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.