It was a late night for me last night as iMedExchange hosted the inaugural Seattle Poker 2.0 tournament at our offices. The purpose of the event was to bring together folks from Seattle-based startup companies to meet, hear about what's happening, share ideas, commiserate and have a good time in the process. We had two dozen attendees, all of which were startup company founders, execs or investors and most of them in the technology and/or internet space.

We started play at around 6:30 with 17 players and played until the first, second and third place winners were decided at around 11:15. I was fortunate enough to last until the final table but was then summarily dismissed within just a couple of hands. Fellow iMedExchanger Cliff Chirls (who you will be hearing more about soon) finished just out of the money in fourth place. The big winners were Cliff Monlux (1st) and Erik Jansen (2nd), both from the local Seattle private equity firm, Ramp Equity Partners. They both took a fair bit of trash talk for being the only investor types in the group and walking away with most of the money -- as "vulture capitalists" are frequently known to do. Cliff and Erik were both good sports about it and Erik generously offered to funnel his winnings back to group to sponsor the next event. Bravo, Erik! Third place went to Ian Gorrie, a local entrepreneurial technologist.

It was a great bunch of guys and they were all a blast to play poker with. However, the highlight for me was seeing the connections and hearing the conversations happening between players. The motivation for putting on the event was to foster useful dialog and synergies between Seattle area startups in a fun environment. My hat goes off to everyone who attended and made the event a success!

Bob Crimmins