Cougar night busted in Silicon Valley!

The bar at the Rosewood Hotel, at the end of the fabled Sand Hill Road of venture capital fame, has been building up a reputation for a while now as a pick-up joint. I wrote a blog about the bar scene more than a year ago now, not realizing I was seeing the myth develop in front of my eyes.

But last night, as we sat at the outside bar watching the sun go down with some good friends, we commented how odd it was that a bar and restaurant that had always seemed packed seemed half empty.

And now this morning I found out why. The bar has been faux-busted for Thursday cougar night. According to the Merc, “a recent report that police
had arrested several big-name venture capitalists for solicitation — by
all accounts, a false story on a satirical Web site — seems to have
helped chill the scene, at least for now.” 

Faux-busted, not even really busted. The VC world is actually pretty conservative. Mostly white men, mostly funding deals they’ve seen before, following the pack. Only a few are truly risk taking visionaries. And sex is under cover here. Cars, wine, jets, houses are all on show, but the women I meet through my VC friends are almost always wives or daughters. Even so, the scene had definitely been building up at Madera, but who knows if it was pickup for fun or for money (or both)?

The scene will be back. And in the future, as we get more women in power in technology, maybe the Joss Whedon imagined universe of Firefly will happen even here.