Last night, BoomTown went to a lovely party thrown by David Hornik, the August Capital VC who also runs The Lobby conference in his spare time.

He threw the event because those who attend the annual invitation-only gathering in Hawaii wanted to get together again during the year in Silicon Valley for even more schmoozing.

I went to the first Lobby in the fall of 2007, so Hornik let me in to have some pizza and beer at August’s offices on Sand Hill Road and use my Flip video to ask those in attendance where they thought the digital sector was in terms of the economy and innovation.

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Last week, StumbleUpon announced it was buying itself out of its much-vaunted previous corporate buyout, by being born again as an “investor-baked start-up.”

The Canadian-born social-bookmarking company, which was launched earlier, came to the Bay area in 2006 and got some fancy venture investors and soon became a traffic-generating hit.

Then StumbleUpon was bought by eBay two years ago for $75 million in one of Web 2.0’s high points.

End of a fairy tale? Um, nope.

Here’s CEO and co-founder Garrett Camp, talking to BoomTown in a video interview about it all.

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The content-discovery service, StumbleUpon, has gotten itself back to start-up status, after being bought by eBay two years ago.

It announced today that it was returning to being an “investor-backed startup” by a roster of well-known Silicon Valley investors, including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners and August Capital.

Its founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, are also back, with Camp now in place as CEO.

“We are grateful to eBay for its guidance. However, we realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses. It is best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths,” said Camp, stating the very obvious.

That’s quite a boomerang since it was acquired by the auction giant in 2007 for $75 million.

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There’s is nothing lovelier than a sun-dappled summer night, terrific food and drinks and a giant gathering of khaki-wearing venture capitalists.
OK, strike that last one, but the valet parking was nice.
Last night, it was hearty partying in Silicon Valley, with two big events that attracted the digerati in numbers. Tech folks, for all their earnest [...]

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