Where Are They Now?
13 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 14 ratingsJoin us as we catch up with founders from Chicago Booth's New Venture Challenge and hear about their entrepreneurial journeys. Hosted by Colin Keeley.
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Episodes
Sebastian Rivas (Andes STR) & Mark Tebbe
June 17, 2021 09:00 - 1 hour - 62.8 MBSebastian Rivas (Andes STR) interviewed by Mark Tebbe
Matt Maloney (Grubhub) & Mark Tebbe
June 10, 2021 10:00 - 47 minutes - 87.9 MBMatt Maloney admits he had a bit of an ego when he entered the New Venture Challenge. He had already launched Grubhub, had a few customers, and had landed at a top business school. But during his first presentation to the NVC judges, he fell on his face. “You could tell mid-way through, the blank stares, people were expecting unit model economics,” Maloney, MBA ’10, recalls. “They’re expecting financial plan. What do you need to invest? What’s the runway? What’s the outcome? What’...
CoCo Meers (Equilibria) & Starr Marcello
June 03, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 65 MBCoco Meers’ career has centered on helping women look and feel their best. When she caught the entrepreneurship bug and looked for a pain point to solve in that space, she kept remembering a long flight delay she had when traveling between Paris and New York and how she wished she could spend the time getting an eyebrow wax in town – if only she knew what salons were good, nearby, and available. Her idea for PrettyQuick was to offer a marketplace for booking beauty services much li...
Bryan Johnson (Kernel) & Starr Marcello
May 27, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 68 MBGrowing up in a small, religious town in Utah, Bryan Johnson felt he existed in a video game where the rules were all mapped out. His favorite part of the day as a kid were the early mornings he spent wandering the fields with his dog, shooting at targets with his BB gun, which gave him a feeling of “endless possibility.” Now he’s playing in a video game of his own making, as he puts it, that allows him to explore the “infinite expanse” of the brain and how it might be measured and...
Seyi Fabode (Varuna) & Ellen Rudnick
May 20, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 64.9 MBAs a Black founder, Seyi Fabode, MBA ’10, has experienced the challenge of investors taking him seriously. Fabode, an immigrant from Nigeria, recalls an investor calling him and his African-American partner in his first venture, Power2Switch, “boys.” It happened again 10 years later, after Fabode had founded the clean water company Varuna Tech. “I have two kids, I’m a grown man,” Fabode said. “And you can tell there’s this, I’ll say, discount and disregard and disrespect that is j...
Michael LaVitola (Foxtrot) & Waverly Deutsch
May 13, 2021 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBFoxtrot cofounder and CEO Mike LaVitola, MBA ’14, has become expert at hearing “no.” He was not initially accepted into the New Venture Challenge, and after he talked his way in, his team did not make the finals. Despite steady revenue, it took years to put together a seed round. But LaVitola remained committed to his idea of a reimagined convenience store, with curated locally-made products that could be ordered online for delivery on demand. The ecommerce model soon evolved to i...
Katlin Smith (Simple Mills) & Chris McGowan
May 06, 2021 11:00 - 58 minutes - 53.9 MBKatlin Smith, founder and CEO of Simple Mills, wowed her first buyer with a muffin recipe using almond flour. Now the Chicago-based natural baking brand is the category leader in baking mixes and crackers. Its products are in more than 27,000 stores, from Whole Foods to Walmart. Smith, who had her products in just four stores when she started at Chicago Booth, was a co-winner of the 2014 Edward L. New Venture Challenge. The NVC helped her understand the importance of spending on ma...
Ashish Rangnekar / BenchPrep & Michael Alter
April 29, 2021 14:46 - 1 hour - 100 MBAshish Rangnekar of BenchPrep interviewed by Michael Alter
Ashish Rangnekar (BenchPrep) & Michael Alter
April 29, 2021 14:46 - 1 hour - 100 MBAshish Rangnekar, MBA ’11, grew up in a sleepy town in India where success looked like a white-collar job, not entrepreneurship. But early on he encountered a problem: he had few resources to prepare for college entrance exams. A decade later, when he was living in New York and planning for the GMAT, he realized test prep options were still lacking outside of lugging a big book around or attending expensive in-person classes. It was the dawn of the Apple app store, so Rangnekar an...
Jennifer Fried (ExplORer Surgical) & Steve Kaplan
April 22, 2021 11:00 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBJennifer Fried, MBA ’15, started her MBA at Chicago Booth with dreams of a career in venture capital. By the time she graduated, she had launched a healthcare tech company that helps ensure surgical procedures go smoothly — and today her product is becoming a must-have in operating rooms. Fried, MBA ’15, took second place in the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge (NVC) with ExplORer Surgical, a digital playbook that helps surgical teams coordinate and communicate during p...
Jennifer Fried / ExplORer Surgical & Steve Kaplan
April 22, 2021 11:00 - 53 minutes - 49.1 MBJennifer Fried of ExplORer Surgical interviewed by Steve Kaplan
The Story of NVC
April 15, 2021 10:00 - 1 hour - 75.2 MBWhen it launched 25 years ago, the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge (NVC) was a pioneer in helping business school students get their startups off the ground. Now the program is consistently ranked as the nation’s top university accelerator, with its alumni companies having raised nearly $2 billion in capital and achieved more than $8.5 billion in mergers and exits. Podcast host and Chicago Booth alum Colin Keeley, MBA ’19, interviews three key leaders responsible fo...