TheGlobe @ NYU Entrepreneur's Exchange

"Everyone asks us what our exit strategy is, but we can't understand why anyone would want to give away their 'baby' right away," noted Todd Kritzelman (co-ceo, The Globe) during the panel he spoke on at NYU's Entrepreneurs Exchange seminar on Saturday, March 27th (http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~eex/). Moderated by Polly LaBarre (senior editor of Fast Company) Todd and Stephan Paternot (co-ceo, The Globe) chatted about how they still think of themselves as a startup and order pizzas on Fridays for their employees. This final panel ended a day of interesting discussions on "Turning Your Vision into Reality" that the EE group organized. Keynotes included Jay Capela, (founder, Wild at Start), John Katzman (CEO and founder of The Princeton Review) and Polly (who spoke in stead of Alan Webber). Connie Connors, Dan Pelson, and Andrew Raisej spoke on a panel of "Tales of Silicon Alley," and Lisa Bauxman, (Boxtree Communications), Scott Osman (Double Space), Nancy Slotkick (Drip Cafe(R)), and Matthew Diamond (Alloy) discussed branding issues and challenges on Professor Michael Darling's panel of "Branding Your Business." I spoke in the morning on Michael Ringel's (LTBN.com) panel of "Maneuvering Through Your Environment" with Nancy Ploeger (NYC Chamber of Commerce) and Dennis McLaughlin (CEO-Aurora Natural Gas). Our dear Burt Alimansky of Alimansky capital was scheduled to sit with us as well, but couldn't attend. Mr. McLaughlin, however, entertained the audience with many tales of how he started his company and what it's really like to ride a beat-up pick up through dusty Texas checking monitors of oil pressure. Michael Ringel conducted an audience-participation interaction and kept the flow going while he directed some questions to Nancy. Ms. Ploeger helped dispel stereotypes of Chamber of Commerces around the world. MBA students and EE members Lisa Kay, Jon Mensch, Andrew Heifetz, Philip Higginbotham deserve a round of applause for putting together a very professional, well-run, and interesting mini-conference.