Thumping bass, vampire squids and friendship bracelets.
I have no idea why Goldman Sachs GS invited me to their first ever South by Southwest party, held on a rooftop. As it turned out, neither did most of the attendees I spoke with. Half of them had no connection to the party’s hosts, which included the Wall Street giant and two venture capital firms. Almost everyone else had sneaked in from another party being thrown in the same building.
It wasn’t tough to play “spot the banker.” Among the typical techie crowd of young founders in startup t-shirts, flip-flops and wayfarers, a small handful of older men–sporting gelled hair, crisp button-ups, expensive blazers, khaki pants and square-toed dress shoes–observed the action like party chaperones.
I approached the first bankerly types I spotted and asked point blank: “Do you guys know why Goldman Sachs would throw a party at South by Southwest?”...MORE
They did; turns out I had approached the two people from Goldman who’d organized the event. Their easy smiles turned cold once they spotted the “Press” label on my conference badge. One of them even moved his Oakley sunglasses, which had been hanging around his neck via neck strap, onto his face like a professional poker player trying to hide his thoughts.
Off the record, he told me, Goldman threw the party for some fluffy non-answer reason I cannot write because I agreed to talk off the record. “What’s the on-the-record answer?” I asked. “We never go on the record,” he said....
