TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer (Photo: Thisistravel.co.uk)

Jetsetter, the luxury travel site that Gilt Groupe put up for sale for around $50 million back in October, has been acquired by TripAdvisor, according to a press release published to PRNewswire. A Gilt Groupe representative confirmed the acquisition to Betabeat. Skift reported back in March that Jetsetter was close to an acquisition, most likely by the travel reviews site.

"In a short span of time, Jetsetter has emerged as a premier player in the travel space, and we are proud of what the team has accomplished," Gilt Groupe CEO Michelle Peluso said in the release. "There are strong synergies between Jetsetter and TripAdvisor and we are confident that having Jetsetter be part of the TripAdvisor group will further accelerate its growth."

A report in the Wall Street Journal in October indicated that Jetsetter was having difficulties finding buyers as it had reportedly set its asking price at $100 million. However, a source close to the situation told Betabeat in October that the listing price was actually $30-50 million.

Jetsetter endured a series of ups and downs prior to Gilt's decision to put it up for sale. Its founder and former CEO Drew Patterson faced staffer mutiny last May before Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan asked him to step down. Mr. Ryan attributed Mr. Patterson's departure to turnover and low staff morale. "More than half of us are looking to leave within the next month, at which point the business won’t be operational,” a Jetsetter employee told Betabeat back in May.

“Too many people have left," Mr. Ryan told Betabeat after Mr. Patterson stepped down. "When you’re the CEO, you’re responsible for that. We’ve had a lot of communication over the last six months on this issue. At a certain point, for myself, you make a change.”

Meanwhile, TripAdvisor is no stranger to acquiring NYC startups. Back in October, it also acquired Brooklyn travel startup Wanderfly.

Update:

A source within the company tells Betabeat that TripAdvisor took the Jetsetter team out tonight to an open bar at Strand and told them "nothing will change." The source also said Jetsetter will be moving out of the Gilt offices "soon," and will keep some sort of relationship with Gilt, though it's unclear what that will be.

Additional reporting contributed by Nitasha Tiku.

YO. (Photo: TechCrunch )

File this one under 'second acts in American lives': This week, Business Insider honcho Henry Blodget gets the New Yorker treatment (subscription only, you cheap bastards), with a profile by none other than the bold-faced Ken Auletta. Sure, he's still banned for life from the securities business (for now!), but being written up by Mr. Auletta ain't too bad as a life consolation prize.

In Mr. Auletta's estimation, the media mogul comes across like a bit of huckster. Take, for example, his spiritual presence in the newsroom: “When he talks, his arms swing and his voice rises, conveying the enthusiasm of an evangelist." Early employee Peter Kafka came to a similar conclusion:  "He’s an excellent communicator," adding, "He has a great Barnum in him."

Ringmasters may bring the crowds, but you don't want to end up with a briefcase full of snake oil, either:

"A senior Wall Street executive, asked if he trusted Blodget, said, 'Of course not. This doesn't mean he can't have good ideas. But he's a promoter.'"

You don't say!

Mr. Auletta even lends his considerable powers of analysis to explain that absurd "I Rode in a Big Metal Sky Bird!" post:

"The post is consistent with a conscious decision that Blodget says he made at the outset 'to put the fun back in business' by making light of people in the news and of himself. 'If we see something is funny, we don't wait to see if the Pulitzer Committee likes it,' he said. 'We post it.'"

Mr. Auletta boils the company down to its essence: "If Bloomberg and Fleshbot had an illegitimate child, it might look something like Business Insider."

Unfortunately, all that song and dance isn't enough to turn Business Insider into a money-printing enterprise just yet, but you can't have everything. According to the piece, Business Insider lost $3 million in 2012, though Mr. Blodget later added on Twitter that the company turned a small profit in Q1. (He also insisted that $3 million was an "investment," not a loss.)

The company's chairman, the ubiquitous Kevin Ryan, blames the loss on aggressive expansion and says the company will do $11 million this year in revenue this year. Mr. Ryan admitted, though: "That's tiny. Ad rates are low. It's tough to monetize."

Still, we like to imagine William Randolph Hearst looking down with a gleam in his eye and a whisper: "Attaboy."

Mr. Patterson

Skift broke the news today that former Jetsetter cofounder Drew Patterson was named the new CEO of Room 77, a hotel price comparison startup that raised almost $44 million in funding from investors like Expedia, Concur, Bob Pittman, and General Catalyst Partners.

Mr. Patterson was CEO of Jetsetter--a flash sales luxury travel site operated independently under the Gilt Groupe umbrella--for more than three years until Gilt Groupe chairman Kevin Ryan asked him to step down last May. The move by Jetsetter's board followed an exodus of senior executives, low morale, and fears of a "mutiny" among staffers. 

After leaving Jetsetter, Mr. Patterson, a former executive at Kayak.com, cofounded CheckMate, an app that allows hotel guests to check-in from their smartphone. He's served as CEO there since January, according to his LinkedIn profile and has changed his Twitter handle from @JetSetDrew to the more nimble @DrewPats. Skift reports that Room 77 has "absorbed" CheckMate, as well as Mr. Patterson's cofounder, Adam Rugel and some team members.

Skift also reports that Mr. Patterson been busy raising money for Checkmate and already secured funding from high-profile techies like Twitter cofounder Biz Stone and Twitter's former chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury.

In an interview with Skift, Patterson, who was VP of marketing at Kayak for three years before co-founding Gilt Groupe’s Jetsetter in 2009, said no company has “claimed the mantle of leadership” in mobile and vertical hotel search, which he described as only being “in the second or third inning.”

With all that investor pedigree, Skift wondered whether Room 77 should have "tapped a CEO candidate with public company experience for a possible IPO," posing questions about the motivations of Room 77 founder and chairman Brad Gerstner:

Speaking of spin, some will question the announcement’s back story.

Gerstner and Patterson say the idea to hire Patterson as Room 77′s first CEO only emerged around three weeks ago when the two were having dinner and discussing mobile, hotel search, and Patterson’s fledgling CheckMate.

As chairman and founder, Gerstner has wielded control of Room 77 since its beginnings in 2010. Perhaps opting for Patterson instead of one of the “bigger names” would ensure that Gerstner’s choreography goes unchallenged.

That's the thing about founder/chairman, they tend to like to control.

As for Mr. Patterson's former company, Gilt Groupe put Jetsetter up for sale last October. At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported Gilt had trouble finding buyers and lowered its asking price.

When we spoke to Mr. Ryan in December, he said everything was on schedule for the sale and that he expected "binding bids" due that month. We asked about the status of the sale this afternoon, but a Gilt Groupe representative declined to comment.

Into all that drama jumped Decoded Fashion with an exceedingly practical idea: a fashion hackathon where industry insiders tell techies what's actually lacking in the market. In other words, rather than the umpteenth street style photo-sharing apps, how about the next Fashion GPS, a digital tracker for samples and look books used by designers like Lanvin, Dior and many, many more.

The hackathon, which took place at AlleyNYC in Midtown last weekend--Betabeat was one of the judges--began with a panel of designers like Rachel Roy and Uri Minkoff, founder and CEO of Rebecca Minkoff, who stressed the need for innovation in areas like managing manufacturers, analytics tools around a product's success rate, and getting the right items in front of the right customer when they're ready to buy.

Decoded Fashion, which was founded in 2011 by Liz Bacelar, acts as a liaison--introducing startups and emerging technology to leaders in fashion and retail through events and discussions. Stephanie Winston Wolfkoff, the ringmaster of Fashion Week, is Decoded Fashion's co-executive producer. The organization is supported by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the hackathon winners were chosen based on a number of factors, including how well the hacks would further the mission of the CFDA. (Top prize: $10,000 and CFDA will build your app.)

There's been some grumbling about corporate hackathons of late--and the "fine line between engaging and exploiting." But in a Series A crunch, Decoded's set up seemed like a call for rationality, at least to us. There were also plenty of familiar Silicon Alley faces by way of tech bona fides. Mentors included Startup Bus conductor Mike Caprio, Andy Hagerman from The Design Gym, and Status Chart founder Chris Kennedy, whom we named one of the most poachable players in tech in last Spring.

In addition to getting the right balance of fashion vs. tech and startup folks vs. industry big wigs, the crowd of about 300 was also markedly diverse.

"I’ve been to many hackathons before. I’ve never seen a fashion hackathon with that much diversity of thought--this diversity of race, with this diversity of gender," a 7-months pregnant Ms. Bacelar told the crowd. "We’re 40 percent female here today and I’m so so proud. We didn’t recruit for that, it just happened. It shows how technology is changing and I’m so proud of it so thank you."

And, seriously, you've never seen such a well-dressed bunch of bleery-eyed coders. We spotted knee-high shearling boots, two shimmering gold numbers (one worn by Tumblr fashion evangelist Valentine Uhovski--a fellow judge) and plenty of leathah.

Unlike your traditional hackathon, the five finalists chosen had from Sunday until the grand finale, which will happen on the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week with a keynote from Zach Posen and Dennis Crowley. Yes, like QR codes, apps are about to make their big tent debut.

So despite concerns about vaporware, judges were looking for ideas that would present well in a couple weeks--with advice from mentors like Kevin Ryan along the way. (Notable considering some of the chosen few sounded like future Gilt Groupe acquisitions.)

The finalists included Coveted, a universal checkout platform for brands on Tumblr. That one is already in operation, as one of the hackers demonstrated by buying a $250 pair of sunglasses live during the demo. Fashion Dashboard, which analyzes how consumers are interacting with your brand, was another winner for displaying how Prada store windows are popular on Instagram and Foursquare check-ins on H&M. 42 was chosen for its attempt to measure and personalize in-store experiences, as opposed to offline ones. Then there was Avant-Garde, which wants to help with excess inventory by looking at the social media activity of customers on your mailing list. Lastly, SwatchIt is an app designed to help with inefficiencies of sourcing material from, say, rural parts of India so that designers can send questions and get a yes or no response to a database of artisans.

You can check out more information about the projects via Hacker League.

The five finalists will be whittled down to three before the 14th. Now we just have to figure out if there's anything in our closet that won't get us kicked out of the tents.

(Photo: AlleyCorp)

A little more than a year ago, Betabeat reported that despite his lofty role as chairman and chief executive officer of 10gen, the company behind the MongoDB database language, Dwight Merriman was still mixing it up with his developers, drinking beer and writing code with the company's engineers. 

So when news broke this morning that Mr. Merriman was giving up the CEO job at 10gen to focus his time on the chairman's role, we wondered if it meant he was giving up the technical side of his function to concentrate on the business side of things. Au contraire.

"I was the CEO that codes," Mr. Merriman told us over the telephone this afternoon. "Now that the company is order of magnitudes bigger, the coding part of the job has been getting squeezed."

To free Mr. Merriman up to keep his hands on the product, 10gen elevated Max Schireson from the role of president to CEO, allowing Mr. Merriman to spend more time working on the company's core database kernel. That could mean coding, or architecture or product definition, Mr. Merriman said, stressing that he'll still be engaged in functions more typically associated with a company's chairman.

"It was sort of interesting question what the right title would be," he said. "The best analogy is probably that I'm operating like a founder of company would do, where I touch lots of things. If we changed my title to something more tech, that’s not accurate either. I'll still be doing a lot of work on the business side, whether it's thinking about strategy or talking to customers."

At that, a founder's role is appropriate for Mr. Merriman, the DoubleClick veteran who cofounded 10gen in 2007 as part of the AlleyCorp network. Of course, it was less than two months ago that another AlleyCorp company saw its top executive move on to a chairman's position. Did Kevin Ryan's decision to cede the CEO job at Gilt Groupe influence Mr. Merriman's thinking about his own role at 10gen?

"I think the timing similarity is completely random and coincidental, and the reason for those changes is different," Mr. Merriman said. "For one thing Kevin is spending a little more time on 10gen, a day a week up from something more like a director's level of engagement. ... For me, it's no change in the distribution of my time."

(We told Mr. Merriman that if Henry Blodget—CEO of Business Insider, another AlleyCorp company—announces he's giving up his CEO title, we'd be mad at Mr. Merriman for not giving us a hint.)

Meanwhile, Mr. Merriman said he decided to make the change ahead of 10gen's annual meeting next week, when the company's 200 employees will gather in Florida. The changes, the new chairman said, from Mr. Schireson's ascension, Mr. Ryan's added involvement and his own more varied role, would help to build on the company's promising 2012.

"There's huge potential there," Mr. Merriman said. "It's growing so fast, it’s going to be a very large company."

Ms. Peluso (Photo: Working World)

Earlier this afternoon, Gilt Groupe named a new CEO to replace founder (and current CEO) Kevin Ryan. Michelle Peluso, formerly the president and CEO of Travelocity, will take the top slot at the flash deals site beginning in February. Ms. Peluso, who currently serves as the chief marketing and Internet officer at Citigroup, is also the only outside member of Gilt Groupe’s board who isn't an investor. She joined the board in October 2009.

"There aren’t that many people that you would trust to become CEO of a company that you’ve spent five years building and that has a thousand people," Mr. Ryan told Betabeat by phone. "She’s always been my first choice. But in the process, midway through, you can’t say ‘Oh my God, I really want Michelle,' because she hasn’t said yes yet; we haven’t made an offer yet.”

The news comes on the heels of swirling rumors that Gilt was looking for an IPO-friendly CEO to replace Mr. Ryan. At the time, a source close to the company told Betabeat that it was never Mr. Ryan's intention to stay on as CEO. Mr. Ryan will continue working closely with Gilt, returning to his previous role as chairman, but shift his focus to other fast-growth companies in the AlleyCorp network: Business Insider and 10Gen. Ms. Peluso will be the third CEO in four years, following Mr. Ryan and Susan Lyne, who stepped down to the chairman spot in 2010, swapping roles with Mr. Ryan.

"So I actually approached Michelle a year ago. One of things I do is that I’m thinking about recruiting all the time," Mr. Ryan said, noting his attempt to hire away a woman in charge of suite sales for the Jets after attending a game seven months ago. "Fast forward, she works at Gilt City today."

Gilt has had a fair amount of difficulty expanding its business in recent years. Its forays into full-price menswear and travel didn't pan out, with its travel vertical Jetsetter now for sale for around $50 million. Back in January, the company laid off 90 employees, closing Gilt City offices in six different markets.

Mr. Ryan said that part of Ms. Peluso's appeal is that "the managing team really likes her." During the search process, he interviewed former employees of hers who said the same thing. "That was important to me," said Mr. Ryan, who let go of Jetsetter CEO Drew Patterson back in May.

Another factor in Ms. Peluso's appointment was her experience with different-size companies. "Here’s a hard thing when you look for someone in this spot. You want someone who has entrepreneurial energy and focus and moves quickly. At the same time, we’re not a 20-person company, we’re a 1,000-person company and with global operations. So you need to have that big company structure and thought process, but not slow you down--and that’s a weird hybrid," he said. "I’ve interviewed people from big companies and I’m like: oh my God, they’re going to be a disaster here. They’re gonna wanna take too long on everything. And yet people can be too sloppy if they just come from startups."

In contrast, Ms. Peluso had sold her travel company Site59 to Travelocity for $43 million in 2002. Her startup was "sort of like a Jetsetter, actually," Mr. Ryan said. "The unusual thing is that they made her the CEO of Travelocity, which is a 5,000-person company!"

Was Ms. Peluso's marketing background ideal in light of Gilt's expected IPO road show? "The most important thing is that you run a good company," Mr. Ryan insisted. "Because you can be a terrible presenter, but if you show up and you have great results, you know public investors will love you. Second thing, you’re right though, is being able to present well."

In January of this year, Mr. Ryan had predicted an IPO for Gilt in the fourth quarter of this year or 2013. That timetable has been delayed. In an interview with AllThingsD, Mr. Ryan mentioned Zynga and Groupon's performance in the public markets with some distaste. He told Betabeat that because Ms. Peluso won't join until next year. "She needs to be here a couple months before we can make the decision and say go," he said, predicting an IPO by either end of next year or the end of 2014. "If I had to refine it, I’d say end of 2014," he added.

"Look no one loves the prospect of going public for all the obvious reasons," Mr. Ryan acknowledged. "On the other hand, it’s inevitable that any company I’m in--if they get really big--either they sell or have to go public. You need to get liquidity at some point." However, he added, "It depends on your alternatives. I think in Gilt's case going public is the best option. If someone walks up tomorrow and says, 'Here’s $10 billion,' I’ll call you up and say, 'Guess what? I got a better option!"

As for the impending sale of Jetsetter, everything is on schedule, Mr. Ryan said, with binding bids due in the next two weeks of December. "You never quite know whether you get zero bids or five bids," he said. "But so far the right things are happening, and that would close in the first quarter."

We'll use this as an artist's rendering. (Photo: flickr.com/lac-bac)

Silicon Alley Smackdown One of the many tech events on rain delay because of Hurricane Sandy was the Big Apple Smackdown ping pong tournament, whose guest list included an impressive number of familiar names from the New York tech scene. (Betabeat is one of the media sponsors, so we may be a little biased.) Among the techno-athletes scheduled to play was Gilt Groupe CEO--and soon-to-be Gilt Groupe chairman--Kevin Ryan. Apparently, we missed quite a show.

The tournament was scheduled for Sunday, "and I played on Friday and on Sunday just to get ready for it!" Mr. Ryan told Betabeat. Really? "Oh yeah, because I won a tournament about a month ago." That was an invitation-only affair for ping pong ringers at the Hamptons manse of ABC Carpet & Home's Ken Pilot. "You had to put $100 into the pot and the winner got two-thirds of the pot, so I was pretty excited about that," Mr. Ryan enthused.

Mad that Sandy ruined your chance to see him action? You can drown your sorrows at Appular's F#@K SANDY event this coming Thursday and throw one back for a good cause.

Make It or Break It Start-Ups: Silicon Valley glamazon Kim Taylor finally has a name for her soon-to-launch startup, and being the gymnast that she is, she's named it after a move from Yelena Shushunova’s floor routine. The former NBA dancer will launch Shonova this winter, targeting the "millennial luxury fashion market," because you can never have too many websites dedicated to selling expensive clothes to young professional women.

LOLfamous Speaking of Bravo, it appears that I Can Has Cheezburger founder Ben Huh is starstruck by himself. Following the premiere of his new Bravo show, LOLwork, Mr. Huh tweeted a link to his freshly-minted IMDB profile with the caption "So...this happened." Don't let the fame get to your head!

And the techno's so loud USV ringleader and hometown hero Fred Wilson is wheels up and L.A.-bound today. However, his wife--Gotham Gal and investor-in-her-own-right Joanne Wilson--booked the tickets, and so he's not flying his preferred airline. Instead, he's flying Virgin, which is not his preferred airline and for a very specific reason: "I find flying on Virgin like going to a nightclub because of the lighting and I avoid it as a result." We always suspected Mr. Wilson was more of an indie music club kinda guy, and this cinches it.

"Executive scent" It seems that, after several years of "sifting through the crap," Team Thrillist has finally found the platonic ideal of brochandising. Behold:

Via Thrillist CEO Ben Lerer's Instagram.

So saucy Betabeat hates to clutch her collective pearls, but my goodness! Who knew the crowd at AllThingsD were quite so naughty? (Okay, we had an inkling.) Earlier this week, ATD doyenne Kara Swisher tweeted out the link to a colleague's story, which had the headline, "Meet the Man Behind Those Hot Pink Mustache Rides." Catalyst Group CEO Nick Gould immediately gave that the side-eye, noting that he "Can't help wondering if @lizgannes is aware of the off-color meaning of the term "mustache ride." Ms. Swisher didn't miss a beat: "i mean I ASSUME she is. I am." Duly noted.

Digging up history The Computer History Museum, located in Mountain View, California, is kind of like mecca for tech geeks. Contained within its hallowed walls are artifacts that tell the history of computers and videogames. Among those artifacts, apparently, is a copy of Windows 1.0, originally owned by Digg founder Kevin Rose. "My copy of Windows 1.0 on display!" Mr. Rose wrote in a caption for the below photo. A nerd's dream come true.

(Photo: Instagram)

Mr. Ryan (Photo: Invoke Media)

Weeks after news broke that flash sales giant Gilt Groupe put its travel deals site, Jetsetter, up for sale, the Wall Street Journal reports that Gilt is looking for a new CEO to replace company founder Kevin Ryan. Sources told the Journal that Mr. Ryan and the Gilt board agreed two months ago to quietly begin the hunt for a new CEO who can help usher the struggling e-commerce site towards a successful IPO.

Despite flailing forays into verticals like menswear and travel, Gilt is still eyeing going public within the next 18 months, and wants a CEO who can revamp Mr. Ryan's business strategy in order to "generate sufficiently predictable profits."

This is the second high-level shakeup in four years for the New York-based e-commerce company. In September 2008, Susan Lyne was brought in to head the company, but was then replaced by Mr. Ryan in 2010 as Gilt was poised to expand into new markets.

Gilt has not been without its stumbles. Back in January, the company laid off 90 employees, closing Gilt City offices in six different markets.

UPDATE 2 p.m.: Betabeat spoke with a source close to the company who offered a different version of events. According to the source, it was never Mr. Ryan's intent to stay on as Gilt Groupe's CEO through its transition into a public company.

Gilt Groupe is one of three companies in the AlleyCorp network, along with 10Gen and Business Insider--both prominent, fast-growth New York startups. Mr. Ryan's business partner Dwight Merriman, a fellow DoubleClick veteran, also does not have plans to stay on as CEO, should 10Gen go public, added the source.

Considering Mr. Ryan's tenure at Gilt, the source also scoffed at the idea that the board, where Mr. Ryan has voting power, was searching for someone with more ecommerce experience. Rather, the source said the board had always been aware of Mr. Ryan's intent and with an IPO possibly happening within six months to a year, it was time to start the search.

Now that 10Gen is busy scaling--the source said 10Gen had raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation--Mr. Ryan will be advising on matters like sales, as opposed to 10Gen's early day when Mr. Merriman, DoubleClick's former CTO, exclusively handled 10Gen for AlleyCorp. Mr. Ryan also recently joined the board of the Yale Corporation, which manages a $19.3 billion endowment.

The source said Mr. Ryan is expected to still devote the bulk of his time to Gilt and will keep his office with the company, returning to the type of role he had in his previous post at Gilt's chairman.

Nitasha Tiku contributed reporting to this article. 

One of Bonobos' displaced Ninjas. (Photo: Tumblr)

Many startups are able to work remotely with just a laptop and a working Internet connection--though good luck finding one right now. But for ecommerce companies focused on pushing products out into the real world, "just ship it" is taking on a whole new meaning. Between extensive power outages and three days without a functional subway, the disruption is likely to last through the week.

"Eccommerce companies are lucky since we don't have physical stores--we can handle a break pretty easily," said Gilt Groupe CEO Kevin Ryan. "We are a little bit like an airplane," he added: "you can turn off the engine for a little bit and there is no problem--if you turn off the engine for a while it is a disaster, but a few days is not a big problem."

That doesn't mean recovering from Sandy has been painless, though.

Many of the companies we talked to didn't have power, and they were preparing their customers for delivery delays.

JackThreads CEO Jason Ross reported that the company's Soho HQ is closed, as they've got no power. Many employees don't either, but they're doing their best to work. Problems also stemmed from JackThreads’ facilities across the East River: "Our warehouse and photo studio in Brooklyn have been shut down the last two days which has delayed our sales calendar as we can't receive merchandise, photograph merchandise or ship anything," he told Betabeat via email.

Mr. Ross expects the warehouse and studio will be back up and running sometime today, offering any employees who can get there a place to work. He's hoping the Soho office will be back online by Monday.

Bonobos' offices at West 25th and 6th Avenue are also closed, as they don't have power. "While Bonobos' 'free & fast' shipping generally arrives in two-days, delivery delays are expected," spokesperson  Kaitlyn Axelrod told Betabeat via email. Packages are getting out of their Massachusetts warehouse, they might take a few extra days to reach customers.

Meanwhile, Bonobos' customer service staffers in New York City are working where they can, and the Palo Alto team has stepped up to support them. "Ninjas are available via phone, email and social media to help customers track packages and answer questions," said Ms. Axelrod. The company's stylish employees have even created their own Tumblr, chronicling work-from-home post-Sandy.

Birchbox, Rent the Runway, and AHALife are all dealing with delivery delays, as well. "There have been a lot of elements out of our control," Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman told Betabeat.

Even for companies with working offices, it's all hands on deck. BaubleBar's Flatiron HQ didn't even lose power or Internet--"not sure how we narrowly escaped that," cofounder Daniella Yacobovsky told Betabeat via email. Yesterday, almost all of BaubleBar's staffers made it into the office, trekking from four of the five boroughs.

"People who lived near one another carpooled in (most with 2 hour + commutes), lots of folks brought food for the team and everyone has collectively put down their work and come into operations to help QC and fulfill orders," said Ms. Yacobovsky.

For the most part, companies seemed grateful the damage wasn't worse. “We’ve gotten in touch with every member of the team and they’re all safe," JackThreads' Mr. Ross said, sounding upbeat. "Everyone has found a safe place where they are able to work diligently and stay positive and productive.”

While Gilt Groupe doesn't have power in its main offices, the company's Brooklyn outpost (typically used for photo shoots) should be up and running again today. Because their customer support and distribution centers are located outside New York City, Mr. Ryan expects delivery delays of no more than a few days, and since they shoot product photos almost a week in advance, they haven't missed anything yet. "But one or two more days and it would have had an impact," said Ryan.

As it is, the hurricane has "hardly impacted business." They maybe lost 10 percent of sales for Monday and Tuesday, but overall they came out about even: "The bottom line is that some people had no electricity or phones so they obviously did not shop, some had mobile only and were bored so they shopped a little and some had both and were locked in their apartment and bored and they shopped a lot," said Mr. Ryan.

"In general, we got off very lucky," he said.

UPDATED: Gilt Groupe also tells us that, to help the affected areas get back on their feet, Gilt City NYC  will be donating 30 percent of profits from now through Sunday to the Red Cross's hurricane relief efforts. AHALife will also donate 15 percent of sales from October 31 to November 4 to the disaster response organization Team Rubicon.

Additional reporting by Nitasha Tiku.

Cheryl Mills (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

A lot of startups are letting their employees work from home for the next few days because of hurricane Sandy. That's all swell news, but those members of New York's tech scene who were supposed to go out and party or sit through conferences are screwed. Tech events are getting cancelled left and right, though some scene luminaries don't seem to mind.

AllThingsD's "D: Dive Into Mobile" conference has been postponed until a later date that will be announced as soon as possible. The event had originally been set for tomorrow and Tuesday in New York City. If you booked a room at the Ritz Carlton (looking at you, VC's), the hotel is apparently giving full refunds and waiving cancellation fees. Speakers like Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy and Hillary Clinton's Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills, will just have to wait until another day to make their speeches.

The Big Apple Smackdown Tourney, a ping pong tournament held at Susan Sarandon's SPIN and co-sponsored by this very blog, was postponed until further notice. Gilt's Kevin Ryan will have to wait to face off in a heady match of pong against David Tisch and AllThingsD's Kara Swisher. Ping Pong'ing with the Tech Stars sounds like a Bravo reality show just waiting to happen. Maybe the rain delay will give Andy Cohen some time to hash out that concept. The event will be postponed "until a later date."

Facebook, however, is the company shedding the most tears about Sandy. They've had to cancel two of their New York events set for this week. The first is a Tuesday engineering open house that was planned for the social networking site’s New York HQ in midtown. And, more importantly, Facebook's Gifts event--set for Thursday at FAO Schwartz--has been nixed too. According to AllThingsD, Facebook was set to use the occasion to announce partnerships for its new platform that allows users to send gifts to each other in real life.

Monday's Google event in New York has also been shut down ahead of schedule. They were expected to present the Nexus 10 tablet and an updated version of Android OS. Guess you'll just have to use your old gear through the storm and dream of the bigger and better things that will come after the skies clear.