Valleywag: jordan mendelson

Party correspondent confronts ghosts of Yelp parties past

Megan McCarthy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:00:36 PST

Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.

The insular crowd, however, all but ensured I'd meet up with Ghosts of Valleywag Past. No, not a spectral Nick Douglas or a scary Nick Denton — but other people I've read about, or written about. That vaguely familiar girl chatting with Jeremy Stoppelman? Oh! It's his ex-girlfriend Liza, reportedly the center of love triangle involving Valley good-time-guy Sean Parker. There's Steve Chen, the YouTube founder, with spiky hair and glasses, holding hands with his girlfriend while bidding Stoppelman adieu. Over there, by the bar, is Ooma CEO Andrew Frame, wearing a form-fitting leather jacket and sporting bangs. Bangs? Really? And Keith Rabois, the ex-PayPaler now at Slide, with the controversial Stanford history.

Then I met Snocap founder Jordan Mendelson, whose appearance with a bevy of beauties at last year's Yelp party lead us to crown him the Valley's newest bad boy. Boy did we peg him wrong. My first thought, after taking in his supreme untallness, was that he seemed like such a nice guy. And so unassuming. The expression of smug self-satisfaction in last year's pictures was missing. As was, apparently, his job.

I asked about Snocap, the troubled music startup he founded with Shawn Fanning, whom he worked with at Napster. Mendelson confirmed our rumor that he had left for another project. So, was he going to indulge his Valleywag-created persona and party hearty all night? Sadly, no. Mendelson begged off early during the afterparty at Mr. Smith's, in order to prepare for a venture meeting today. The bad boys are growing up — or at least learning when they need to put on appearances.

New details on Snocap's CD Baby breakup

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:08:02 PDT

When Snocap and music retailer CD Baby ended their partnership earlier this month, Snocap made like it pulled the plug. But today CD Baby president Derek Sivers put out numbers that show why it's no surprise Snocap had to lay off 31 of its 57 employees. Its partnership with CD Baby only generated $12,000 in revenues.

In a post to CD Baby's blog, Sivers details the costs his company faced dealing with Snocap as a partner.

We had to hire 6 new full-time customer service people just to deal with the thousands of problems. We couldn't fix problems ourselves, only pass them on, because all fixes had to be done by Snocap. A hundred times a day we had to helplessly apologize to our clients.

Every company meeting revolved around Snocap. Every employee had to be trained in the endless FAQ about Snocap. For the last 8 months, the CD Baby office has felt like a Snocap office. All we were doing, all day long, was dealing with Snocap issues.

But the pain felt necessary, because Snocap, with its deal to distribute music over MySpace, was expected to pay-out big. That little fantasy died when Snocap came to CD Baby with numbers, Sivers writes:

$12,000 total sales for the 8 months they'd been active. Since we keep a 9% cut, that's $1080 for us, total. Ouch.
As a curiosity, I quietly enabled MP3 sales on cdbaby.com, without telling anyone. A "buy MP3" button showing up next to the "buy CD" button.
In 3 weeks, with no announcements, we sold over $110,000 in downloads. Hm.

Snocap lays off 60 percent of its employees?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:17:54 PDT

A tipster reports that Snocap, the once-hot digital music startup from Napster founder Shawn Fanning and Silicon Valley bad boy Jordan Mendelson, has laid off 60 percent of its staff, and the company is up for sale. If true, it's not surprising, giving industry trends. Snocap was something of a second coming for Fanning; rather than fight the music labels, he aimed to help them release copy-protected files on peer-to-peer networks, so they'd get paid even if users shared files. But despite cutting a range of deals, the idea never really took off. And lately, the music industry has started to embrace the idea of doing without digital-rights-management software altogether. It's not clear who would want to buy Snocap, really. At any rate, this explains why we haven't seen Mendelson, pictured here in bubblier times, at many parties lately. Anyone hear more about Snocap's firings? Drop us a line.

Citizen publicist spanked

Paul Boutin — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 11:12:57 PST

PAUL BOUTIN — Note to Vivian, the lady who wrote Tuesday's entertaining party report on Snocap founder Jordan Mendelson: Yes, Jordan is upset with you. No, he didn't give the OK to send us that writeup. Yes, we all loved it! No, it did not make him look good - it gave the impression Jordan has higher priorities than Snocap. Yes, we know you meant well. No, you are not his paid publicist. Yes, we did some reporting on this and have sources, Vivian. No, we are not going to run a correction, because we used journalist kung-fu to avoid stating as fact anything we didn't know for sure, e.g. that Jordan is or isn't a playboy, or that he has or has not hired a publicist. Yes, we envy him. Night and day!

Jordan Mendelson parties down, hires publicist?

Chris Mohney — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:00:46 PST

Snocap's Jordan Mendelson is quite serious regarding his duties as the Valley's new symbol of personal bacchanalia. Witness these pics of a private cocktail party held this past weekend, sent along by a Mendelson fan who claims not to be his publicist. Large, lurid editions of the photos after the jump. And because we can't resist, there you'll also find the accompanying "party report," which is one of the funniest things we've read this month.

What started out as a 70 degree Saturday in San Francisco turned into one hot winter night for guests in attendance at Jordan Mendelson's exclusive, invitation-only cocktail party. It seems the Snocap co-founder wants to be more than a techie with a penchant for beautiful women—he also wants to be known for throwing some of the best parties in SF! Guests were treated to fabulous food, fantastic cocktails, and an unending flow of champagne

The SOMA loft was sparkling but the light from the party paled in comparison to the beautiful guests. What a smokin' hot crowd! The young, hip, well-dressed and successful attendees made for a ridiculously high concentration of hot people and more than one person commented on the fortuitous ratio of straight men to enticing women. Guests, who included several well-known straight and gay couples (and singles) in the SF social scene, drank, nibbled and flirted while eyeing and admiring each other's party outfits.

Though the party was scheduled to end at 1am, those who left early missed out on rounds of shots of Don Julio (Jordan's favorite tequila) and the impromptu, 3 a.m. dance party, which included, among the bumping and grinding couples, a dozen gorgeous women kicking up their heels and letting their lovely locks down. Everyone wanted to know who would make it onto the list for the next party—but lips are tightly sealed. Jealous on-lookers will just have to wait by their mailboxes for the next invitation.

When the music was turned down at 4 a.m., most of the girls left... although I can't (and won't) say who stayed over for the even hotter after party. Which begs the question—just who at the top of Jordan's seemingly endless harem ladies? It may not be as clear as it seems! Rumor has it, the Valley's newest bad boy plans on taking his favorite ladies to the VergeLA party in Southern California this week. Could it be the two pictured below [or "above" — ed.]? Maybe... but I'll never tell...

Developing!