Where the Venture Capital and Sangria Flow

Bobbie Kilberg's Hot Tickets Award Party in 2004. Guests this year were especially enthusiastic about venture capital's prospects. (By Michael Lutzky -- The Washington Post)

Sangria, sweat and silly Hawaiian shirts were the motifs Thursday night for the fifth Hot Ticket Awards party, a once-a-year chance for Northern Virginia's high-tech leaders to exchange cards, back-slap and celebrate the region's recent economic boom.

This year, even more than in 2005, guests talked with enthusiasm about the flow of venture capital funding and the pipeline of new start-ups as causes to celebrate.

More than 400 tanned chief executives, venture capitalists and the assortment of accountants, PR reps and lawyers that serve them made the annual pilgrimage to the McLean home of Bobbie Kilberg, president of the Northern Virginia Technology Council.

John F. Hurley, chairman of the event and a director at DLA Piper Rudnick, said, "There's a new level of excitement and enthusiasm of what the next five years will bring."

Cynthia Gilmer, president of Opus Plus Inc. in McLean, escaped the steam room of guests packed under a massive white tent where flank steak, teardrop tomato and mozzarella salad, and Boursin cheese were served.

"VC money seems to be flowing, and the ideas are just better this year," said Gilmer, a 20-year veteran of the local high-tech community who founded the consulting and services company in 2001. "In 2005 some of the ideas were just dumb, but now we are seeing good ideas and more ideas."

Funding opportunities prompted Mike Shahbazi to help start a Web-based video surveillance company, eView Technologies, this year, four years after co-founding his first start-up, Trust Digital. Trust Digital received about $13 million in venture funding last year. "It's a very good time if you find a market niche," he said.

Lenard Marcus, an investment manager at Edison Venture Fund, said out-of-towners have caught on to Northern Virginia's business expansion.

"There's definitely a general buzz," he said, "but also more competition as West Coast investors have come in."

-- Cecilia Kang