Monster.com: What drove you to originally make the switch to online business?

Mitchell York: My last four years at CMP Media, I had started the company's Internet division, and I was involved with the launch of a Web site called TechWeb. Prior to that, for many years, I was doing print publishing in the computer industry, so when we started the Internet division it really occurred to me that that was going to be my future. I had been with CMP for 17 years, and I wanted to do something where creating revenue over the Internet was the complete focus of the company.

Mc: What takes up the majority of your day at epromos?

MY: I work a lot on business development and finding new ways to create new revenue streams through partnerships. I spend a lot of time on operational and process issues because even though buying promotional products seems like the easiest thing in the world, there's actually a lot of moving parts. I'm constantly refining the process and making the technology work for us. I also spend a fair amount of time talking to prospective investors.

Mc: What does it make you think when you see headlines or figures that predict the death of the dotcom?

MY: I think first you have to define what this funny term "dotcom" is. Generally it means a business plan, a business model, but no business. It usually means inventing some marketplace that doesn't really exist yet. I don't consider myself a CEO of a dotcom company, even though our name is epromos.com. I consider myself the CEO of one of the fastest-growing promotional products companies in the country. We use the Internet to facilitate customer acquisition and provide customer service. We use the technology to streamline our process, but not to the extent that we are a dotcom. It's merely a utility for us; it doesn't define us.

Mc: Is there room for a dotcom company that doesn't deliver a product as tangible as the ones epromos does?

MY: Yes, there's plenty of room for dotcoms in liquidation court and bankruptcy court if there's not a physical or real-world business attached to what they do. Just because people can do things doesn't necessarily mean that they should. Before I came here, I can recall asking one company what research it had done to substantiate its basic premise that consumers would engage with the company in the way that it was relying upon. The answer was that they hadn't done any research, but that they had a gut feeling that it made a lot of sense, and they were able to convince investors of that. But that wasn't for me.

Mc: How crucial was your Columbia MBA to your advancement?

MY: I think of people like my COO here, who is a former investment banker, a financial wizard and a great strategic thinker, and he has a BA from Columbia with no advanced degree. I think of a guy I used to work with at CMP who, with me, cofounded TechWeb. He has a BA from Queens College, he was an English major and now he's one of the most successful venture capitalists in New York. I don't think it's at all a prerequisite to being or doing anything. It was personally very helpful to me because I felt I had a lot of gaps and I needed that crutch, and I have a lot of admiration for people who have it without having to go to school for it.

Mc: You've had three jobs in just over two years. Is this typical, and does it indicate anything about the industry?

MY: There's certainly a lot of mobility at senior levels, and part of that is that there's more opportunity, but I also think that having spent 17 years at one company, it takes a while to find the place that feels right. There's nothing particularly wrong about being a company and going through some interesting rapid periods of growth in a serial way. It's been fun for me to go through this, through some ramp-up periods with a number of small companies, more fun for me than being in a large company.

Mc: What benefits does your location in New York offer?

MY: New York is a great location for us because of the labor pool, the network of companies in Silicon Alley that we can partner with and learn from. Personally, there's a lot of business development activity that I am able to do because we're in New York that would be more difficult if we were outside the city. So we don't rely on being here, but it's a bonus.

Mc: What is the dotcom outlook compared to what it was a year ago, and what's coming up?

MY: A year ago, everyone was breathing the same nitrous oxide, and we were all pretty much hooked up to it, and a lot of resources get spilled in that sort of heady environment. You got the feeling in all kinds of companies that everyone was like a kid when they get their allowance; they just go through it. Now I think it's more like how life used to be: You don't spend more money than you can afford to spend, you budget yourself, grow your sales and you make sure you do a good job for the customer. You treat it like you're growing a business and it's got nothing to do with dot-anything.

I think we've seen the future, and this is it. This is what it is now and this is what it's going to be, and that's great because people don't get silly expectations and they're focused on execution.