New York, November 2, 2001 - The BiZBash Idea Center (www.bizbash.com), the first comprehensive niche media company targeted exclusively to event planning and business entertaining professionals, meeting planners and hospitality executives who conduct business in New York City, announced today that it completed a $500,000 convertible series B raise.

Milestone Venture Partners, an early stage information technology venture capital firm focusing on the New York metropolitan area, led the round along with prominent individual investors including William F. Reilly, former chairman and CEO of Primedia; Insignia Financial Group; H. John Greeniaus, former chairman and CEO of Nabisco; Matthew Bronfman; Louis Perlman; and Warren Adler, author of War of the Roses and Random Hearts.

Since launching its online service in late February 2001, BiZBash has created successful media products and franchises that include directories, visual search engines, a unique editorial perspective, a trade show in partnership with the Javits Center, two newsletters with more than 18,000 recipients, networking events and a prototype for a print newspaper for the industry.

In less than half a year BiZBash attracted more than 150 marketing partners and had more than 50 thousand qualified user sessions per month. The company has maintained a high profile as an industry leader including such projects as chairing the Meeting and Event Coalition of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau (NYC & Co.) in response to the September 11 tragedy and acting as an industry source for numerous newspapers, trade magazines and television shows. Recently, BiZBash was chosen as the Successful Meetings.com Site of the Week where the Web site was described as “fun, entertaining and useful.”

BiZBash’s leadership includes Chief Executive Officer David Adler and President Richard Aaron, CMP, CSEP, who in the summer of 2001 received two of the highest honors in the event and meeting industry. In July, Aaron received the 2001 Meeting Professional Award-International Planner and in August he received the Event Solution Visionary Award.

The BiZBash.com Idea Center is a free online and offline resource for special events and business entertaining professionals that was created to fill a real need: to find localized "nooks and crannies" information to help in producing effective events. BiZBash.com is the most extensive database of the best event resources and has pages of industry gossip, personality profiles and coverage of all types of parties and events.