The First New York Entrepicurean

After almost exactly two years since the first Entrepicurean dinner, this episode marks another significant first: the first time an Entrepicurean dinner was held in New York! The new venue reflects recent changes in my life, which is now centered mostly in the Big Apple, with a dwindling number of days spent in Boston each month. Lucky for me, the entrepreneurial scene in New York is vibrant, and I have been able to meet a plethora of interesting folks, including those who joined the first New York Entrepicurean dinner. Included in the picture below, from left to right, are: John Pasmore, Daphne Kis, Eric Bonabeau, Daniel Dus, Connell McGill, Jewel Burks, Daisy Egeolu and Scarlett Sieber. Missing from the photo are Susanne Buckler (co-host) and yours truly.

Two fundamental differences were immediately obvious between prior, Boston-based Entrepicurean dinners and this one: first, the space here (courtesy of Susanne) is substantially larger than my place in Boston, which made it possible to have ten people seated comfortably around the table; hence this dinner had the distinction of being the largest as well as the first one in New York. Second, being in Manhattan means that people generally don't have to drive to events. That in turn makes for a more relaxed schedule and people staying longer. In fact, virtually nobody left until about midnight.

As one might imagine, many conversations took place during the evening. I was pleasantly surprised that, once we sat down to dinner, most of the time was spent in a group conversation rather than splintering off into smaller units. Probably the most significant discussion was about Esther Dyson (Esther - perhaps your ears were burning?), who in a way was the original connection between Eric, Daphne and myself. And of course that inevitably led to discussions about angel investing, space travel, Elon Musk and other related topics. Somehow the conversation then veered toward a discussion about whether or not Google is evil - but Jewel, who spent some time there helping to promote apps into educational institutions, assured us that Google is still not evil.

Two of the guests (Daniel and Connell) work in the energy space, albeit in different sectors, so there was a frequent sprinkling of related topics such as solar energy, LEED certification, fracking, efficiency and the Story of Stuff. At one point we got into a bit of show-and-tell mode, with each of us talking about the work we were doing. As I look again at the picture, there is in an interesting left-right distribution, with the left half of the table representing individuals with multiple start-up experience (I would venture a guess that between John, Daphne, Eric and Daniel there is a collection of a few dozen companies). On the other hand Connell (energy efficiency), Jewel (visual identification of parts), Daisy (fashion technology) and Scarlett (visual content exploration) are all working on very exciting companies and have shown impressive achievements - particularly so given their youth.

The food was traditional northern Italian fare: after the usual mixture of appetizers, we enjoyed Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms, Cotolette alla Milanese (though I cheated and used chicken instead of veal) and a medley of peas, carrots and corn cooked with apricot jam. Dessert featured a pumpkin cheesecake and chocolate ganache torte, both courtesy of Trader Joe's. All of this was washed down with a variety of excellent wines brought by the guests.

To sum it up, I would say this was a successful foray into the New York Entrepicurean scene. Stay tuned for more dinners to follow: hopefully as my life becomes less nomadic I will be able to hold these dinners more regularly - there are certainly plenty of wonderful people to invite!

The Tenth Entrepicurean

It's hard to believe, but the most recent Entrepicurean dinner was the tenth in the series since we started back in November of 2011. In this span, almost exactly 50 people have been able to join us! However, the list of people to invite has been growing faster than the list of people who have attended: I now have a spreadsheet of an additional 130 people, and the two co-hosts each have huge lists of people as well. We are scheming to make some changes that will expand the Entrepicurean community more broadly... stay tuned.

The Tenth Entrepicurian was great fun. We had an interesting mix of people (well, we always have an interesting mix). Of course I got distracted and forgot to take a picture until after two people had already left, so I had to photoshop in the two missing people–I am sure you can tell which ones. Through a statistical aberration, five of the seven participants are women. Speculation had it that this might not have been a statistical aberration...

Counterclockwise from the right you can see Maggie Wells, Corey McAveeney, Mary Chiochios (once again as co-host), Ihsan Ecemis, Judy Laster, Becky Curran and yours truly. Yes, the apron with my name on it gives it away.

As is often the case with when more than 5-6 people attend, there were many conversations sometimes simultaneous, so I will not be able to do justice to all the topics that were discussed during dinner. Interestingly, four of the seven people have lived in California (Becky and Maggie in the LA area, Corey in Silicon Valley, and Paolo in Santa Barbara); three people have or have had direct involvement with the film industry (Becky, Judy and Mary); three people are involved with companies that in one way or another deal with the sale of advertising (Ihsan, Maggie and Paolo); and three people either have lived, are living, or want to live in New York (Maggie, Becky and Paolo).

There were lively debates about some key differences between Boston and New York, one of them being diversity (which is much more evident in New York). We also had some great discussions about being different, and how difficult it can be in our society to be accepted as a person who stands out in terms of race, gender, religion, size, skin color, sexual orientation, age, etc... Becky in particular does an amazing job of disseminating motivational information to overcome perception biases - if you don't know her you should check out her Facebook and Twitter pages for some moving videos and stories.

The dinner was simple but good: after the usual complement of appetizers, the first course was a risotto alla milanese (i.e., risotto with saffron). The second course was anchored by scaloppine al marsala, a repeat item, but one that met everyone's dietary constraints, and in any event one of my favorite dishes. Side dishes included carrots (slow cooked with apricot and fig jam) and peas with ham. Some of us left room for a fruit salad at the end.

The food was washed down by generous amounts of wine. You can see a selection in the picture to the side. As a disclaimer, you might notice that not all the bottles are completely empty! :-)

The Social Entrepicurean

One might argue that, by design, all Entrepicurean dinners are "social." What earned this particular group the monicker is the large number of people who are involved with companies with a social spin, or whose lives involve a significant amount of networking.

Tonight's list of Entrepicureans includes, counterclockwise from the right in the picture, Don Dodge of Google, Claudia Santoro of Dyn (recently at VSnap), Ryan Kabir of ProBueno, Dejan Duzevik of Concentric ABM, Chandra Jacobs of EMC and Tripchi, Carrie Stalder (a familiar co-host) of Arms Reach, and yours truly.

Don, whose career reads like a timeline of the success of the PC and the Internet–culminating in his current position at Google–has been an advisor to a number of start-ups, including some recent forays into social networking. Claudia was cofounder of Vsnap, a messaging service that leverages email, LinkedIn and Twitter. Ryan is cofounder of ProBueno, a social fundraising platform that allows individuals to offer their talents in exchange for a donation to their favorite nonprofit. Dejan is cofounder and CTO of Concentric ABM, which simulates the behavior and interactions of consumers to help brands understand the impact of their activities. Chandra (who makes me look lazy with all her activities) spends her "ample spare time" on Tripchi, a startup that helps business travelers make the most of their time while at airports (would have been handy during the recent snow storms). Carrie has done more social and networking activities than anyone I know, including of course her founding contributions to Venture Café. (Which Chandra heard about while in Mumbay!)

My own relationship to social is through Infomous, which I can blame for the amount of time it has taken me to write this blog: literally the day after this dinner we were selected by Super Bowl XLVII to help them with social media monitoring, and had to fly out to New Orleans two days later to set things up. The last two weeks have been a blur...

Conversation through the evening touched on many fascinating topics; not surprisingly, many of them revolved around social themes. Don mentioned stumbling upon a Dinner in White in Paris, a really cool concept that started almost as a joke and became a world-wide social event. We had lengthy discussions about initiatives that combine networking and entrepreneurship, such as the Mass Challenge, Tony Hsieh's incubator in Las Vegas, social travel companies like Dopplr, shared office spaces for start-ups like WeWork. Someone mentioned the recent "Blind Gates" promotion by New Zealand Airlines, which pairs compatible strangers and sends them flying from London to L.A. And of course no discussion of social and tech could have avoided the mandatory conversations about online dating.

The food was designed to ward off the wintry chill in the air: after a healthy round of appetizers, we enjoyed a single-course meal consisting of polenta, garnished with four different sauces: a beef spezzatino (stew), gorgonzola cream sauce, peperonata (sauteed peppers and onions) and trifolata di funghi di bosco (sauteed wild mushrooms). The dessert tiramisú could have passed for home-made, but was actually from the Whole Foods down the street... All of this washed down by a few bottles of excellent wines.

The double co-host dinner

This dinner marked the eighth time that a group of Entrepicureans gathered at my place, and the first time that the dinner featured two co-hosts! Both Mary and Carrie have been co-hosts before, and we had been having some discussions about how to improve this growing dinner series, so it seemed like a good idea to have both co-hosts. And in fact, it was - there were absolutely no lapses in conversations, with many interesting topics.

Tonight's line-up, shown in the picture counterclockwise from the lower right, included Ajeet Bagga, Carrie Stalder (co-host), Sandy Missakian, Dave Waller, Carolyn Potter, Mary Chiochios (co-host) and yours truly.

There were a couple of unusual "categories" in the crowd: first, two of the diners (Carrie and Sandy) both have had and currently have some involvement with restaurants or businesses related to restaurants. This was reflected in some of the conversations. Also, several people (Mary, Dave, Sandy) have extensive experience with the film industry, and that was also a recurrent theme throughout the evening, with discussions about selection of actors, movies, production, distribution and much more.

At one point I recall a conversation about Las Vegas, a city that seemed to elicit diametrically opposed views and opinions from some of the Entrepicureans. We also learned about Dave's recent family vacation to New Zealand, a place we would all love to visit it if weren't so far away. Many other conversations swirled around the room, touching on topics as varied as baby sweaters and neon signs. People must have been having a good time because nobody left until after midnight!

The food had a definite maritime slant. The appetizers included smoked salmon tartines, bluefish paté, trout paté and a few other items. The first course was a seafood risotto that I had recently "invented" by borrowing ideas from a mixture of other recipes. The risotto was topped with bottarga, a substance made from the roe of the grey mullet, typical of certain southern Italian regions. It is similar to caviar, but comes as a hard reddish lump that was used during cooking and also grated on top of the risotto.

For a second course we had sole filet mugnaia style with a white wine and lemon reduction, accompanied by asparagus and roasted vegetables. Dessert included a taste test: Carrie had bought vanilla ice cream from two Cambridge favorites, Toscanini's and Christina's. We used these ice creams to make two types of affogato (ice cream with espresso) for each guest, and asked everyone which they preferred. People's decisions seemed to switch, and at one point it was suspected that the server (yours truly) got the two brands mixed up, so the results were inconclusive - though quite tasty.

Dinner was washed down with a great variety of specialty beers and wines. You can see a selection of what we consumed in the picture. In addition I am happy to report that my collection now includes a couple of delicious bottles that I am saving for the next good opportunity to enjoy some great wine with great company.

The resilient biking undergarment dinner

After a two-month summer hiatus, the Entrepicurean series resumed in full force on August 7. Thankfully the weather was not as hot as it had been for the previous several days, which is a good thing given that my A/C is not working. Nonetheless, for the first time in this series I decided to do the cooking the night before to keep things cool. One side effect of this choice was that I was able to participate in more conversations than I am used to, especially in the early part of the evening. This was great as I feel that I had an opportunity to have at least some time to chat with all the diners before we sat down to eat.

The guest list included (counterclockwise from the lower right) Marina Hatsopoulos of Windy Street, Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe, Barbara McGovern of Incentive Targeting, Mike Bukhin of Tendril, Mary Chiochios of Chiochios Studio (the co-host), Amit Bansil of WireOver.com, Mona Vernon of Thomson Reuters and yours truly.

The title of this dinner reflects three of the many discussion topics that buzzed around the dining table. In a slight departure from past Entrepicurean dinners, at one point everyone was asked to say a few things about themselves, and to make suggestions for a title for the dinner. Mona suggested the resilient label because there had been several conversations about resilience, from children who grow up in different countries, to entrepreneurs, to women in Iran who are not allowed to do many things that we take for granted. Biking is a thread that was repeated several times, and in fact at one point we realized that seven of the eight diners consider themselves bikers (of the pedal variety); in fact, I believe at least two of the guests biked to the dinner. As to the undergarment... no, the dinner was not that exciting. As it turns out, Marina has recently made investments in a couple of different start-ups that have to do with undergarments, and Mona has a friend who also started an undergarment-related company, which made for lively and amusing conversations at our end of the table (much to the envy of some of friends at the other end of the table who were talking bikes while we were talking bras).

The food and drinks

The entire menu was designed for a warm summer evening, with nothing hot being served at any point during the meal. Appetizers included a variety of choices from hummus to artichoke dip and chips and salsa. The main course included a room-temperature risotto alle verdure, i.e., a risotto with mixed vegetables (bell peppers, eggplant, carrot, tomato, zucchini, onion), accompanied by a tomato salad made with yummy Campari tomatoes and mozzarella. Dessert also stayed on the cool side with a tropical fruit salad heavy on the pineapple and kiwi. The fruit salad was complemented by some delicious elephant ears that Mary brought from a bakery in East Boston.

The drinks selection was also quite summery, including a wonderful variety of fruit sodas and juices, some specialty beers, and a full complement of wines: red, white and rosé. Marina added a splash of Italian summer by bringing a bottle of Campari and a bottle of soda, with which she prepared one of my favorite apéritifs - with a glass of Campari & Soda in hand I felt like I was back in Piazza Navona. And when I got up the next morning I was reminded that Campari is stronger than it seems, especially when mixed with other drinks...

The delayed response entrepicurean

The title of this post is a reflection of the time it has taken me to create the blog entry, rather than having anything to do with the dinner itself, which took place ten days ago! As usual, we took a picture of all guests seated around the dinner table, as shown above. Moving clockwise from the lower left, you can see yours truly, Mary Chiochios (co-host), Emily Green, Ed Lafferty and Daniel Pereira.

Emily, who was CEO of the Yankee Group when I met her at a conference in Madrid two years ago, is now running a really interesting company called Smart Lunches that meets two important needs: providing a nutritious lunch for your child at school, and relieving the busy parent from having to prepare a lunch everyday.

Ed is CFO and partner at Saturn Partners, a Boston-based VC firm that invests in a very interesting variety of companies. It is also interesting that Ed's background is in accounting and finance, somewhat unusual for a VC. Daniel is a digital media professional with several movies under his belt and an impressive career that has included positions at MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium and IBM's Digital Media Laboratory. I am always in awe of people like Daniel who have such creative energy and productivity! Mary was back at the co-hosting spot, and in addition to her usual excellent job as a co-host, she brought some delicious fresh pastries from an excellent bakery in East Boston. You can see the pastries in the picture - yum!

I must confess that the details of the conversation are a bit blurry as I write this post ten days later. I remember discussing Emily's company, and her stories of learning about the complexity of parents' concerns about their children's meals. It was also fascinating to hear about Ed's involvement with The Ride, a company that organizes tours through New York, with actors planted at various locations providing live interactive performances as the company's high-tech motor coaches drive by. At one point the discussion moved to the quality of life in various parts of Boston, spurred by the fact that Daniel is looking for a place through the summer, as he is pursuing some new activities and trying to decide whether he will stay here or end up back in LA. I also really enjoyed an exchange with Emily in which she asked a lot of great questions about how we run the business at Icosystem. In spite of the wine and beer I think I was able to give some coherent responses to what sometimes seems like our incoherent behavior...

The Food

For this dinner I decided to go back to basics. After the usual spread of mixed appetizers (some of which you can see in the picture), we served gnocchi with a very plain homemade tomato sauce. This was accompanied by chicken scaloppine in Marsala sauce (I have found that veal is unreliable), accompanied by a salad of mixed greens with goat cheese and dried cranberries. The dessert consisted of the aforementioned (and "aforepictured") pastries.

The meal was washed down with a nice selection of red and white wines brought by the guests, including a Mouton Cadet white Bordeaux, Elena Walch Chardonnay, Layer Cake Shiraz and a Montepulciano d'Abruzzo by Cantina Zaccagnini.

The entrepreneurial entrepicurean

Last night's Entrepicurean dinner was the most entrepreneurial to date: every single one of the eight diners has had some entrepreneurial experience -- and this was reflected by the sheer number of different conversation topics that surfaced during the course of the evening.

The list of Entrepicureans, shown in the photo clockwise from the lower left, included Andrew Moss, Vicki Godfrey, Tara Cousineau, yours truly, Carrie Stalder (the evening's co-host), Rod Brooks, Rich Ramirez and Vaughn Tan. I won't even try to list all the companies with which this combined group has been involved, but let's just say that in one way or another this group has probably touched more industry sectors and application areas than your typical VC firm. Another interesting facet of last night's group is that for the first time there were two people that I had never met before (Andrew and Vaughn). This is something that I hope will happen more frequently as the Entrepicurean community expands.

Interestingly, I find myself having a hard time remembering what we all talked about, which is a bit surprising given that we talked about so many things. My fuzziness may have to do with a combination of factors: being pretty involved with the cooking, which distracted me from the conversation; the fact that there were several conversations going all at the same time; or perhaps the consumption of a fair amount of alcohol? Whatever the case, the conversations must have been good, because people seemed to be enjoying themselves and some stayed as late as midnight. I have vague memories of snippets of conversations involving healthcare, teens, Zeppelins, robots, TiVo, coffee makers, travel nightmares and numerous other topics. Rod's story of having a 3pm flight from DC delayed and finally canceled at midnight - forcing him to rent a car drive back - probably took the prize.

Carrie was great as co-host, helping with last minute errands, making a yummy salad, and doing an excellent job ensuring that everyone was having a good time even when I was completely distracted with the cooking. She also brought a couple of special treats, including a piece of some lovely Italian truffle cheese that I selfishly hid in the fridge rather than adding it to the appetizers platter (sorry, everyone!).

Tara had a good idea: before the dinner she contacted everyone on the list and connected with them on LinkedIn. I had created an Entrepicurean group on LinkedIn but did not set up any members. I will see if I can get that done today, and then we'll figure out how best to use it. Also, the subject was brought up once again about having two or three events per year at a larger venue, where everyone on the list is invited. There should be some venues that would be happy to sponsor a gathering of this sort.

The Food

Thanks to Carrie (who had done her homework and read the previous blog entry), I remembered to take a few pictures of the food. After the usual complement of appetizers, the first course consisted of gnocchi with a very simple butter and sage sauce, sprinkled with Parmesan. The second course consisted of saltimbocca: thinly sliced veal with sage and a slice of prosciutto, sauteed with white wine. A side salad made by Carrie featured a wonderful vinaigrette kindly made by a friend of hers who is chef at Garden at the Cellar (thank you!). Dessert consisted of a tropical fruit salad. I am learning that cooking for a large crowd requires a more careful selection of ingredients and timing. I thought the gnocchi was good, but it was a large enough batch that trying to stir the entire pot threatened to make them stick together, so the sauce was not distributed as evenly as I would have liked.

I was not particularly happy with the veal: the flavor was good, but some of the slices were tough and dry. Next time I will be more aggressive in tenderizing them (or start going to a proper butchery instead of the local grocery store). The salad was great, and the fruit salad I thought was delicious - Whole Foods has some great mangoes and kiwis. As to timing, I realized as I dumped the gnocchi in the boiling water before I started the veal that I lost my opportunity to do a single main course -- so instead I opted to do it the Italian way and serve the first course, then take a healthy break as I cooked the second course. This was actually fine, though it made it harder to interact with the guests, which in this case was fine given the larger crowd.

The drinks

We all enjoyed a great selection of libations. Everyone started by sipping some lovely Bonal Gentiane-Quina, a traditional apéritif best enjoyed with a bit of ice. Between appetizers and dinner we enjoyed three bottles of red and one of white, including a 2010 Owen Roe Kilmore Pinot Noir, a 2007 Sartori Valpolicella, a 2006 Veramonte Primus and a 2009 Glen Carlou Chardonnay. The fruit salad was accompanied by a bottle of Il Prosecco. The dinner ended with a few cappuccinos, espressos and a bit of limoncello. I also now have a nice bottle of Red Giant by Element brewery that perhaps I will enjoy with the truffle cheese and a bag of Lindor chocolates - all gifts from the guests that I stashed away...