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Posts published in April 2014

Trial and Terroir: Enjoying Wine Beyond Your Kitchen

Tara Hankinson, MBA Class of 2015

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With the temperature firmly in the 60s and sunset after 7:30PM, days are feeling longer and I am feeling opportunistic. So few of us have chosen to afford outdoor space or spacious living rooms, which means we need a third place (that’s not Starbucks) for enjoying the weather and meeting with friends. A good wine bar can satisfy these needs. A great wine bar can convince you to pay 3x retail price for a bottle of interesting wine. To compile my suggestions, I considered locations that prioritize value to the customer and a relaxed ambiance, ideal for escaping from elevators of undergrads and reading room tables of torture.…

Rizzo Reviews: Appropriate

Courtney Rizzo, MBA Class of 2015

Appropriate The Pershing Square Signature Center/Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre

The Signature Theatre has managed to differentiate itself in two ways from the dense population of Broadway and off-Broadway theaters around Times Square. Firstly, it devotedly sponsors new works by emerging and mid-career playwrights. Last week I saw Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, one of seven playwrights that are part of the “Residency 5” program, employing the writers for five years to produce three new works. To draw in an audience that is not coming for a famous playwright or blockbuster actors, all tickets for the initial run of a show are capped at $25.

Set in a dilapidated house in Arkansas, a family reunites to settle the patriarch’s estate: the older brother with Manhattanite wife and two cell-phone obsessed kids, the recently divorced, maniac sister trying to connect with her teenage son and dealing with the grief of being her father’s caretaker, and the younger once-pedophile brother toting his hippie (and don’t worry, over age) fiancée.…

DBi: Costa Rica

Michael Strange, Langone MBA Class of 2014

DBi Costa Rica (CR) could not have arrived soon enough for our NY-based students stranded in an endless, harsh winter. Escaping the remnants of the 2014 “Polar Vortex” combined with the allure of classes shrouded in the glow of tropical sun had all 17 of us eager to set off. Dbi is “Doing Business in” at Stern and is a great way to immerse oneself in a culture with a host university and faculty; the core focus in CR is sustainable business.

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Upon arrival the warm air and bright sun greeted us immediately and winter became a distant (2222 mile) memory.…

Notes from KW: Three Things I Hate About You, Stern

Krystal Walker, MBA Class of 2014

Bear with me guys, this article is a bit of a rant. You know I love Stern. I bleed violet… my Doctors are concerned. But alas, there are some things about this place that grate on my nerves.

The Graduation Ticket Fiasco
Perpetrators: Stern Administration, MBA Students who see this as a great arbitrage opportunity (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)

Seriously, who in the administration thought it was a good idea to issue three tickets per student for graduation? I don’t have a large immediate family, but even with that allotment I’ve got to decide between which sibling gets to see me receive the first Master’s Degree in my family.…

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah

Matt Nathanson, MBA Class of 2015

Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH may not be great or even a particularly good film, but it is a wonderful one.  Full of wonders–great and subtle–and unexpectedly wonderful filmmaking.  Mark my words, every D-girl in Hollywood right now is pitching biblical projects.

Should we blame Mark Burnett, who financed 2013’s stupid and stupidly popular scripted drama THE BIBLE?  Or should we blame Mel Gibson– who proved the audience for scriptural cinema so large that a movie didn’t even need to be particularly enjoyable or particularly Jew-friendly to make millions?
Or do we thank them?  Do we thank Mel Gibson for taking time to create THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST before its gloriously underrated sequel THE BEAVER?…

Personalitini: Tales of Drinks and Dates / Ladies Night

Oh Yes It’s Ladies Night, and the Feeling’s Right

Liz Batsche, MBA Class of 2014

Dating is many things. Lately, it has been incredibly exhausting. As I shared in my last article, I had high hopes for a potential match. As we’ve all experienced at some time or another, sometimes grand expectations can quickly transform into grand disappointments. Today’s paramour is tomorrow’s Fader.

In attempting to prevent myself from becoming a bitter dater, I’ve pumped the breaks on online dating…at least for now. I know that when I am obsessively checking OkCupid for new users, I need to put my phone done and take a break.…

Entrepreneur Spotlight: Brooklinen / Building the “Warby Parker of Bedding”

Rich Fulop and Dave Fortune, MBA Class of 2014

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A few weeks before starting at Stern in August 2012, Rich and his wife took a short trip to Las Vegas. While in Vegas, Rich and his wife stayed at the Wynn Las Vegas, where Rich had an experience that got him started on the path to starting his own business. As Rich tells it, “The sheets at the Wynn were the most comfortable sheets I’d ever slept on, but when I went to the gift shop to look into buying some, I was shocked to find out they were $800 a set.”…

Professor David Yermack Lectures on BitCoin – Compares it to ‘90s Grunge Rock Fad for “Techno Elites”

Logan Winston, Langone MBA Class of 2016

On March 25 over 110 students packed into KMC 2-60 to hear NYU’s resident BitCoin expert speak about the storied digital currency. The talk reviewed some of the five and half-year history and recent controversy surrounding BitCoin before exploring whether or not BitCoin and other digital currencies actually behave like currencies. Yermack’s answer: a resounding kind-of.

In terms of history, BitCoin was started by Satoshi Nakamoto, a mysterious unnamed individual or group responsible for writing the initial code for the first BitCoin. The currency is created by a distributed network of miners – like server farms – that are solving “hard math problems” and which in turn release new BitCoins into the world.…

Rizzo Reviews: A Doll’s House

Courtney Rizzo, MBA Class of 2015

In LiO, we spent a recent lecture discussing leading through conflict and uncertainty. The first step in making headway in this difficult situation is to look at what is happening “from the balcony” or “with a bird’s eye view.” Professor Lechner went on to illustrate her point of forgetting the details and focusing on the big picture by asking the class, “When was the last time you asked yourself to dinner and asked, ‘Self, how are you doing?’ ”

That is Nora’s critical thought moment in Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, A Doll’s House. Thinking back to 12th grade English, I remembered Nora’s action-speaks-louder-than-words door slam at the end but little of her self-actualizing journey, until I saw the Young Vic production at BAM last week.…

Ninth Annual Stern Private Equity Conference

Ammar Al-Hajjar, MBA Class of 2015

On February 28, The Stern Private Equity Club (SPEC) held its Ninth Annual Stern Private Equity Conference at NYU’s Kimmel Center, following a tradition that began in 2006. The sold-out conference this year had a record turnout of more than 400 attendees, and marked a milestone for SPEC, after more than a semester of meticulous planning and coordination on the part of its board, specifically the SPEC Conference Committee Co-Chairs: Javier Gondo, Juliya Rozenfeld, and Lauren Sanders.

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The conference is arguably the largest at Stern and brought together 250 professionals in private equity, as well as 150 students to listen to industry panels led by thought leaders in the field.…

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