Work hard, play hard for Team Webmission!

WebMission08 is go! The companies participating in the UK start-up trip to Silicon Valley first discussed here in February jetted out to San Francisco on Saturday for a week of frenzied card swapping with some of the US’ most influential internet names.

Judging by the some of the pics emerging on Facebook and Flickr, Team WebMission spent the opening 24 hours proving us Brits can certainly mix it with our revered friends across the pond… in terms of downing cocktails and partying, that is.

But hey, a bit of 'work hard, play hard' never hurt anyone and reports filtering back across the pond suggest it was certainly back to business first thing today.

Oracle were the group’s host this morning while, depending what time you’re reading this, around now they should be watching craigslist founder Jim Buckmaster interview Bebo’s Michael Birch at a Glasshouse San Francisco event.

Partying tonight isn’t advisable as the group will be making presentations to VCs and US press at Heller Erhman first thing the following morning.

We’ll update you later in the week on their progress and hopefully get a diary report from Peter Ward, co-founder and co-CEO of travel and lifestyle social network WAYN.com (Where Are You Now?), one of the 20 companies on the trip. We’ve also asked trip organiser and Smarta friend Oli Barrett up-to-date with everything as it happens.

In the mean time, check out the full agenda on the WebMission08 site and biogs of the 20 companies lucky enough to make the cut on a trip Oli tells us was very heavily over-subscribed.