Our meeting was shattered by a bomb drill in a building just blocks from Times Square where a real bomb had been left weeks before. I felt like I hit another dead end and I needed a call from my kids to tell me to “Suck it up!” Instead we decided to stop at the Plaza Hotel to see if we could grab a cup of tea. The dining room was packed so we went back outside to survey our options from the incomparable vantage point of the hotel’s front steps.
There was a family visiting from Israel waiting for a cab, and we fell into casual conversation. Originally from New York, he was a venture capitalist visiting on business
I told him I was putting together a Private Equity Summit designed to connect women with capital. He asked me when it was and how much money he should bring with him. He gave me his card and told me to follow up with the details, and he would make sure all his associates would attend as well. He told me to bring it to Israel, because there was a lot of money and a lot of deals being made with women. He offered me the same advice I had heard almost word-for-word before: “Don’t make this about women. Make this about money.”