Chris Caen: So imagine there is more money than God, and it has no place to go, but there are a lot of cocktail napkins with things scribbled on them, and those are what are called start-ups. I’m being a little facetious but not by much. The joke used to be at the time, this being ’97 through 2000—the golden era—was basically all you had to do was stand at the corner with a cocktail napkin, and VCs would throw money at you from a passing car. I loved it.

Ev Williams: Every night there was a party to go to, where you could drink for free and eat for free and there would be lots of young people—half of whom were brand-new to town.

Patty Beron: The more extravagant the event was, the more publicity they’d get: the more write-ups, the more people talking about them, like, “I heard that blah blah blah had pig races at their party,” and “This or that party had ten-foot ice sculptures and vodka luges,” and things like that. It just became a thing to one-up the last party and get attention.

Ev Williams: I remember leaving some party with a bottle of champagne. It was like, “You’re leaving? Have a bottle of champagne!” In those days, it wasn’t a ridiculous gift…

Po Bronson: There was always this high-low tension that was always trying to make you feel like you hadn’t totally sold out—like you add some funk and you get rid of the guilt. Like everybody would wear a tuxedo with sneakers, or serve Kobe beef on a cheap ol’ napkin. It was some form of apology or some sort of a desperate cry to not be just about the money.

Tiffany Shlain: There was so much talk about IPOs that we had an Initial Pumpkin Offering for Halloween. Everyone came out to South Park. I still have all the schwag from that; it was very funny. It was a ridiculous time.