HN Explorer

Vintage Startup Employee Swag?

33 points by joshqharris ↗ HN
Any startups you know that have unique & cool employee gear? I'm looking to buy ($$$)

Stripe, YC, Airbnb, Twitter, FAANG, etc (open to cool stuff from pretty much anywhere).

54 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] thread
nosefrog
I have a bunch of old Dropbox t-shirts that don't fit me anymore haha.
brk
Sounds like you need to de-dupe more of your input :)
dawnerd
There used to be a service that would send out startup swag (I think it was actually called startupswag). Wish something like that still existed.
rrival
"founder" of startupschwag here ( https://techcrunch.com/2007/09/03/return-of-the-schwag/ ) - passed the torch to a guy about 10 years ago - would be happy to talk about how to bring it back, at the time the addressable market seemed... small.

I still have a few kozmo tshirts from '99 around here somewhere =)

rrival
all credit goes to valley schwag for the original concept - they went on to better things (getsatisfaction.com) - but as a subscriber to that service, I inadvertently received a cc'd (instead of bcc'd) list of 500 of their subscribers, and when valley schwag shut down, I reached out to those past subs and TechCrunch to bring it back!
gopher_space
For t-shirts you'd have better luck at places like vintage by the pound in San Francisco if you're looking for stuff from the .com boom. If you're not local to the area you might contact a boutique vintage store and tell them exactly what you're looking for.
atdrummond
I was hoping this might be a place A) to discuss our own collections and B) where discussing older startups, such as Thinking Machines and NeXT, would be kosher.

Anyway, the biggest loss for me when I was beaten and robbed in the Tenderloin in December was the loss of my Thinking Machines windbreaker and NeXT pin. I hope the responsible assault participant truly needed them more than me and is enjoying them.

JohnBooty
Maybe that's what they were specifically after!

I'm so sorry this happened to you. I hope you are doing okay, physically and mentally.

Something like that can really mess with the mind, in subtle ways.

Austin_Conlon
Maybe the criminal was really upset about Objective-C.
atdrummond
If true perhaps I should just forgive and forget.
exdsq
I haven't been to the Tenderloin since I moved to the Bay - is it as bad as people say? I thought it wasn't so much violent crime as daylight drug taking etc...

Hope you're okay!

atdrummond
This was my first bad experience and honestly what's soured me is the police response, not what happened on Eddy or how I feel when I visit after the fact.
bryanrasmussen
Since it's your memory I think you should call CFRelease.

on edit: yeah I know a little out of date but...

atdrummond
I would have a bit more respect for them if that was the case - sadly, however, I am fairly certain they were after the cash I had just withdrawn for a local charity and my rent.

Really the most frustrating bit is that SFPD has the video, their names and a last known location which I believe to still be accurate. They continue to claim to be "too busy" to investigate the matter. Since I was "jumped" we believe they've attacked at least 3 others, including two elderly women, one of whom was still in intensive care as of last week.

jmcgough
The SFPD seems genuinely uninterested in dealing with anything short of murder. Bike or safeway theft rings, out of control vehicle break-ins. SF feels like such a hellhole sometimes.
ecf
They’re pretty good about protecting embarcadero parking lot profits by having a couple officers directing traffic at each exit
amdelamar
Physical NFTs! Sounds like a cool idea for a website...
eatonphil
When I was at Oracle, it was easier to buy Oracle swag from ebay than figure out how to get it internally... (Granted this likely differs a lot by business unit.)
fecak
I ran a large Java Users Group for several years when Java was part of Sun Micro and a handful of years after the transition to Oracle. I used to get swag for my members and did giveaways at meetings. I can say that Sun sent me jackets, shirts, books, you name it - once it turned over to Oracle, I had a hard time getting much.
toast0
> I can say that Sun sent me jackets, shirts, books, you name it - once it turned over to Oracle, I had a hard time getting much.

It seems like Sun just had a ton of swag. I was at a TopCoder event and chatted with a Sun rep who was fiddling with his laptop; I noted he had a neat USB hub with a Sun logo on it (pretty small, but I think it might only do usb 1), and he gave it to me. I suspect there was an overflowing bin of them back at the office.

cf100clunk
The best Sun swag I ever got was the leather Java jacket. I wore it once on a subway and kept getting asked how to get one by Java coders so I gave it away to a coworker for my peace of mind and privacy. EDIT: I wasn't even a Java coder at that time - I was sysadmin on Solaris machines, but swag is swag.
akoster
I acquired a Sun mug and card deck from a discard pile at an internship about 7 years ago, a few years after the acquisition by Oracle. Also in the pile was a mug with the pre-merger/acquisition Broadcom big sinc function logo. Glad to see this post that I'm not alone with a small collection of vintage tech swag. (Now I just need to find a Wang Laboratories bag like an older prof proudly carried around...)
cyberge99
I have an Oracle 5L tshirt from when they moved to Linux. Somewhere…
grogenaut
Twitch had the purple hoodie in a specific color that a few streamers paid $1k to get as it signified you were a partner (top tier streamer) or an employee. We had an event before PAX at a Game Works and for 100k tickets you could get a hoodie in that make/color. Streamers were frantically playing the ticket games to get 100k before midnight, it actually messed with the event a bit as they weren't socalizing.
ushakov
Herman Miller Aeron chair, made in 90s

tied to each and every startup employee for the last 30 years

https://www.fastcompany.com/1671789/the-untold-history-of-ho...

sokoloff
I’m sitting in one now and my wife and kid have their own as well. They’re great chairs (and, as you allude, often available from folded startups.)
rob74
Wow, looks cool, undeniably! Although for that price, they could have included a headrest...
praccu
Not for sale, I'm hijacking your thread, but I wear the heck out of my Google+ slippers.
propter_hoc
I recall there was a guy on HN that had a hobby of collecting swag from notorious bankrupt companies. Enron coffee mugs, Webvan T shirts, etc. Apparently Theranos stuff is hot these days on ebay.
second--shift
My company just got acquired, all our branding will eventually go away. Can't get too doxxy; HQ is in San Jose. I have a few items I'm getting rid of, I was thinking of you (or another collecter in your space) about exactly this topic when I heard about the acquisition.

How can I get ahold of you privately?

1MachineElf
Unique Thrift in Merrifield VA outside of Washington DC has a huge bag section that usually has stuff from various "beltway bandit" companies. I've collected a dozen pieces of swag for Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Gartner, IBM, Cisco, VMware...
BillSaysThis
I have a NetDynamics baseball cap from around '97.
fizx
If anyone has a copy of the twitter "#shirt" or the Andy Warhol bird shirt, I'd buy them off you too (lost mine moving sometime).
stergios
I have a never used clear Enron coffee mug, and a nice Overture (previously goto.net) gym bag.
zht
I've seen lots of Facebook swag at Goodwill in SF. Check thrift stores
dsr_
I have a BBN baseball cap with spinning propellor and Greatful Dead bear.

Sorry, not for sale.

If you want an Avi Freedman "I'd rather Snort Pickle juice" t-shirt, I can probably find one.

zilchers
Nothing beats the Dreamforce swag at the SF good will locations.
nunez
Might have some luck finding this at Goodwill Thrift Stores in the Bay
LeoPanthera
I think I still have my WebVan baseball cap. "One of the largest dot-com flops in history" according to Wikipedia.

I also have some pets.com stuff somewhere. I don't know why I only have swag from huge failures.

If you want your startup to succeed, don't give me swag.

lccarrasco
Optionally, they can give you competitor's swag.
edent
I have a bunch of SpinVox swag - including custom dolls - from before their fall from grace. Niche, I know! Contact details in my bio.
bradly
I have a few Apple branded items from my time there. My email is in my profile if you are interested.

I also have Merb sandals as well from the only Merb conf back in 2008, but I'd have a hard time letting those go.

closeparen
One of my favorite UChicago Scav list items: "Official swag from Arthur Andersen LLP, Lehman Brothers Inc., or Enron Corporation. [9 points]"

http://scavhunt.uchicago.edu/lists/list2014final.pdf

chiph
I used to work with someone who was a former Enron employee. The day they let everyone go, he went and cleaned out the swag closet and made a bunch of money reselling it all on eBay.