(Photo: Charlie Rose)

The Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road, conveniently nestled near almost every important VC firm in the Valley, has long been a hotspot for wealthy VCs to meet potential mates. This is due in part to love concierge Amy Andersen, founder of the super stealth matchmaking company Linx Dating. She helped cultivate an unofficial “Cougar Night” at the hotel after setting up a meet-and-greet there for her wealthy clients in 2009.

Ms. Andersen helps geeky Valley guys clean up their act (Get a spray tan! Whiten your teeth!) and switch out the sandals-with-socks look with the hopes that they'll find the "Einstein-meets-Heidi Klum" of their dreams.

"A lot have been incredibly successful because of their analytical minds,” Ms. Andersen told Vanity Fair, "but women don’t want to be out with a cyborg." Speak for yourself, lady.

We're not really sure how Thursday nights at the Rosewood went from powerful VCs getting drinks to a "Cougar Night" so infamous even Starbucks baristas know to try their luck there, but luckily storied venture capitalist Marc Andreessen took to Quora to help explain it.

In response to the Quora question, “Why does the Rosewood Sand Hill attract its lively late-night bar crowd?” Mr. Andreessen wrote:

My theory is that the Rosewood bar is wired with video cameras and is actually a long-form reality TV show titled "Cougars vs Hookers".  Could be wrong though.

Someone get Andy Cohen on the phone so we can clear this one up ASAP.

(h/t Daily Mail)

Hey, Mickey (Photo: hollywood-elsewhere.com)

Mark MacLeod, a partner at the Montreal-based seed fund Real Ventures, recently posted a list of venture capitalists to avoid that quickly got passed around Twitter. Don't take money, he advised, from archetypes like "the banker," "the name-dropper," "the dude on 20 boards," etc.

Those kinds of self-interested parties have been circling around the tech scene for years. But perhaps the downward turn in startup financing is bringing back the sharp elbows that didn't serve as well in a "party round" atmosphere. 

Unfortunately, Mr. MacLeod may have another type of investor to add to his list: the dude who makes you pay to pitch.

A startup investor alerted Betabeat to an upcoming event hosted by FundingPost at Credit Suisse's Midtown office. The entry fee for "entrepreneurs raising capital" is $135 to $150 to meet investors; those who also want to attend a "pitching workshop" will have to fork over $420. "Pitch to 8 VC's and Angels - GUARANTEED," read the subject line of an email soliciting registrations.

The event is sponsored by Credit Suisse, among others, and features a long list of speakers, including, New York Angels, StarVest Partners, 37 Angels, ERA - Entrepreneur Roundtable, DreamIt Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Launch Capital, Golden Seeds, Rho Ventures, Canaan Partners, and many more. Unlike RRE and FirstMark, however, most of the speakers are second and third-tier investment firms.

This isn't the first pay-to-play event FundingPost has hosted. When we looked into the practice in 2011, FundingPost had recently held a lunchtime pitch practice that ran $75 to $350 to present.

The notion of struggling entrepreneurs paying for the privilege of pitching has attracted detractors in the past. Back in 2009, entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis wrote:

“It’s low-class, inappropriate and predatory for a rich person to ask an entrepreneur to PAY THEM for 15 minutes of their time,” he wrote. “Seriously, what is the cost to the party hearing the pitch? If you answered ‘nothing’ or ‘the cost of two cups of coffee’ you win the prize!”

But a new twist on FundingPost's event offers something more objectionable than just a fee: a set up modeled after a deli counter.

The biggest issue has always been the long lines. Well this year we are adding a take-a-number feature (like the deli counter) where you can grab a bunch of numbers from the investors you want to meet, and not stand on line! We will have all of the numbers displayed on the big screen (and a mobile page for your phone). You can stand on many lines at one time and just go from meeting to meeting, and network in the middle!

You can have #4 at one fund, #16 at another, #24 at a 3rd and plan your evening accordingly! And no, you can run in and grab all of the #1's at every table as you will miss all of your meetings except one... You need to be at the table when your number is called, or you will be skipped. The numbers will stop at #40, there will be open lines & networking after that.

"As a VC," said the source who sent us the listing, "I can't understand why you would want to be on this list, charging entrepreneurs to pitch you in a deli line style format." Startup founders with or without $135 to $420 to spare might be wondering the same thing.

In Adrianne Jeffries' feature this week on start-up fever affliciting New Yorkers with a bad case of  wantrepreneurship, we listed what we thought was already a high number of networking spinoffs from the original New York Tech Meetup. Dumbo Tech Breakfast, UWS Startup Meetup, and the New York Technology Bathhouse Meetup come to mind. But none of the options on that growing list meets the particular specifications of ff Venture Capital's David Teten. He and venture partner Mike Yavonditte from Hashable are launching "a periodic Meetup for people who work in the innovation community and who are parents of pre-teen children." Sorry, Fred Wilson, your kids are too grown.

On Business Insider, Mr. Teten writes, "We envision organizing activities that our kids, partners, and we will all jointly enjoy."

Ironically, Mr. Teten felt the need to create this new targeted meetup vertical because of the proliferation of events that leaves New York's tech set in a constant state of FOMO. For VCs with growing broods--they're probably a little more insulated from the cost of raising a kid in the city--that FOMO is particularly acute. Says Mr. Teten:

Now that I’m up to my 3^rd child, effectively all of my weekend/spare time is spent with the kids. That’s great, but it also means that I’m somewhat cut off from some of the great activities that the NY innovation community organizes every week: the classes, panels, presentations, networking events, pitch contests, etc. That’s why we’re working on this initiative.

Hmmm, come to think of it, we're feeling sort of feverish about a location-aware babysitting app that disrupts the venture capitalists with pre-teen kids market.