What is the biggest lesson that Underdahl has absorbed from launching a venture like Civic Champs? Counterintuitive as it may seem, he advises entrepreneurs to share their ideas. “I was originally very guarded with my ideas,” he admits. “One of my instructors told me, ‘Don’t worry about that. No one is going to steal your ideas. The Idea is not as vital to the success of the organization as the implementation.’ We’ve integrated a lot of the learnings we’ve had from speaking with others into our product road map. Telling people what you are working only enhances what you’re doing.”
After launching Pepper without product in inventory, Lia Winograd has taken a different lesson to heart: Don’t shoot for perfection. “It is more important to be scrappy and test things and feel comfortable with a certain level of risk,” she says. “If we had waited until the product was perfect, it may not exactly have been what people wanted. There wouldn’t have been an opportunity to refine the product further. I think the best advice is to be comfortable with not having everything figured out. As someone once told me, ‘If you feel 100% comfortable with your product, then you’ve probably waited too long.’”
And comfort is something very few entrepreneurs ever experience, Ryan Underdahl adds. That’s why he urges future MBAs to understand exactly what entrepreneurship entails. “People think that entrepreneurship is being your own boss. To a degree, that’s true. If you’re going to start a venture, it better be something you love because it’s all-consuming…It’s not only all you do, it’s also all you think about and all you worry about.”
What inspired these graduates to pursue entrepreneurship? How did an MBA make them better entrepreneurs? What are their long-term goals with their ventures? Click on the company names below to access over two dozen in-depth profiles of the most innovative MBA startups.
| Startup | MBA Program | Founding Students | Industry | Funding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BikeLord | Babson College (Olin) | Jake Maude and Ty Filsinger | Bicycles | NA |
| Jamani Corporate Group | Babson College (Olin) | Jacob Fohtung | Education, Finance, & Impact Investment | $4,700 |
| Caldo Restaurant Technologies | U.C. Berkeley (Haas) | Jose Alonso | Food Service/Automation | NA |
| Eliqs | UCLA (Anderson) | Max Berg, Dave Goldman and Joe Schwappach | Food and Beverage | $450,000 |
| Riders Share | UCLA (Anderson) | Guillermo Cornejo | Motorcycles / Sharing Economy | $670,000 |
| Talent IPO | Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) | Aashay Doshi, Michael Lai and Ayush Luthra | Financial Services | $26,000 |
| Aegis AI | University of Chicago (Booth) | Ben Ziomek | AI/Security | $2,200,000 |
| Sable | Columbia Business School | Andrej Paule, Naveen Qureshi, Towers Wilen and Joseph Finlayson | Financial Services | NA |
| SiteRX | Columbia Business School | Seth Goodman | Healthcare | NA |
| Purro | Cornell University (Johnson) | Earl Roach III, Donnie Hampton and Christian Laftchiev | EdTech/HR Tech | $8,000 |
| Moonshot Diversity & Inclusion | ESADE | Sophie van Gool | HR/People Analytics | NA |
| Foublie, Inc. | Georgetown University (McDonough) | Melissa Antal | Pediatric Health and Wellness | NA |
| M’panadas | Georgetown University (McDonough) | Maria Margarita Womack | Food | $40,000 |
| Civic Champs, Inc. | Indiana University (Kelley) | Ryan Underdahl | B2B Software | $366,000 |
| INSEACT+ | INSEAD | Tim van Vliet and Saby Maity | Agtech/Biotech | €40,000 |
| Dear Black Women | University of Michigan (Ross) | Florence Noel | Community/Wellness | $85,000 |
| Phraze | University of Minnesota (Carlson) | Jack Schneeman | Health IT | $300,000 |
| Season Three | MIT (Sloan) | Adam Klein and Jared Johnson | DTC/Apparel/Outerwear/ Fashion | NA |
| Maziwa | Northwestern University (Kellogg) | Sahar Jamal | Global Health/Maternal and Newborn Health | $132,500 |
| Pepper | New York University (Stern) | Lia Winograd | Online Apparel | $400,000 |
| WellWorth | Rice University (Jones) | Vinay R. Acharya | Enterprise Software for Upstream Oil & Gas | NA |
| Synapse Technology Corporation | Stanford GSB | Ian Cinnamon | Security/Defense | $6,300,000 |
| Trulli | University of Virginia (Darden) | Amanda Joseph | Travel Technology | $35,000 |
| Buoy | Washington University (Olin) | Daniel Schindler | Food and Beverage | $100,000 |
| aavrani | Wharton School | Rooshy Roy & Justin Silver | Beauty | $1,500,000 |
| Statera Therapeutics | Yale SOM | Owen Yang and Jennifer Fischer | Biotechnology | $25,000 |
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