You can't run an event series exploring New York's burgeoning tech scene for too long without having Dennis Crowley as a guest. Crowley is the founder and CEO of Foursquare, but you may know him from BestBuy and Gap ads and pretty much every story about the ascendency of New York's tech scene.

While New York has done a better job than the Valley of building blogs and content companies and has several notable exits in the world of ad tech, the ecosystem is still waiting for that big Valley-style consumer Web home run. From its earliest days, many people have hoped Foursquare would become just that-- the home-grown company that Mayor MIchael Bloomberg can point to as fueling the tech ecosystem, rather than the New York offices of Valley giants like Google and Facebook. 

But while the location app started life as the darling of the New York media and West Coast tech bloggers alike, Foursquare has seemingly struggled to take its service mainstream and build a company around all those checkins and badges. 

In an in-depth conversation, we'll talk to Crowley about these challenges and his journey as an entrepreneur. Whether you are bullish on the company or not, it's hard not to root for Crowley. He's a visionary when it comes to location based services, building products around that theme long before it was trendy, and he famously turned down pricey acquisition offers for Foursquare after his disappointing experience selling his previous company Dodgeball to Google. 

Our fireside chats are always centered around an entrepreneur's personal journey, and Crowley has a doozy of a story to tell. I expect a fantastic conversation. 

This will be our fifth PandoMonthly in New York, and I'm really excited with how our New York events have been taking off. A lot of that is due to our loyal New York readers who've been evangelizing the series and bringing new friends every time. We really appreciate it.

We entered the market knowing there was a packed calendar of events in the New York tech community -- and in New York generally-- and have been surprised at how quickly our events have started to sell out. In case you haven't attended yet, we price the tickets at a low $20 to make sure it's accessible for students, young developers and struggling entrepreneurs. In addition to a download of industry wisdom from a big-name guest, you get pizza, beer and a T-Shirt. And of course, you get to meet other like-minded entrepreneurs. That's probably the biggest value. (Although the New York T-Shirts are my personal favorite.)

Clearly, $20 a head doesn't cover all of that, so we rely heavily on sponsors and have an important new one this month: New York co-working space Projective. We'll be holding our October event at Projective's gorgeous Lower East Side coworking space. It should give us a bit more elbow room than our last venue-- where entrepreneurs were crammed in the back, on the sides, and practically hanging from rafters, and I'm hoping the wooden floors with cushion the sound of knocked over beer bottles. Huge thanks to Projective for helping us afford to keep coming back to New York and keep the ticket prices low. If you'd like to sponsor any of our events, contact Jeanne Logozzo at Jeanne(at)PandoDaily.com.