Biz kids Network With Pros at Kairos
In a time when big business has failed, many are looking to entrepreneurship as a solution to help fix the country’s plummeting economy — and NYU students are working to help.
“In this economy right now, everybody has this idea that entrepreneurship will bring us out,” Stern senior Katie Shea said.
In that vein, Shea and fellow Stern senior Susan Levitt presented their shoe company, CitiSoles (a company selling comfortable and fashionable shoes), at the Kairos Society’s unveiling of the top-100 student companies in the U.S. at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York from April 3 to 4. The Kairos Society is an invitation-only entrepreneurial group.
Of the 100 companies from universities across the nation, seven of them were created by NYU students.
The event began with a welcoming address from Kairos founder Ankur Jain, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, and Louis Lautman, producer of the entrepreneur documentary “The YES Movie” (the Young Entrepreneur Society movie).
“You are the future generation,” Lautman said. “You are the innovators. You are the ones making things happen.”
He added: “You’re in the right place at the right time.”
The attention then turned to the students and their companies, who were given an opportunity to present their companies to other attendees. Students used poster boards and videos on computers to explain their companies to other students and business executives at the event. Many had business cards or fliers to hand out.
Generally, two or more students presented each company so they could take turns wandering around and meeting the heads of other companies.
At the event, Stern seniors Caroline Tseng and Candice Madan presented their fashion blog Street-Spotted, which features photos of fashion-forward NYU students. They said the Kairos event was a good opportunity to network.
“We get to talk face-to-face with a bunch of different schools and spread word about what we’re doing,” Tseng said. “It’s good to connect with different companies.”
Emery Goossens, a Stern junior who created the company WeCycle Inc., agreed.
“When we’re doing our entrepreneurial thing, it’s good to share that with other people,” he said.
The event was not completely devoted to networking; many attendees were happy just to talk to other entrepreneurs.
“The people in Kairos are good to talk to, to bounce ideas off of,” said Stern freshman Ken Knight, the founder of Palos Verdes Youth Organization.
“We feed ideas to each other,” Levitt said. “We’re not only giving each other feedback, we’re giving each other support.”
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