan, LOLapps, CEO
Catherine Levene, DailyCandy, COO
Ben Leventhal, Curbed, Founder
Ben Lerer and Adam Rich, Thrillist Founders
David Karp, Tumblr, Founder
Ben Kaufman, Kluster, Founder
Lin Miao, Tatto Media, CEO and Founder
Sean Mills, The Onion, President
Kevin Colleran, FaceBook, Director of Media Sales
Dave Morin, FaceBook, Platform Manager
Josh Spear, Undercurrent, co-founder
Shawn Fanning, Napster, co-founder
Nikki Laffel, Gotta Mentor co-founder
Tim Ferris, Author and Entrepreneur
Charles Forman, Iminlikewithyou, founder
Maggie Grace, Actress on LOST
Joe Green, Casuses, Founder
David Hauser, GotVmail co-founder
Scott Harrison, Charity: Water, Founder
Graham Hill, Treehugger, CEO and Founder
Joel Holland, Footage Firm, CEO and Founder
Rob Jewell, SocialCash, CEO and Founder
Brian Monahan, People Search Media, co-founder
Mike Mothner, Wpromote, CEO and founder
Blake Mycoskie, Toms, CEO and founder
Liane Mullin, Modelinia, President and co-founder
Summer Rayne Oakes, Supermodel and Entrepreneur
Josh Peterson, Adteractive, President
Hilary Rowland, Hilary Magazine, Founder
Keith Richman, Break.com, CEO
James Siminoff, Phonetag, CEO and founder
Alex Zhardanovsky and Joseph Speiser, Epic Advertising, Founders
Eric Stotz, Karma Foundation, President and CEO
Neil Vogel, Webby Awards, CEO and co-founder

MySpace DJ taunts Wall Street Journal reporter

Owen Thomas — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:20:00 EST

Poor Jessica Vascellaro. The Wall Street Journal reporter will never be able to live down the video she and several Webhead friends recorded on a Cyprus vacation. The song-and-dance number was controversial as a sign of bubble-era excess — and as an indication that Vascellaro might be rather too close to the companies she covers. Last night, as Vascellaro partied at the MySpace Music party, the DJ put on "Don't Stop Believing" — the same Journey song which provided the soundtrack to their seaside frolics. Kara Swisher has video from the party:

Wealthy wantrepreneur Sam Lessin shows face in public

Owen Thomas — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Drop.io founder Sam Lessin, the son of Croesus-rich Wall Street investment banker turned venture capitalist Bob Lessin, is obsessed with privacy, the chief selling point of his file-sharing startup. Which is why a video he and 19 of his closest friends filmed themselves cavorting at his father's vacation home in Cyprus ended up splashed all over the Internet. And why, after he'd successfully rendered himself infamous, he turned out at a journalist-infested birthday party thrown for CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy and Scott Kidder, an employee at Valleywag publisher Gawker Media. Sure, Sam — keep telling everyone how important privacy is. And don't stop walking in front of cameras. He's shown here, at left, with a companion who's much more skilled at keeping his identity secret. (Photo by Random Night Out)

Camp Cyprus's incredible Journey

Owen Thomas — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Roundtrip tickets to Larnaca, Cyprus: $1,300. Lodging at your pal's dad's pad on the Mediterranean: Free. Getting your goofy video turned into a symbol of generational excess: Priceless. I'm starting to feel some sympathy for the Camp Cyprus 20, the crazy Internet kids who filmed themselves cavorting poolside at Wall Street big Bob Lessin's gleamingly white vacation home, to the tune of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." The charge: That they lacked self-awareness. Hence, for example, this remix of the video set to "Highway to Hell."

Are you kidding? These guys had two hours a day of poststructuralist textually-agnostic confabulism theory before lunch in college. On the surface, "Don't Stop Believin'" sounds like an anthem of cluelessness, a party song to get your frat-rock dance on. Listen closely, though, and you'll see that it's actually a nihilistic, no-future tale sung by a senselessly addicted gambler. The schadenfreude crowd is bent on telling these happy-go-lucky Facebookers and Googlers and Blip.tvers and Drop.ioers how they're gonna sing the blues. Guess what, guys? These Cyprussians have figured out that some will win and some will lose. Here are the lyrics to the song, annotated to further your understanding of the video's wit; deconstructionist comments welcome, but only if you're showing your wasted liberal-arts education to best effect.

Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin anywhere

Google marketer Brittany Bohnet. Apple, her previous employer, likely the "lonely world."

Just a city boy, born and raised in south detroit
He took the midnight train goin anywhere

Was Facebooker Dave Morin raised in South Detroit? Or is that a reference to the tough environment he faced as Facebook's chief platform evangelist?

A singer in a smokey room

Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Vascellaro, with a metaphor for journalism.

A smell of wine and cheap perfume

Her boyfriend, Drop.io founder Sam Lessin, whose dad provided the venue for wine and cheap perfume.

For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night

Venture capitalists!

Streetlight people, living just to find emotion
Hiding, somewhere in the night

Entrepreneurs!

Working hard to get my fill,
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin anything to roll the dice,
Just one more time

That's pretty much how it works on Sand Hill Road.

Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

The wrong startups will continue to get funded.

(chorus)

Dont stop believin
Hold on to the feelin
Streetlight people

Whoa ... uh oh!

The Cyprus 20 and the art of the single-take video

Owen Thomas — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:40:00 EDT

The deep mystery of the Camp Cyprus 20: What were they thinking? The most common theory floating around is that the 20 or so Internet-employed twentysomethings who filmed themselves cavorting by the Mediterranean, even as the markets imploded and Silicon Valley shuddered, were simply drunk. Oh no, my friends: This was planned. The beer cans were expertly placed props. Think about it: The Cyprus vacation home of Wall Street power broker Bob Lessin screams "music-video set." His son, Sam Lessin, invited a number of people, including his girlfriend, Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Vascellaro. She and the other bathing beauties all brought identical black-and-white checkered swimsuits. A single-take video like this doesn't just happen; in fact, it's something of an art form. It doesn't require the cinematic talent of a Welles or Scorsese, but it does require a stunning amount of free time. Here are three videos which likely inspired the Cyprus hill gang:

Vimeo, the IAC-owned video-sharing site, is widely believed to have popularized the form. Here's their single-taker:

Digg recently imitated Vimeo; the social-news site's CEO, Jay Adelson, boogies down, but nerd superstar Kevin Rose only makes a cameo:

But the best one of all has to be AOL France's layoff video:

Ah yes, layoff videos. We'll be seeing a lot of those, won't we?

It's the end of Web 2.0 as we know it

Owen Thomas — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:00:00 EDT

The infamous Camp Cyprus 20 are trickling back home. And they feel fine. The twentysomethings of Camp Cyprus work at companies like Google, Facebook, and Blip.tv, all of which make a business of moving our lives online. They gathered at the Cyprus vacation home of Wall Street banker Bob Lessin, overlooking the wine-dark Mediterranean, at the invitation of his startup-founder son, Sam, for a vacation. And in this hyperconnected age, they must surely be aware that a lip-synching video they made of their trip was an Internet sensation, marking the end of an era. If they feel any shame for popping the Web 2.0 bubble, they are not blogging, Tumblring, Twittering, or FriendFeeding it. The only concession to embarrassment over the incident was making the video private — and of course, it promptly resurfaced on YouTube and elsewhere.

Sam Lessin, in public, is a privacy freak; privacy is the sales pitch for his staggeringly unpopular blogging and file-sharing startup, Drop.io. But he invited a bunch of known oversharers — Facebookers Dave Morin and Meagan Marks, Google Maps marketer Brittany Bohnet, and the like — to his dad's vacation home, permitted the filming of the video, and starred in it himself. I doubt he cared very much that it became an Internet sensation.

No, I suspect that this takedown had little to do with Web 2.0, and everything to do with Wall Street. Even before the mortgage bubble popped, launching the credit crisis, being showy with wealth just wasn't done in the circles Bob Lessin circulates in. Showing off your dad's sweet pad only seems like a good idea if you're a Harvard legacy in your early 20s.

So is this the end of Web 2.0? Depends on what you mean by "Web 2.0." No one can quite agree. User-generated content? It's cheaper than the professionally generated kind; in recessionary times, it seems like it's here to stay. Likewise the fad for creating programmable interfaces for websites; getting coders to volunteer their time to make your product better sure sounds better than hiring them.

No, the real test is whether this millennial generation will continue posting videos when they don't have splashy trips to celebrate. Will they continue updating friends with every change in their status, when the news isn't that they've gotten hired, launched a company, bought something expensive?

When their buddies can't find work, when their startups run out of money, when they start leaving town en masse, what will they do? Promise to stay Facebook friends?

On Sequoia's firing line

Owen Thomas — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:00:00 EDT

What plots are the members of "Camp Cyprus," a group of young webheads, cooking up? Perhaps we'll read about them in a Wall Street Journal front-page A-hed, since reporter Jessica Vascellaro was on the scene, along with Wall Street-scion boyfriend Sam Lessin, the CEO of Drop.io. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments; the best one will become the new headline of the post. Yesterday's winner: TheChris2.0, for "McCain and Whitman unveil Social Security plan." (Photo by Sam Lessin)

WSJ reporter parties in Cyprus with people she covers

Owen Thomas — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

You can never escape the media! Valleywag's favorite hot-tech-company couple, Facebooker Dave Morin and Googler Brittany Bohnet, weren't vacationing in Cyprus alone. A whole group, "Campcyprus," attended the get-together in the Mediterranean island's Turkish-controlled sector. And who was in the in crowd? Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Vascellaro, who covers Facebook and Google, and her startup-founder boyfriend, Drop.io CEO Sam Lessin, the son of ultrawealthy investment banker Bob Lessin. Sam, who's normally obsessed with privacy, posted this photo of the couple. So cute!

And now I know why I got an out-of-office message from her when I complained about her nicking not one but two of my recent stories on Facebook for a Journal article! But I would have been more impressed with Vascellaro's honesty if she had said that she was going to Cyprus with "sources" rather than, as she Twittered, "buddies."

Catch Vascellaro's cameo in Bohnet's latest video:

Cyprus Lip Dub - Don't Stop Believing from Brittany Bohnet on Vimeo.

(Photo by Sam Lessin)