When The Economy Made Lemons, These Guys Made Lemonade

What's the old saying? Wall Street sneezes and New York catches a cold? When the recession began weighing on the city's restaurants, Ben McKean and Dan Leahy saw an opportunity. So they left their analyst jobs to start Village Vines, a Web site that matches diners to restaurants with seats to fill. When they quit their jobs (at Merrill Lynch and Brown Brothers Harriman respectively):

... Ben and Dan each brought with them a rolodex filled with internet entrepreneurs that launched the companies they covered at Merrill and Brown Brothers.

"That's the real reason working on Wall Street helped us," Ben told us, "the contacts we made."

From what Clusterstock can tell, they're adjusting pretty well to their lower-down lifestyle. They eat Ramen noodles. They go to tech parties. They get to grow beards. They wear jeans. All part of the glamorous life of an Internet entrepreneur.