It’s New Orleans: Out to Lunch

Hosted ByPeter Ricchiuti

Tulane University A.B. Freeman School of Business finance professor Peter Ricchiuti holds court over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. Peter's lunch guests are New Orleans business people, from startups to CEO's, from artists to tech entrepreneurs, musicians to movers-and-shakers. New Orleans is on everybody's list as a great place to party but it's also on many lists of the best place to start a business. Peter's deeply knowledgable and equally levity-laden approach to business conversation neatly makese sense of the Crescent City's contradictions.

Go For It! – Out to Lunch – It’s New Orleans

Common sense is difficult to define. In business, people with unique and quirky ideas can run into a lot of negativity based on “common sense”. A few years ago it was the stupid idea of putting a camera in a phone. Common sense said it would never work – people who want to make a phone call don’t want to buy a camera. Then there was the idiot idea of fancy coffee. Who’s going to pay $5 for something with a stupid name like Frappucino?

How about the guys who decided that, at a time when newspapers are going under all over the country – when New Orleans’ one remaining paper couldn’t get enough advertising to sustain itself  – they’re going to launch a brand new daily newspaper in New Orleans. 

peter kovacs

That newspaper is The Advocate. Its editor, Peter Kovacs, who was canned  by the Times Picayune in its realignment, is Peter’s guest on this episode of Out to Lunch.

Opening a business is unimaginably difficult. Most people do it once, maybe twice, in a lifetime. Colin Grussing is doing it once a week.

colin grussing

Colin’s company, 52 Businesses, is launching a new business every week for a year. Common sense has got to tell you, that’s crazy. Right? Like the Frappucino.

colin grussing, peter kovacs, peter ricchiuti

Colin Grussing, Peter Kovacs and Peter Ricchiuti talk about what’s smart, what’s crazy, when to fold and when to Go For It!

Realtor Tracey Moore