DESIGN NOTE:

Don't worry, this is a hidden canvas. You can delete it after you read this.

To learn how to showcase Trending / Featured posts and your blog categories on this page, don't forget to also watch our video tutorials on the Learn page! — Jen

back

Favorite

Exette at NY Tech Week 2026: What Happened When We Brought the Exit Conversation to the Most Watched Stage in Tech

NY Tech Week Recap — Exette

I went to New York Tech Week with one goal: to find out if the exit conversation was ready for a bigger room.

The answer was yes. Loudly.

Here is what happened when Exette showed up to one of the most concentrated gatherings of founders, investors, and fintech operators in the country.

The numbers

300+ registrants across Exette’s two events alone. 14 sponsors. 2 corporate co-hosts (Baton and UBS). Over $10,000 raised. Dozens of new members who joined the Exette community directly from the week. And a single interview clip that reached over 100,000 viewers before the week was even over.

For a platform that is still in its early stages, those are not small numbers. They are a signal.

The events

Exette hosted two events during Tech Week — the Build to Exit hackathon, a 90-minute session bringing together the identity, financial, and operational dimensions of exit readiness, and She’s Selling, a conversation with Dylan Ganz of Baton about what the seller journey actually looks like from the inside.

Both rooms were full. Both conversations went places I didn’t entirely anticipate. And both confirmed what I have believed since I started building Exette: women are not avoiding the exit because they don’t want it. They are avoiding it because nobody has given them the infrastructure to approach it.

Beyond Exette’s own events, I spoke at Loading Future State alongside Courtney Spritzer — in front of hundreds of women — about what it actually means to exit a business you have spent years building. I also attended two private dinners that put me in rooms with exactly the kind of operators, investors, and advisors who need to be in this conversation.

Five events total. Every single one confirmed the thesis.

The moment that mattered most

I was interviewed by School of Hard Knocks Women during the week. That conversation, about identity, about what it costs to leave something you built, about the gap between when a woman is ready to exit and when she actually does, reached over 100,000 viewers from a single post.

100,000 people.

That reach didn’t come from a big budget or a publicist. It came from a conversation that was specific enough to be true and human enough to travel. That is what happens when you are talking about something people have felt but never heard named out loud.

What the week proved

I went to Tech Week to test a thesis. I came back with a conviction.

The intersection of identity and exit is a space that Exette uniquely owns. Nobody else is bringing this conversation to this room: the psychosocial dimensions of why women don’t exit, the emotional architecture of what it actually takes to leave something you have become, the gap between what financial services offer and what women actually need at the exit moment.

People are anxious and excited about this in equal measure. Anxious because it surfaces something most founders have been quietly carrying. Excited because for the first time, someone is naming it.

The room is ready. The conversation is ready. Exette is ready.

What comes next

Tech Week was a beginning, not a peak. The community is growing. The mastermind is being built. The research is being collected. And the stages are getting bigger.

If you found Exette during Tech Week — welcome. You got here at the right time.

If you have been here since before any of this — thank you for believing before there was a room full of people to prove it.

The exit conversation is finally having its moment. Come be part of it.

+ view the comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

BEHIND THE BUSINESS

Hi, I'm  Alisha.

Alisha Pennington exited a 12-year business and found herself on the other side of a conversation that didn't exist. A Forbes Business Council member, Inc. 5000 founder, and author of Power of the Pivot — she built Exette so the next woman doesn't have to find her way through it alone.

Learn More

 01

An Exette 6-Month Recap Six months ago, Exette was an idea with a thesis and a domain name. Today it is a movement with a community, a stage presence, a research mission, a sponsor roster, and a growing body of proof that the conversation it was built around is one the world has been waiting […]

02

NY Tech Week Recap — Exette I went to New York Tech Week with one goal: to find out if the exit conversation was ready for a bigger room. The answer was yes. Loudly. Here is what happened when Exette showed up to one of the most concentrated gatherings of founders, investors, and fintech operators […]

03

By Alisha Pennington, Founder of Exette  |  June 2026  |  8 min read A version of this piece was originally published in Biz Journals’ BizWomen. Read the original here. What follows is the full version with the research, the framework, and the part that didn’t fit in 500 words. 1.37%  of businesses that sell a […]