“The goal of the summit is to educate, connect and empower,” said Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education & Professor in the Practice of Organization and Management Andrea Hershatter. “To that end, the greatest thing we can do for our current students and the alumni who attended is to bring in these powerful role models to share their insights and stories.”

Kickoff Conversation: A Fireside Chat with David Glattstein

To open the summit, Hershatter sat down with Glattstein for a fireside chat-style conversation in front of approximately 200 attendees. After his earning his Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) at Goizueta, Glattstein immersed himself in the investment and private equity world, where he gained experience investing in and helping small businesses grow. Along the way, he earned an MBA from The Wharton School and in 2017, joined forces with David Bessler, VMD, to co-found VEG ER for Pets.

Glattstein and Bessler have reimagined the veterinary emergency business model. With a customer-centered approach, trained emergency veterinary staff, and rapid response times, each of VEG’s locations is open 24 hours, seven days a week, holidays included. VEG locations are open concept so that pet owners can “see everything and participate in” their pet’s care, notes the VEG website. “We want to provide mind-blowing customer experiences that people would never imagine,” Glattstein said.

Glattstein advised the students to think about the problem they’re solving for when they start a business. “For us, ER professionals—doctors and nurses—didn’t have a great place to build their careers, so we gave them that,” he said. To help existing veterinarians shift to emergency medicine, VEG provides a six-month fellowship program that offers mentorship and continuing education. VEG strives to create a culture that makes it “so obvious that that they would want to join us,” Glattstein said of employees, which are known as VEGgies. Glattstein admits that creating that environment took years.

Calling Glattstein amazing and “one of the kindest, most uplifting people I know,” Hershatter added that Glattstein is also “relentless and driven and expects his VEGgies to rise to the same level of commitment. He has built this into the incentive structure and into a culture of innovation.”

During his conversation with Hershatter, Glattstein also explained “IKIGAI,” the concept of combining one’s purpose and profession with one’s passion. “If I’m not going to be passionate about what I want to do and good at it, it’s going to be really hard to be successful,” said Glattstein. “You don’t just have to go into finance or banking or consulting to be successful.”

In addition to building a lasting, generational business and “genuinely doing something meaningful to drive positive impact,” Glattstein is committed to coaching and mentoring what he calls “the next generation of stars. I really want to be there for young people as they start their career and inspire them, help them, coach them,” he explained. “That’s something I really want to focus on.”

According to Glattstein, VEG ER for Pets’ revenues are growing 40% annually and are expected to top $1 billion in the next year. The company’s current investors include Fidelity Investors, Sequoia Heritage, and D1 Capital Partners.

Luminary Lessons: Breakout Sessions with Entrepreneurs

During two separate sessions on day two, after brief introductions, each of the luminary entrepreneurs went into breakouts with students to discuss pre-selected topics.

For the first session, Designing for the End User Experience, the entrepreneurs included Vanessa Jeswani 08BBA, co-founder of Nomad Lane; Adam King 09MBA, co-founder & CEO of 1587 Sneaker; Colin McIntosh 12BBA, founder & CEO of Sheets & Giggles; and Scott Roskind, Partner at R3 Venture Partners.

For the Venturing in Disruption & Technology discussion, the luminary entrepreneurs were Jeffrey Chernick 04BBA, the founder of several successful companies as well as an advisor and angel investor; Camerson “Cam” Duncan 17BBA, co-founder & CEO of Axle; David Gaspar 02BBA, co-founder & Head of Innovation at Gather; and Glen Surnamer, COO of Pensare LLC.

Students recorded their takeaways from their breakouts with the entrepreneurs. Those takeaways included: 

+ “A bad product with a good team can succeed but a great product with a bad team will never succeed.”

+ “You won’t change the status quo unless you ask why. Ask why five times to get the answer—then dig deeper.”

+ “If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.”

“What these Luminaries share is a perpetual intellectual curiosity and cycle of continuous learning, an incredibly strong work ethic, resilience, and a strong desire to control their own paths and destiny,” explained Hershatter.

Pitch the Summit Competition

The Goizueta Emory Entrepreneurship summit concluded with the final rounds of the Pitch the Summit Competition, which provides Goizueta and Emory undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to learn to pitch an idea for a new venture.

The student teams competed not only for funding for their businesses in the form of cash prizes, but for access to the Emory Venture Mentoring Community. “This year featured perhaps the most competitive group of student-founder-led ventures in the competition’s history, all of whom are also participants in the 2025 Techstars Emory Founder Catalyst program,” explained Brian Cayce, managing director of The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Cayce adds that the luminary entrepreneurs had committed to mentoring the student founders as well.

The top teams were:

Undergraduate

1^st place $7500: Subscription Intern

2^nd place $3500: Commonology AI

3^rd place $1500: Safe Squeeze Headgear

Graduate

1^st place $7500: Workforce IQ

2^nd place $3500: Corridor

3^rd place $1500: moji

“Our panel of Luminaries was notably impressed by the caliber of innovation and drive they witnessed,” said Cayce of the student Pitch the Summit teams. “It is a powerful reminder that with the right support, Emory entrepreneurs are truly poised to lead transformative ventures,” Cayce added.

Discover how The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation is reshaping business and empowering the next generation of leaders.

The post Fueling Founders at Goizueta’s Ninth Annual Entrepreneurship Summit appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

We mark the official start of the new year with celebrations on January 1. New Year’s is a time for new beginnings and a chance to start fresh. We revel in the possibilities and opportunities the new year brings. Frequently, it is a time for goal setting. Perhaps you’ve even made a New Year’s resolution or two?

But New Year’s is also a time to pause, if only for the briefest of moments, before we return to work, school, or whatever regularly scheduled programming life has in store for us. It’s a chance to take a pulse on the current state of things. We reflect on the past year, bask in the glow of its high points, and appreciate lessons learned from the challenges we faced.

So, before we launch full steam ahead into the new year, let’s take a look back at some great stories you may have missed this past year on EmoryBusiness.com.

Students Write Notes to Themselves for the Future

Every August, the students in Goizueta Business School’s Full-Time MBA programs gather for Keystone. It’s a week of giving back through volunteering and catching up with classmates after a summer internship. Students take the opportunity to pause, reflect, and project. As part Keystone, they write a letter to their future self, not to be opened for at least five years. The letter-writing experience has been a Goizueta MBA tradition since 2012.

Emory Entrepreneurship Summit Features Renowned Shoe Designer Stuart Weitzman

Goizueta Business School hosted the 7th annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit March 30-31. One of the highlight’s of this year’s was the keynote address from Stuart Weitzman. Known for his commitment to prioritizing function as an integral element of fashion, Weitzman encouraged those in attendance to pursue their passions. He shared insights with a packed room of aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators in the form of a number of his truisms—or as he prefers to call them, “Stu-isms.”

Goizueta Launches Graduate Business Degree for Veterans & Active-Duty Military

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School announced in July the launch of its new Master in Business for Veterans. The program is a fully accredited 11-month degree for active-duty military, veterans, National Guard, and Reserve personnel. Spearheaded by Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General and Associate Dean for Leadership Ken Keen, as well as Faculty Lead Professor JB Kurish, the program will be guided by an advisory board of high-level business executives, several of whom are both retired military and graduates of Goizueta. The working professional program began accepting applications in August 2023 with the first cohort of veterans starting classes in May 2024.

Goizueta Business School Introduces New Master in Management Program for Recent Graduates

This past summer, Goizueta introduced its new Master in Management program. It’s designed specifically for graduates with a non-business major who are looking to level up their undergraduate degree. Experienced professors who are experts in their respective fields help students develop a foundation of with business knowledge and skills. Best of all, students can complete the Master in Management program in just ten months. This provides a fast-track option for students to gain a valuable business education and expand their career options.

Virtual Reality Revolutionizes Classroom Learning

Jill Perry-Smith is bringing an entirely new dimension to Goizueta’s Executive MBA program. Her focus: navigating difficult conversations and finding effective conflict resolution strategies. Through the use of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), Perry-Smith, senior associate dean for strategic initiatives and professor of organization and management, hopes to provide more students with experience in dealing with interpersonal conflict.

Goizueta Faculty Work to Help the LGBTQ+ Community Thrive

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and the LGBTQ Institute at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights are partners in the second survey of LGBTQ+ Southerners, released in April 2023. The study is a follow up to the 2017-18 inaugural survey, which was conducted by the Institute and George State University. This newly released study aims to help fill a critical research gap, looking at an understudied group with a larger data set.

The Voice of Alexa: How Speech Characteristics Impact Consumer Decisions

Rajiv Garg is associate professor of Information Systems & Operations Management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. Garg conducts research that explores the impact of artificial intelligence voices on consumer behavior and purchase intent, along with partners at HEC Paris and The University of Texas at Austin.

So, here’s the question: Can the voice of Samuel L. Jackson sell you an office chair? Read on to find out.

Playing Ball: How One Goizueta Graduate Has Scored Big in the NBA

Meet Lauren Cohen 00BBA, who recently entered her 24^th season with the National Basketball Association (NBA). But she doesn’t play basketball. She’s the vice president of partner management and operations lead for the NBA’s global partnerships group.

Cohen credits two things with the stability and tenure she’s enjoyed at the NBA: the people she works with and her opportunities to change roles every few years. But it all started with the strong foundation she build at Goizueta.

Preparing Workers of the Future

The future of work. What does it mean?

For Goizueta Business School graduates, the future of work is an exciting prospect, and they are ready for it. These workers of the future are embracing their passions and pursuing multiple careers. They are making business decisions for the betterment of society and leveraging technology to enhance their skills. On top of that, they are learning how to lead dispersed, remote teams.

Goizueta graduates don’t fear the future. They embrace it.

Talking about the Business of Healthcare

Healthcare is a business like many other industries, but instead of just making money, healthcare workers must also save lives. Navigating patient care and profitability is a unique challenge that neither business professionals nor doctors are able to address alone.

Goizueta helps bridge that gap. We teach clinicians the fundamentals of business and teach business professionals how to apply their knowledge specifically within the healthcare field.

Help keep the great Goizueta stories coming with a gift of support to Emory’s 2O36 campaign.

The post The Best Stories of 2023 from Goizueta Business School appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

This is the question that The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (CEI) is seeking to answer. 

The CEI Vision

Funded by a gift from The Goizueta Foundation in late 2019, the center seeks to bridge the gap between vision and reality, theory and practice.

The center focuses on three pillars of activity: developing entrepreneurial skills and new venture creation; preparing for early-stage investing and growing an understanding of capital formation; and enhancing creativity and innovation capabilities for organizations of all types.

“Think of it as a funnel,” Brian Cayce, managing director of the center, explains. “At the top of the funnel, our students or other startup entrepreneurs have these early-stage ideas. We want the center to support in various points along their journey with a continuum of programming and courses that will accelerate the likelihood of success with their ventures, all the way down to potentially securing investment from our student-run seed and venture funds. At the same time, some may also jump on the funnel at later stages, through exposure and opportunities we are providing for them to collaborate with early-stage investors in supporting startups.”

Delivering Transformational Experiences

In business schools across the country, there is a growing demand for opportunities to learn the real-world mechanics of disrupting and improving industries, as well as building new ones.

“Entrepreneurship and innovation are increasingly important, both for those interested in developing a creative mindset to shake things up and manage innovations within companies of all types to those interested in founding, joining or investing in new ventures,” says Jill Perry-Smith, academic director of the CEI. “We are proud of our suite of programs and courses that serve both interests.”

The center has expanded rapidly to meet these needs. As of 2023, the center already has 15 mission aligned courses; 10 programs offered; upward of 100 startups engaged; over 20 seed and venture funds involved; and over 500 students participating in program and course offerings. 

Many of the opportunities the center has in place aim to open the doors wider to historically excluded groups. One such program is the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund, a $1 million student-run venture fund focused on empowering underrepresented founders. Each year, students involved in the fund act in the investor role with input from faculty and an esteemed advisory board. To date, the fund has made total investment commitments of $170K into seven companies in seven different industries in six cities. AACSB International, the world’s largest business education alliance that connects educators, students, and businesses, recently honored the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund with its 2023 “Innovations that Inspire” award recognizing institutions that create new value for a continuously evolving business world and global society.

Like many of the center’s initiatives, the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund is run in the context of a class.

“In addition to benefiting each founder and company, this process also provides students unprecedented access and exposure to the world of venture capital–not to mention potential job opportunities,” says JB Kurish, professor in the practice of finance and co-lead faculty advisor for the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund.

Another popular program is the annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit, which provides Goizueta students a chance to network, hear from successful entrepreneurial alumni and learn from entrepreneurs. This year’s summit featured Stuart Weitzman as the keynote speaker, whose shoe line has been worn by the likes of Beyoncé, Kate Middleton, and Taylor Swift. The culmination of the annual event is the “Pitch the Summit” competition, in which students present their own aspiring startups to a panel of distinguished entrepreneurial judges. The judges select one lucky and hardworking recipient to take home a grand prize of $10,000, among the $25,000 awarded across a variety of startup categories.

“Each year, the summit gets exponentially better,” says Andrea Hershatter, senior associate dean and BBA program director. “Student attendance this year was at an all-time high, the track records of our entrepreneurs were off the charts, and the traction and potential of the pitched ventures was the most evolved it has ever been.”

The Emory Startup Launch Accelerator, run in partnership with The Hatchery, Emory Center for Innovation, prepares early-stage founders to take on the challenges of launching a new and successful business.. This immersive 8-week program pulls from evidence-based tools and processes to offer hands on workshops and challenges, allowing young companies to quickly test and tweak their business models to reflect consumer feedback. The center selected a dozen companies for their 2023 cohort; businesses ranged from sustainable farming education to task management software. The most recent cohort saw several companies go on to either raise external capital or find spots in the leading global accelerators, and the center strives to support the placement opportunities for these participants after the sessions have ended.

“The 12 founders selected for the Startup Launch Accelerator represent a diverse range of industries and are at various early stages of their entrepreneurial journeys,” says Christy Brown, one of the center’s key entrepreneurs-in-residence. “Their passion, innovation, and commitment to scaling their companies with rigor and strategic goals around growth are truly inspiring. These founders were selected based on overall ability to scale and the current timeline of their companies.”

Another key initiative, the RAISE Forum (Retaining and Accelerating Investment in the Southeast at Emory), connects in-revenue startups and top-tier investors from across the Southeast to foster collaboration within the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and ensures that the best startups can stay local. The 12th RAISE Forum—which took place in November of last year—gathered close to 100 participants, who enjoyed the opportunity to exchange strategic plans, engage in discussion groups, and explore potential business opportunities.

“This program fulfills one of our key goals of keeping companies in the region, along with showcasing a diverse group of founders and companies, as about 30 percent of RAISE C-level execs are underserved,” says Charles Goetz, senior lecturer of organization & management at Goizueta Business School and RAISE Forum co-founder.

Supporting these activities and learning vital lessons along the way, student fellows add tremendous value to the center.

 “The fellowship—which includes undergraduate and graduate students—allows students to get more exposure to different programmatic opportunities, working with partners across Atlanta, sometimes farther afield,” says Cayce. “They get the opportunity to travel and participate in conferences with support from the center. At the same time, they help to design, cultivate and curate these programs. They go on to be amazing ambassadors for Goizueta Business School.”

Expanding Impact

The center plans to streamline and enrich its current programming, while continuing to generate new programs, many of which focus on building collaborative webs between Goizueta students and the various other stakeholders in and around the field of entrepreneurship.

For example, the center is gearing up to take advantage of the robust biomedical community in and around Emory’s campus.

“My goal is to build tools that can bring visibility to what’s happening across different hubs of innovation within the Emory University ecosystem, and then think through meaningful ways that the business school students can plug into those and build value for Emory across the board,” says Cayce.

Another prospective program tentatively titled “EmHERy Ventures,” which borrows its framework from the successful Peachtree Minority Venture Fund and is geared toward women entrepreneurs and founders, is also in the works: “This is an area where we would use the same plumbing and wiring of the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund, but find support—from the school and beyond—to get this initiative with its unique focus launched,” shares Cayce.

Also in the planning stages, the center is looking into an initiative focused on corporate venture capital.

“Corporate venture capital is a subset of venture capital in which corporations take the early risk in startups. In the last five to seven years this activity has really grown and become more sophisticated,” he shares. “It’s a huge growth opportunity for the business school.”

Cayce says we should stay tuned, as there are even more programs in the works which mingle Goizueta students with community partners to spur innovation and investment.

While the center researches the best methods to help nurture the vision of students, Cayce himself is dreaming of what Goizueta can do for the community overall.

“What excites me is to think about what that portfolio of contribution to the community could look like in the next three to five years.”

Immersion in entrepreneurship and innovation is central to Goizueta’s business education. The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation takes a multi-faceted approach to engage students and business owners through interaction with Entrepreneurs-in-Residence and ecosystem collaborators, Pitch the Professor events, the annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit, focused coursework, a Startup Launch Accelerator, venture capital opportunities through the RAISE Forum and the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund, and other entrepreneurial programming. Learn more here.

The post Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation Expands Opportunities to Meet Growing Demand appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation has been working tirelessly to provide aspiring entrepreneurs at Emory with the tools and resources they need to succeed. These programs enable student entrepreneurs, like me, to thrive.

Through experiences, programs, and opportunities, I believe that entrepreneurship at Emory will become a magnet that attracts prospective entrepreneurs from all over the world to come to Emory to receive their education.

One program meant to push entrepreneurs forward in their journey is the Emory Entrepreneurship Summit which took place on March 31 and April 1. The Entrepreneurship Summit is a two-day event where people connected through a passion for entrepreneurship come together to network, learn, and get inspired.

The objective of the Emory Entrepreneurship Summit Pitch the Summit competition is to provide Emory undergraduate and graduate students with the opportunity to learn how to effectively pitch an idea for a new venture. Winning individuals and teams receive guidance, financial support, and in-kind contributions to move the venture forward.

This year’s event featured a founder’s address by Vivek Garipalli 00BBA, a panel by the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund, and numerous workshops aimed at honing entrepreneurial skills. Finalist pitchers that participated in the competition also presented their ventures to compete for a cash prize pool of $25,000. If you are interested in launching your own business, this is an excellent opportunity to acquire funding and take the first key step to transform your venture from a dream to a reality.

Neil Banerjee 22BBA, who won second place and secured $5,000 in funding, plans to use his prize money to visit New York and meet with designers to partner with his startup, FTTED, a platform that hosts independent fashion designers and connects them to consumers, giving them the resources they need to scale.

For nonpitchers, the Summit is an excellent educational opportunity to learn from professionals. Various workshops were hosted by Emory alumni who have had their share of success in the entrepreneurial world. Workshops included topics such as “How do I Monetize my Concept and Acquire Customers,” hosted by Sean Belnick 09BBA and Jared Belsky 05MBA, “How do I Build an MVP, Working Prototype, or App,” hosted by Omer Sattar 00BBA  and Eden Chen 02BBA, and “How do I Raise Funding,” hosted by Gardiner Garrard 99MBA and Kerry Miller 01BBA. These workshops illuminated aspects of entrepreneurship about which some young entrepreneurs might be in the dark, giving valuable pieces of knowledge that aspiring entrepreneurs could utilize.

“Embrace Luck”

The keynote speaker gave an inspiring founder’s address that walked the audience through his own entrepreneurial journey. Garipalli is the CEO and Founder of Clover Health, a health insurance company that leverages data to proactively improve health outcomes, filling gaps in care and reducing avoidable costs. He earned a BBA from Goizueta with a concentration in entrepreneurship.

My biggest takeaway from Garipalli’s address centers around an unconventional piece of advice he gave us: “embrace luck.” This piece of advice illustrates to entrepreneurs that sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time, and you must ensure you have the grit and consistency to create and capitalize on these opportunities.

The Emory Entrepreneurship Summit further fueled my passion for entrepreneurship by placing me in an environment with like-minded individuals who share the same goals and ambitions that I do. If you missed the Summit this year, don’t worry. You can always join us again next year!

Undergraduate and graduate students share their perspectives on life at Goizueta through the Voice of Goizueta blog. Dany Hernandez is an entrepreneurship student fellow of The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.

The post Young Entrepreneurs Absorb ‘Lessons Learned’ by Seasoned Pros at the Emory Entrepreneurship Summit appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

“Many more women are now starting businesses. Maybe 15 percent of the students in my classes were women back in 2010,” Goetz recalls. “Today I have classes where that’s 45 percent.”

The gap between men and women is narrowing, with women now pursuing a broader variety of businesses. “Guys tend to be more tech-oriented where I’d say a slight preponderance of women create more retail-oriented ventures, but not always. The trend is changing,” Goetz says. Women start businesses for different reasons than men. “I’d say women are not as motivated by money as men,” he says. “Women think, ‘this is a problem, and I can fix it.’ They want results. Men seek a great financial opportunity.”

Women are more mission-driven, and they start more nonprofits by far than men.

Charlie Goetz, distinguished lecturer in entrepreneurship

Founders Build Meaningful Businesses that Merge Passion and Profit

Lola Banjo 11MBA was compelled to found her startup Silver & Riley. Banjo works full-time as the senior managing director for strategy and innovation consulting at Salesforce, a position she loves and isn’t willing to leave. But she also harbored a “nearly decade-long dream” to start her own company and realize her “genuine passion and love for both the travel and fashion industry.”

Banjo’s startup workday begins at 2 a.m. for Silver & Riley.

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. It takes real commitment, dedication, time management, and true passion to sustain.

Lola Banjo 11MBA

Silver & Riley manufactures and sells stylish leather travel bags and accessories for professional women; the brand now includes fashion, which will expand her target audience.

As the founder of Gather’d Market, Antoinette Rosenberg 14MBA saw a problem and decided to fix it—a lesson she learned at Goizueta.

You can build a successful and enduring business off of one unique customer insight. This was a common theme in the stories of all the entrepreneurs we heard from in Charlie Goetz’s classes.

Antoinette Rosenberg 14MBA

Rosenberg is tackling the pain point of families who need a ‘meal-time partner.’ There are plenty of ways to get groceries delivered, but Gather’d is entering into the food buying experience before families even make their grocery list. Located in Seattle, Rosenberg has aspirations to expand nationally.

Raising Capital Presents Greater Challenges to Female Founders than Male

One of the biggest differences between men and women entrepreneurs comes in raising capital. “Unfortunately, it is harder for women to get funding. But more venture companies and angel groups are now looking for women’s businesses specifically,” Goetz says. “Banks are also making a significant change to try to better the needs of women entrepreneurs.” Adding, “Now, we are having a different conversation.”

Banjo invested $200,000 of her own money to launch her business in October 2019. Five months later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Sales halted. She couldn’t receive her product or travel to Italy where the bags were made. As for working capital? It was tied up in inventory that couldn’t be delivered. She relied on “strength of mind” to navigate the challenges and relied on memories of “grit, pain, and preserving the human spirit,” from her time growing up in Lagos in an area severely economically disadvantaged.

Atlanta-based Laine London is a first-of-its-kind Black woman-owned rental bridal shop that provides brides-to-be with convenient and cost-efficient access to wedding gowns, veils, accessories, and more. With 2.5 million weddings a year in this country, Founder Lundyn Carter 17EMBA sees a huge national opportunity.

Carter bootstrapped for the first year, which “allowed us to find product-market fit and build a working capital model that has allowed us to fund our own growth.” She received over $150k in capital contributions in the form of non-dilutive grants from organizations such as Google, American Express, Facebook, and Unilever. Carter also partnered with Verizon on her marcom strategy and SAP on streamlining operations.

Sights set high, Carter’s quest is for Laine London to become the premier wedding resource in the U.S. and attract funding opportunities. “We’re not what your traditional venture-backed startup looks like, so I anticipate some hesitation from investors who may not initially understand our growth potential or see a path to profitability,” she says.

While some would call Laine London a small business, I see us as a tech-enabled Clothing as a Service (CaaS) startup that’s disrupting a 2.4B industry that has seen little to no change. I believe that the right capital resource(s) will come along and see Laine London as an asset to their portfolio.

Lundyn Carter 17EMBA

Rosenberg concentrates on fortifying her business and doesn’t chase after money. “I have learned, and continue to come back to, the importance of staying focused on the real human problem you are trying to solve.”

“In a frothy startup market, it’s easy to look around and see all the money being raised for on-trend businesses. But if raising money is your end game, then one day you’re a ‘future of work’ company, and next day you’re a web3 business,” she says. “This feels like a sure way to fail. Instead, I’ve learned that staying focused not only keeps you moving in the right direction but also opens up opportunities for innovation.”

Antoinette Rosenberg 14MBA

Business is the Most Powerful Vehicle for Change in Society

Goetz shares that more women not only start nonprofits than men, but they tend to have a charity or nonprofit component in their enterprises. The first lesson Rosenberg learned at Emory is that business is the most powerful vehicle for change in society. “During a mid-semester module in South Africa, we visited a company that made banking accessible via a cell phone sim card. Because of that company’s work, a population without access to traditional banks could now deposit, transfer, and withdraw money with ease,” she says.

Banjo remains a “principled leader,” a core value she learned at Goizueta. “As my career has gone on, I have come to recognize how important this truly is.”

Whether you are in corporate America or in business, you’ll be called to task to lead, even if you do not have leader in your title. As a leader, you have to be sure you are walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Your legacy is created every day.

Lola Banjo 11MBA

Banjo is true to her word. For Silver & Riley, five percent of every sale is funneled into grants to help launch, grow, and scale female-led businesses. The first round of $1,000 has grown into $10,000.

Even with challenges, Goetz says it’s not surprising that women are overcoming them and holding their own. “Women are more determined than ever to become entrepreneurs.”

Banjo accumulated 136 rejections from manufacturers—but two others said yes. “Never give up. When you’re first starting out, you’ll hear ‘NO’ a lot. Your breakthrough is just around the corner! Every ‘NO’ is one step closer to a ‘Yes.’ Keep going for your dreams.”

Carter learned the meaning of success and credits Mellody Hobson, president and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, for the insight. “Success is truly a function of how you define it, not anyone else. Hard work plus bravery equals success.”

She admits that every person has their own definition of hard work but, it doesn’t matter. “Hard still means overcoming adversity, obstacles, and challenges. For me, bravery is the ability to be bold, fearless, and true to yourself and your beliefs. For instance, we’re not looking to be just another bridal shop. We’re taking advantage of new technologies not only to cut costs, but also to unlock massive value so we can maintain our first-mover advantage and stay two steps ahead or our competitors.”

Stories of creativity and determination help define women entrepreneurs, says Goetz. “I have to give them credit. They can handle a lot more than men. I don’t know how they do it. But they do.”

The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation serves as the resource hub for student and alumni entrepreneurs, early-stage investors, startup launch accelerator participants, and ecosystem collaborators. On March 31 and April 1, the center will host the 2022 Emory Entrepreneurship Summit featuring keynote speaker Vivek Garipalli 00BBA, Co-Founder and CEO of Clover Health. Register for the summit today.

As part of the center’s outreach, the Peachtree Minority Venture Fund is the first-of-its-kind student-run million-dollar venture capital fund focused on underrepresented founders. Learn more.

Goizueta students interested in entrepreneurship, innovation, and early-stage investing are invited to apply to become student fellows of the center. Applications are now open.

The post Female Founders: Merging Passion and Profit appeared first on EmoryBusiness.com.

Emory Business asked Senior Associate Dean and BBA Program Director Andrea Hershatter for her top advice for would-be entrepreneurs. Here is what she shared:

Embrace frustration

Potential business ideas are everywhere. Any process that is inefficient or not user-centric, any product that does not serve its purpose well, and any job that needs to be done that is not addressed by a market solution, presents opportunities for innovative solutions and successful venture launches

Start with a problem, not a solution

Too many aspiring entrepreneurs fall in love with and create a venture around an imagined solution. Great ventures are much more likely to emerge from exploring an unmet need and the many ways to address it. This allows for the assessment of multiple approaches to arrive at an optimal product-market fit.

Do your research

Research should be qualitative and quantitative and should include primary and secondary sources. There is no substitute for actually interviewing prospective end-users, potential competitors, and future customers. Databases are equally indispensable to calculate the size of addressable markets, estimate potential demand, or assess the competitive environment.

Research is the foundation of all credible projections.

Talk to everyone and learn to really listen

An idea cannot be protected by keeping it secret, and the odds are extremely high that others are working on similar ventures anyway. Entrepreneurs who actively seek and incorporate multiple perspectives and are genuinely receptive to critical analysis are able to build better offerings and foresee and plan for potential obstacles.

Conduct many small experiments

Conceptualizing, researching, and planning are all essential aspects of the process, but entrepreneurship is fundamentally about actually creating something. Build a prototype, test a beta, give out samples, set up a Kickstarter campaign, create a website, or media campaign, and measure the response. Then, analyze, iterate, and repeat until you have validated a viable concept. Every cycle improves your offering and gets you one step closer to launching.

BONUS TIP: Embrace the journey. Every failed venture is a stepping stone to building a successful one next time!

Are you a current student or alumnus with a brilliant idea for a new business? Are you an entrepreneur or investor who would like to get involved as a mentor? Dive into the interactive experiences, events, and resources of The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.

Register for the March 31-April 1 Emory Entrepreneurship Summit featuring keynote speaker Vivek Garipalli 00BBA, co-founder and CEO of Clover Health.

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Pitch the Summit

Prior to the Summit, student entrepreneurs had the opportunity to compete in early rounds of the Pitch the Summit competition.  Those who advanced to the final rounds presented their ideas to a panel of distinguished entrepreneurial judges, who selected the most successful three pitches which were then delivered in an open session.

The winning team was named Innohealth Diagnostics and was pitched by Angela Udongwo 20MPH. The team developed a test for the parasitic disease schistosomiasis, which they hope will increase early detection and lower the rate of the disease. The winners will receive guidance, financial support, and a seat for a semester in Atlanta Tech Village.

Alumni entrepreneurial spotlights

A highlight of the fifth annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit was the alumni entrepreneurial spotlights. A dozen BBA and Emory College entrepreneurs returned to campus to candidly discuss the highs and lows of building ventures. They offered insights and words of advice to students interested in the entrepreneurial path.

Cyril Berdugo 11BBA

During his talk, Berdugo reminded the students they were in one of the best business schools in the world, and that the platform for their success was all but guaranteed. He then challenged the students to ask themselves what they would do if they knew they were not going to fail. For Berdugo, the answer to that question was real estate. His company, Landis, purchases properties for renters and allocates part of the monthly payment towards a down payment, allowing clients to transition to homeownership.

Eden Chen 09BBA

Before founding Fisherman Labs, Chen explored a career as a pastor and a banker. In addition to his primary company, which creates digital products and experiences for brands, Chen is currently running two other companies.  He shared his eclectic interests with the students and urged them to use today’s incredible technology to follow their dreams. If you have an interest or idea, Chen advised the students, use the vast learning resources and global network of the internet to learn everything you can about it. Then, go out and build it—and launch it as fast as possible.

Jonathan Ende 05BBA

Ende’s key takeaway for the students was finding your focus. His company, SeamlessDocs, helps governments take existing forms and processes and turn them into elegant and accessible online user experiences. Ende cautioned the students not to try to do too much and be wary of ideas you can’t explain in a single sentence. Once you have fine-tuned that sentence, the point is not to sell, it’s to tell a compelling story with the perfect customer in mind.  With focus and persistence, Ende said, you can do absolutely anything.

David Gelbard 09BBA

Looking back on his career, Gelbard told the students, it was his relationships and reputation that propelled him forward more than anything else. He emphasized the importance of self-awareness: knowing what you’re good at and where your gaps are and finding the right people to fill them in. Gelbard’s company, Parachute, offers patients online shopping for medical equipment and healthcare supplies and aims to overhaul the antiquated systems hospitals use to order vendor products. “Don’t run for the sake of running,” Gelbard says, “you have to know where you want to go.”

David Gaspar 02BBA  

During his talk, Gaspar shared the journey of one of his earlier startups with the students. He founded a marketing company that worked to leverage social media influencers but existed before the boom of Instagram stars that make up that industry today. Gaspar warned the students that if no one is doing what you’re doing, you’re either early or you’re wrong. And in his opinion, early is exactly the same as wrong. Gaspar is currently using his significant entrepreneurial experience as managing director at DDG, a consulting company that provides tools in strategy, branding, and product development to create transformational growth for established companies

Todd Richheimer 02BBA

Richheimer started his career as a lawyer, where he realized the legal industry is tech-backward. His company, Lawfty, provides case generation technology for attorneys in the personal injury space. Richheimer warned students that there is no such thing as an “a-ha moment,” but that curiosity leads to ideas. In his experience, hustle, relationships, and perseverance build businesses, and only the strong survive in entrepreneurship. Richheimer told the students that although there will always be challenges, they should persevere and remember that work should be fun.

Nathan Meeks 07BBA

For Meeks, people are what matter. During his talk, he told students the relationships they cultivate, and the team they build, is the difference between life and death in a company. He cautioned against depending on one source for growth, whether it’s a client, marketing channel or even a feature set. Meeks originally founded Gigzolo as a platform for finding and booking musicians and other artists for private events. As the company has matured, the focus has evolved to provide clients with data insights that allow them to create events that will resonate with their target audiences.

Andrew Berman 07BBA

Berman founded Nanit, a smart baby monitor that uses computer vision and machine learning to track sleep and breathing. Currently working on a new startup in the enterprise voice space, Berman has plenty of experience in growing ventures and securing VC funding. He told the students that in the fundraising stage, you have to sell a dream, and then build a product that people love.  He provided additional advice: Companies go out of business because they run out of capital, running a business is tough — it’s 24/7/365 — and lack of speed kills startups, so remember that perfection is the enemy of good.

Colin McIntosh 12BBA

Sheets and Giggles, the company McIntosh founded, makes bed sheets from eucalyptus trees. The company separates themselves from the competition with playful but effective advertising and a focus on sustainability and quality. McIntosh visited the Summit directly from TechStars Denver, where his company was selected as part of the 2019 class and was on deck to pitch at Demo Day. He told the students he balances financial goals with offering the highest premium product and being environmentally friendly. In a startup, he said, finances take priority, because “you can’t do sheet without a healthy business!”

Alexandra Samit 09BBA

Samit is a jewelry designer who owns and operates Alexandra Beth Designs.  She started her business as a side line in high school and currently sells her products online and at artisan booths in Soho and Chelsea Market in New York City, where the company is based. Samit used her time in college to intern with jewelry designers and strongly recommends interning to gain experience and contacts in the industry you’re interested in. When developing a product, Samit told the students it’s crucial to research everything, test out pricing during a soft launch and most importantly, listen to your customers.

Joshua Sigel 02BBA

Sigel started his career as an analyst and went on to run operations in the food and beverage industry, but he wanted the chance to be truly innovative.  He started Lasso Ventures, a venture management firm, so he could help companies generate revenue, access expertise and leverage synergies. He is concurrently working on a side venture, underscoring his entrepreneurial philosophy that there is not one path, but rather multiple ways to deploy ideas. The quality of his decisions along his journey, he told the students, have been directly proportional to the number of conflicting thoughts he could simultaneously entertain.

Sarah Van Dell 04C

Van Dell shared her nonlinear path with the students. She said that while she did not always identify as an entrepreneur, she grew up comfortable picking her own path and pursuing whatever sparked her intellectual curiosity.  She founded Plum Relish as a way to tap into the corporate lunch market by providing lunch delivery service from higher-end restaurant groups.  The uncertainty of the food industry excites her. “Put us on a boat,” she says, “We don’t know where we’re going, but we kind of know it’s open ocean.”  Among other insights, she told attendees to suspend disbelief and show up for yourself. Be true to what you want to be doing.

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This year doesn’t just mark Goizueta’s centennial — it’s also the fifth anniversary of the Emory Entrepreneurship Summit. The keynote brought together two extremely successful Emory alumni: David Politis 04C, founder and CEO of BetterCloud, and William Hockey 12BBA, co-founder and CTO of Plaid.

Politis graduated Emory with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He laughs that at the time, his grades weren’t strong enough to get into the business school.

Hearing the story of his success, encompassing life before and after Emory, it’s clear that for Politis, failure isn’t a bad thing. Building BetterCloud to where it is today — operating in 60 countries and employing 250 people in Atlanta, New York and San Francisco — demanded lessons learned beyond the classroom.

ABCs to overseas

Business lessons for Politis started early on, were taught by his father, and learned through osmosis. He accompanied his father (an entrepreneur himself) on business trips to places like China, Ukraine and Nigeria. “My dad would literally take me to meetings when I was 10 years old, give me a piece of paper and say ‘Take notes,’” says Politis. It wasn’t exactly a trip to the park, but it was time with his father, time that left an impression and would pay dividends later in life.

“I spent a lot of time with him and really grew up wanting to be an entrepreneur,” says Politis. “When I was in college at Emory, he would BCC me on every single email. And I read every single one.” That’s where Politis got a lot of the passion he has for entrepreneurship.

Enter … exit Emory

His decision to attend Emory was driven because of Goizueta’s renown as one of the best business schools. He reasoned that being an Emory graduate would position him well to get accepted. But although he found his grades somewhat lacking, he found direction. “All I wanted to do really was start a business.”

“College was an amazing experience,” says Politis. “My time at Emory really shaped the rest of my career.”

After graduating in 2004, he started working at a small Atlanta IT company, which didn’t go well. When severe downsizing dropped the employee count from 16 to two (including him), Politis found himself the CEO of a company within six months of graduating. “I learned so much from this experience,” says Politis. “If I could give one piece of advice coming out of this, [it’d be] if you want to be an entrepreneur and you’re not going to start something, find somewhere where you can go and have a real impact.” Find somewhere you can own a large portion of the business in terms of the work you’re doing, “because you get questions that you wouldn’t normally get and responsibility that would take years to get elsewhere.”

He was able to grow the company to about 200 employees before leaving in 2010 for Cloud Sherpas, a cloud computing company. He was brought on to grow the company, which he did, expanding its employee base from 10 to 100 in just over a year. Ranked as one of the fastest growing Atlanta-based companies, Cloud Sherpas employed 2,000 people when acquired by Accenture.

Define the problem, define your success

“While I was at Cloud Sherpas, I got this idea to start my company,” says Politis. It sprang out of customers’ needs to manage and secure newly installed infrastructure. He saw the very real need, so he created a very real solution.

“At BetterCloud, we connect the cloud applications a company is using to do work — Slack, DropBox, etc. — and we help its IT and security teams manage and secure those platforms at a high level,” says Politis. Starting a company like this took funding (and lots of it) to build the technology, and he was able to raise $100 million.

“My goal for BetterCloud was to make this the most successful company that I’ve been a part of,” says Politis. “And ‘most successful’ in my mind is everything from how we treat our customers, how we treat our employees, to the IP that we’ve built, to the core economics of the business, to the outcome at the end.” According to him, BetterCloud is still in the early part of the journey. “We’re seven years in, but it’s got a long ways to go.”

From his experiences, Politis shared what he considers five keys to his success:

• Obsess over your customer. “This is the most important. Understanding them, who they are, what they do every day, the issues that they have, and really driving to delight them. Doing this has made a massive difference at BetterCloud.”
• Improve the machine every day. “First-time entrepreneurs are always trying to be perfect — that’s a big mistake. Focus on the small improvements that you can make each day.”
• Don’t do it for the ’gram. “Don’t talk about how you’re just crushing it all the time. It doesn’t help you at all. It’s good to understand where the problems are — don’t make it look all perfect.”
• Your team is everything. “Find people who are going to fill in where you’re weak. Learn to delegate. Starting a business, it’s scary to hand over real big parts of it to others, but that’s a key element.”
• Enjoy the journey. “Don’t start a business and try to be the next Zuckerberg. It’s too long of a road and you don’t know what’s going to happen, so while you’re going through it you have to enjoy the journey — making friends, building yourself and your own skills every day.”

Ever seen a plaid unicorn?

Goizueta grad William Hockey has. He’s the co-founder of Plaid, a startup focused on democratizing financial services through technology.

An astounding one in four people in the U.S. with bank accounts uses Plaid. Even more astounding is its raising $250 million at its $2.65 billion valuation earlier this year.

Hockey sat down with Andrea Hershatter, senior associate dean and director of Goizueta’s BBA program, to share his journey with gathered Summit participants.

Like Politis, Hockey’s parents were in small business. “My grandpa owned a welding shop, and my dad owns his own construction company,” says Hockey. “When I was younger, in elementary school, they asked you what you wanted to do. I said I wanted to be a farmer, but my parents pulled me aside and were like, ‘yeah, no.’ And so I started getting into welding at my grandpa’s shop.”

He enjoyed building things and discovered programming. As he describes it, “programming was kind of like the socially acceptable way to build things.” To him, when you’re programing, you’re building software, just like you’re building a house or working on a car. “You’re creating something,” says Hockey. “It felt very tangible to me.” And he kept at it.

His studies and early work experience introduced him to other pursuits like finance and consulting “because that’s what business people do.” Yet the need to create was still there.

Climbing and creating

While at an indoor climbing gym, Hockey and good friend Zack Perret (Plaid’s then-future CEO) started talking about how they were both at a unique place and time in their lives. “We wanted to go and do something ourselves,” says Hockey. “And we decided we wanted to start something in the next 20 years. So, when’s a good time to start that?” While they read that most successful entrepreneurs are 55 years old, “we just ignored all those articles … we had absolutely nothing to lose. I had no wife, no kids, and was lucky enough not to have any student debt, and I figured why not?”

The two decided to treat it as a couple years off. Go build something. Enjoy it. And “in the worst-case scenario, we’d end up having to find a job afterwards.”

Owning a company wasn’t necessarily a driver for Hockey, but creating something was. Creating Plaid was as arduous as it was amazing. In New York, Hockey and Perret lived bottom dollar “and it was great.” They got a free space from one of their friends and got to work. “It was about convincing people to give us money” and getting Plaid off the ground.

Seek satisfaction, find a solution

“You should never start a business to make money,” says Hockey, echoing Politis’ earlier sentiment. “That never entered our consciousness. We were like, we’re going to build something that’s going to fail and then we’re going down.” They found it interesting, fun and different. “And we kind of fell in this hole of financial service.”

People regularly rate financial stress as the largest stress point in their life, more so than health. “Yet nobody’s ever said, ‘Oh my God, the bank changed my life.’ And we wanted to change that.” But they didn’t really know how.  

Begin with a finite focus

When they started in 2012, they didn’t really have any investors, just a few from a small startup they knew. “They were using our product because they were our friend.” The co-founders, however, thought that if they did something in financial services it would grow.

“We were trying to sell this one very specific niche for a small development community,” says Hockey, “and I think we got lucky and picked a good time to get into the market.” Contrary to companies that look at a big market and try to add value to it, Plaid picked a small niche problem, solved it and expanded it.

“One tactical piece of advice I’d give is to work at a startup before you start a business,” says Hockey. “You don’t have to, but I think the most successful entrepreneurs have … it enables you to move so much quicker once you’re actually the one starting a business.”

Hockey considers the lessons that were extremely painful for him, his co-founder and their employees. “We’d never been in a real business before,” and had he that experience, he feels perhaps they could have circumnavigated some struggles. “Just work at one for six, 12, 18 months, and it will save you an immense amount of time. I think we probably would have moved two years faster if we would have worked at a startup for six to 12 months beforehand.”

It’s sound advice that aspiring entrepreneurs should heed. And with both BetterCloud and Plaid hiring, that first step might be closer than you think.

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For two days, students, faculty, staff and community members had the opportunity to dive into the world of entrepreneurship.

Goizueta, in conjunction with Emory Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (E-Cubed) hosted the fourth annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit.

Attendees heard from keynote speaker and Chief Digital Officer of CBS Corporation and Chief Executive Officer of CBS Interactive Jim Lanzone 98JD/MBA, as well as learned from entrepreneurial alumni, showcased their ideas through the Pitch the Summit competition and networked with others.

One highlight from the event was the micro-entrepreneurship panel presented by Emory Impact Investing Group featuring four local entrepreneurs:

• Nicole Massiah, Krumbz Bakery, a bakery in Atlanta dedicated to providing desserts, including custom cakes and cake truffles.
• Eden Fesshazion, Eden Fesshazion, LLC, a law firm that specializes in immigration, family law and personal injury.
• Doris Mukang, Johari Africa Enterprise, a company that employs African refugee women to produce traditional African clothing and accessories, which are sold primarily through markets and tradeshows.
• Akissi Stokes, WUNDERgrubs, a sustainable food revolution by using protein-rich mealworms as a primary ingredient in its cookies and baked treat.

Starting, growing and maintaining a business is no easy task, and each of the four entrepreneurs talked about various challenges and lessons they have learned through the process.

One of Massiah’s keys to success was knowing the full picture, something she didn’t understand until she dove into the interworking of the business. What started out as a simple process of cataloging all of her products, quickly turned into a week and a half project of trying to organize more than 2,000 products.

“For me with the food business, it was not only the policies and some of the laws and regulations because you’re dealing with selling food that’s going to be consumed by the public, but you’re dealing with all of the inventory,” Massiah said. “You think about baking cakes, cupcakes and cake truffles, and it sounds so simplistic. But those little details made it much more complex than I ever thought.”

Sometimes it’s not always working with a variety of products but more so working with a variety of people. Mukang said one of her biggest challenges is having women from Bhutan, Burma, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia — all of whom come from different cultural backgrounds.

“You are trying to address all these cultural nuances, and then not to forget that they’re from a background of torture and trauma,” Mukang said. “We’re thinking of all of those things and trying to accommodate that and still encourage these women.”

One of the biggest factors in starting a business is having community support from the very beginning. With the help of farmer’s markets, repeat customers, EIIG and cohorts, Stokes has been able to build vital community support for her business.

“The community has been surprisingly supportive,” Stokes said. “I definitely consider myself a social entrepreneur. It’s community support, and mine’s been more business-based than anything.”

Organizations like EIIG and Social Enterprise @ Goizueta’s Start:ME program have helped several entrepreneurs succeed in starting a business, including Fesshazion.

“We have a lot of the interns come in from the community, and it’s been really nice,” Fesshazion said. “We’ve helped the interns, and they’ve helped us. Our business is maybe a little bit different, but through EIIG and Start:ME, the continued mentorship program has been priceless.”

Massiah echoed the sentiment understanding the value of helpful organizations stating that it’s important to have a passion to get the business started, but it takes more to make it successful.

“You can come in with passion, but passion isn’t enough,” Massiah said. “You have to have determination. You have to have discipline. And sometimes, to be frank, you don’t really feel so much. But to have a pseudo-partner, and I think EIIG functions very much as one, gives you that extra push sometimes when you may need. It makes it so much easier and makes the process so much smoother.”

Alumni Spotlight Session

The summit also featured a variety of entrepreneurial alumni who presented during the Alumni Spotlight Session, including

• Andrew Berman BBA alum, founder and former COO and board member of Nanit
• Brandon Fishman 03BBA, CEO of Internet Marketing Inc and CEO of Vitacup
• David Gaspar 02BBA, managing director at DDG
• David Mandelbaum 07BBA and Jessica Lloyd 07BBA, co-founders of Panatea
• Nathan Meeks 07BBA, co-founder and CEO at Gigzolo
• Joshua Sigel 02BBA, COO of Innit

Pitch the Summit Competition

Undergraduate students also had the opportunity to sign up for the Pitch the Summit competition where they learn how to effectively pitch an idea for a new venture. Individuals crafted an elevator pitch that verbally outlines an entrepreneurial concept or idea in a short period of time. Students then had to pitch their idea to a panel of judges with the most successful pitches advancing through three rounds of competition.
This year’s winning team was Vimband with 19BBA Kieren Helmn leading the team. Helmn’s team will receive guidance, financial support and in-kind contributions in order to move the venture forward.

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As always, a key highlight of the fourth annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit was hearing from alumni who had stated their own ventures. This year’s entrepreneurial spotlights were all BBA graduates, returning to campus to share their stories and words of advice with eager students looking to potentially start their own entrepreneurial journeys.

Andrew Berman

Entrepreneur, angel investor and advisor to venture capital-backed companies, Andrew Berman 07BBA Is at his most satisfied when he is building a venture. Berman is the founder and former COO and board member of Nanit, a VC-backed smart baby monitor that uses computer vision and machine learning to help babies and their parents sleep better,

Berman, who started his career in investment banking, developed his passion for entrepreneurship at Norwest Venture Partners as a venture capitalist.

“I’ve sat across from a lot of CEOs who now have public companies,” Berman said. “I was learning about this, and I was always wondering what it would be like to be on the other side.”

After getting his MBA and leaving his job in finance, Berman took the plunge and started his own company.

“We were two guys in a room with a whiteboard at the time,” Berman said. “In fundraising, you’re just pitching a dream. You’re trying to convince people the future will come true. After that, you have to actually go build that product. For us, we made it, but it was a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I think the two most important things to know in venture-backed startups is lack of speed kills them and perfection is the enemy of good. It’s a 24/7, 365-day job.”

Today, Nanit employs about 30 individuals and is thriving, but after four years, Berman is considering his next challenge.

“I want to start another company,” Berman said. “Today, I’m advising and investing in companies and focused on starting something new.”

Brandon Fishman

Brandon Fishman 03BBA has more than 10 years of experience in the online marketing and advertising industry. As the CEO of Internet Marketing Inc and CEO of VitaCup, he describes himself as a serial entrepreneur. Fishman started IMI in 2007 and has grown it to 100 employees and $30 million in annual revenue. He is currently burning the candle at both ends, running IMI while nurturing VitaCup, his most recent endeavor. He launched his new company, which makes Keurig-compatible coffee pods infused with vitamins, in April of last year and in only five months, has built sales to $1 million a month in revenue.

“Just through Facebook and Instagram advertising, we grew very quickly in a five-month period,” Fishman said. “[In order to grow more], it’s basically been a year of fundraising. We had just under 200 pitches driving all around the country and constantly pitching.”

His story includes a dramatic turnaround, when, after a critical offer fell through on Christmas Eve, Fishman made more than 200 calls to VCs and equity firms in a frenzied scramble.  His diligence was rewarded when one of the firms he called came through with the investment “miracle” he was hoping for.

Over the next three months, the company went from being nearly bankrupt to now being sold in Sam’s Club around the country, Whole Foods and more. A marketer at heart, Fishman is well aware of the power of advertising.

“Everyone builds these companies and then they put no marketing dollars behind them,” Fishman said. “If you don’t have the marketing dollars to grow your customer base, then no one is going to be interested in giving you money. Maybe we did go a little too crazy and spend a little too much, but every single person kept telling me to slow down on spending, and every day I would double the spending. Now they’re happy I did.”

David Gaspar

“There is no one way. There is no one path. There is no one thing that guarantees success or failure.”

David Gaspar 02BBA, managing director at DDG, an innovation consulting company, understands the complexities of driving growth inside a Fortune 50 as well as he knows the intricacies involved in launching a start-up. After honing his skill set as a financial analyst and an M&A and business strategy specialist at GE Capital, David began simultaneously managing, advising, and investing in new ventures. That path led him organically to DDG, where he focuses on helping large companies develop and execute revenue creation strategies.

“Knowing the other side of it and knowing how that conversation could go is huge,” Gaspar said. “I am able to shepherd clients through that process, not from a, ‘I read this in a book,’ but from an actual empathetic standpoint. I have been there.”

DDG has no employees. For Gaspar, it’s about people and storytelling. The company is “a collaborative,” made up of various entrepreneurs who don’t want to work in a big agency but don’t want to work independently either.

“These are entrepreneurs who have come together to fly under a bigger flag to be able to do something better,” Gaspar said.

Gaspar has created a business that is boutique-by-design, not a statement of size but by ethos meaning the company is extremely selective in their client-selection process.  

“It’s being able to grow something at the pace that you want to and being able to choose the situation that you want in life,” Gaspar said. “You can spend 100-hour weeks, and I have done that. You can also have 30-hour weeks and also be really effective. You can travel all the time and crush it, but you can also be home with your kids every night and figure out a way to balance it.”

David Mandelbaum and Jessica Lloyd

Since meeting during their freshmen year at Emory, Jessica Lloyd and David Mandelbaum 07BBAs have been inseparable personally, and most recently, have also merged forces professionally. The married couple leverage the powerful combination of Lloyd’s finance and operations expertise and Mandelbaum’s affinity for brand building in co-founding PANATĒA, a premier health and lifestyle-driving matcha green tea company.

When coffee wouldn’t cut it, the couple stumbled upon matcha in China Town. The two were hooked and knew they saw potential for something more.

After traveling to every matcha farm, they could access in Japan with a team, the dynamic duo developed and perfected the brand and business model. In just four years, PANATĒA became a health and lifestyle matcha green tea company that has been credited with pioneering the matcha movement.

Their direct-to-consumer business delivers matcha products to customers in every state and abroad, while their food service distribution business provides matcha to over 450 café and restaurant doors across the country. 

“You have to create innovative products that the category hasn’t seen before,” Mandelbaum said. “In building a lifestyle brand, which is what we set out to do in the beginning, you have to work with other, like-minded brands who have like-minded communities. That was something that really made us stand out.”

Just a week before the summit, Lloyd and Mandelbaum’s wholesale distribution business was acquired by a Japanese manufacturer, and the two are selling off the remaining online inventory to move on to their next venture.

“Everyone doesn’t have to have that unicorn story,” Mandelbaum said. “The deal made sense because the manufactures now have 500-plus distribution points that they never had. You can’t think of just yourself. You have to look at the market, where that’s heading and make business decisions based on that.”

Nathan Meeks

As co-founder and CEO of Gigzolo, a company that helps event producers book professional-grade entertainment for live experiences, Nathan Meeks 07BBA knows what it takes to keep a company going.

After working for Golden Sachs for four years, he saw an opportunity when he encountered a Julliard-trained friend struggling to become established as a working musician.

Meeks launched Gigzolo in 2015 in a time where a curated marketplace for performers didn’t really exist, making their services unique and therefore in demand. Within the year, Meeks and his team knew they had a product market fit but they also had a problem.

“We realized that even though the business on a transactional basis was making money, the business overall was actually on a path where it wasn’t going to make much money at all,” Meeks said.

There were three major flaws in the business model: the platform, the types of inquiries coming through the platform and the amount of cash being spent on customer acquisition. Meeks was forced to make a decision — he felt he had to focus on the curated artists because that base represented the true value of the company.

To control his burn rate, Meeks was forced to lay off most of his team and started freelancing much of the work. Within two months, the company was able to lower costs more than 80 percent and increase productivity by 400 percent.

“That’s the lightbulb moment,” Meeks said. “That’s the moment you realize your business still has value.”

By March 2017, the company had grown to 16 cities of artists and 16,000 vendors.

“I think all of the entrepreneurs here have already told you that it’s hard,” Meeks said. “It’s extraordinarily hard. It’s emotional. It’s painstaking. You risk everything, but this life is glorious. But you have to ask, is this life for me?”

Joshua Sigel

Joshua Sigel 02BBA considers himself a technologist.

His love of technology and his background in the food industry ultimately led him to a powerful convergence of his skills as the chief operating officer at Innit, an “eating technology” company where he leads the company development of the world’s first platform for the connected kitchen.  

In the early 2000s, Sigel gained first-hand experience in nascent and emerging business technologies while working at Deloitte, and eventually brought his IT and operations savvy back to his father’s wholesale food distribution company.

“As I started looking at the business, I realized a lot of opportunity from the business was technology related,” Sigel said. “As a result of that, I started growing more and more passionate about tech.”

When the company was acquired, Sigel began to oversee the tech division under the new ownership but decided to move on to other endeavors. His activities led him to an encounter with the former CEO of Nestlé France who shared the idea of a new company called Innit.

“I took the plunge and moved to Silicon Valley,” Sigel said. “It was going to be my first startup opportunity. We started thinking about the world of eating and the consumer foods base.”

Today, the company has developed the first connected food platform, focused on building an ecosystem of how individuals decide what to eat from how they decide to buy groceries and then prepare that food in a home.

“We’ve basically rebranded ourselves as an eating technology company,” Sigel said. “We’re focusing on connecting people to the right food.”

Sigel believes there’s more to the world of entrepreneurship than only making money.

“We live one life, and time is everything,” Sigel said. “Just continue to think about what you can do not only to help yourself but what you can do to make a difference, not just within the immediate world you live in but in other people’s lives.”

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The trio had five minutes to present their product to a panel of seven judges—all entrepreneurs and Emory graduates—who would then pepper them with questions about that product, the team’s business plan, the market and pretty much anything else they could think of. The panel would repeat that process for the other three presenters. To the winner would go $5,000 and a pledge of support as the team moves forward.

Welcome to Goizueta’s Bernard Pitch the Summit Competition, which began with preliminary rounds in late February and culminated with the final two rounds of presentations during the annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit, Friday, March 24.

A total of 24 teams began the competition and those ventures left standing on the final day included an eclectic mix of ideas that were equal parts creative and ambitious. There was one company that built sustainable, attractive furniture out of paper. Others—at various levels of development—connected parents to college students earning extra money as babysitters; created a peer-to-peer lending platform for common items like irons and phone chargers; helped international students with U.S. college applications; and area college students get jobs and scholarships.

Jiang, Woolley and Nguyen were there, too, with Nerv, a dietary supplement formulated to combat anxiety. If they felt any anxiety themselves, it didn’t show. They smoothly discussed the product’s benefits, such as it being available over the counter to anyone regardless of age and that it is non-habit-forming, and without sugar, calories, or caffeine. They also outlined their marketing plan, as well as the challenges inherent in promoting a liquid packaged in a 2-ounce bottle.

“The way we’ve tried to differentiate ourselves from the outset is that we use a different color palette and design. We don’t use a loud color like a of energy drinks.” Jiang said. Instead, Nerv’s bottle is a subtle combo of silver and pale green.

“We’re also not going to market this like an energy drink,” he continued. “We intend to approach organizations like mental health institutions with a message of, ‘here is a product you can use while someone is waiting for therapy, for example.’”

The judges were impressed. Nerv’s pitch was a strike. The team won the $5,000 first prize. Dara Schaier 17MBA took second prize of $2,500 for her fledging company, BOOP (Built Out of Paper). Third and $1,000 belonged to Ifra Khan 17BBA and Omer Ersin 17BBA and their babysitting app, Usit; and the fourth prize of $250 was given to Lend, Peter Yao’s 18BBA and Numan Dharani’s 17BBA idea to leverage the sharing economy for the benefit of local college students.

The alumni entrepreneur panelists included Angie Bastian 91MSN, Eden Chen 09BBA, Jeffrey Chernick 04BBA, David Gaspar 02BBA, William Hockey 12BBA, Nathan Meeks 07BBA, and Brian Rudolph 12BBA.

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Emory alumnus and Dollar Shave Club co-founder and CEO Mike Dubin built his company on laughs. The company’s viral videos use humor to drive consumers from drugstore aisles to the Internet for razor blades and other grooming products.

Dubin’s first video has nearly 23 million views on YouTube.

On Tuesday, consumer products giant Unilever announced its purchase of Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion.

“It was a flight we didn’t want to miss,” Dubin told the Los Angeles Times.

According to the report, the company will maintain its autonomy and gain resources to expand beyond its current markets of the United States, Canada, and Austraila.

“Dollar Shave Club is an innovative and disruptive male grooming brand with incredibly deep connections to its diverse and highly engaged consumers,” said Kees Kruythoff, president of Unilever North America, in a press statement.

Dubin was the keynote speaker at the first Emory Entrepreneurship Summit, organized and hosted by Goizueta Business School. He outlined the company vision, which goes beyond affordable mail order razors.

“You might think of us as the company that ships affordable razors on the Internet, but that is not what we do,” Dubin said at the summit. “We actually help the world be better for guys by solving their problems.

“Most people think shaving kind of sucks. It’s not very fun. Our thing is ‘let’s make that as fun as possible, as painless as possible.’ In the same way that Starbucks took a ritual and built a culture around it, we want to build a culture around shaving.”

Embracing that larger picture started early. While at Emory, Dubin took an early version of a course taught by Joey Reiman, who is considered the father of ideation, in the business school. The undergraduate program has subsequently produced countless students who have developed a keen understanding of the connection between business purpose and world needs by taking a version of the same class.

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Goizueta plans to host the third-annual Emory Entrepreneurship Summit in Spring 2017 featuring keynote speaker Josh Luber 06JD/MBA 99BBA. Luber is CEO and Co-Founder of StockX, a marketplace for “limited edition, high demand sneakers.”

StockX was formed from Luber’s original venture — Campless — after a deal with Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Musician Eminem has also partnered with the company.

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