Startup Cornell

Our new episode features Van Hamilton Barbeau, AVP at Ochsner Ventures, the venture capital arm of Ochsner Health, which invests in healthcare companies from seed-stage to growth-stage. He has spent his career building, advising and investing in healthcare companies. Barbeau earned his undergrad degree from Cornell in 2011, where he studied political economy in the College of Arts & Sciences. He also has an MBA from Cornell's Johnson School and a master's in healthcare policy and research from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

Our new episode features John Bicket '02, chief technology officer and co-founder of tech firm Samsara and this year's Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year 2025. He will be honored on campus April 10 and 11 at the Entrepreneurship at Cornell Celebration Ezra Event. Samsara offers an AI-powered platform to help physical operations organizations improve their safety, efficiency and sustainability by using data from sensors and connected devices. Bicket earned his bachelor's in computer science from Cornell and a master's in computer science from MIT.

Our new episode includes a chat with Cornell student Micere Mugweru '25, the founder of Mizoma Africa. Mugweru is an economics and Africana studies major in the College of Arts & Sciences and a member of the eLab student business accelerator. She's created a Pan-African luxury bag brand dedicated to empowering women by bringing a piece of Africa into cosmopolitan spaces. Each bag is a tribute to African heritage.

Our new episode features Heather Jiang MBA '16, founder of Allegorie, a small-batch accessory company that turns discarded fruits into beautiful wallets, bags and backpacks. The bags reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions and are designed and created in New York City's garment district.

Our new episode features Sakib Jamal ‘19, vice president at Crossbeam Venture Partners. Jamal was recently chosen for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, in part for his book, "The Young VC's Handbook," a tactical guide for newcomers to venture capital. In the book, some of the smartest young minds in VC share actionable advice. Proceeds from the book go to help underprivileged children attend primary school in Jamal's home country of Bangladesh.

Our newest episode features Breanna Neff ‘16, founder and chief food scientist at brelixi, a company that makes drink mixes infused with nano-CBD or THC, as well as electrolytes, adaptogens and nootropics. Neff studied food science, technology, business, nutrition and health at Cornell. Before founding brelixi, she worked with Dannon and Evian, as well as in the startup world.

Our newest episode features Lloyd Robinson '87, president and owner of Awisco, a family-owned welding business started in 1952. With 10 locations across the New York metro area and a sales presence in South Florida, Lloyd has led the company through lots of changes and has hosted Cornell interns for more than 20 summers. Lloyd graduated from the ILR School.

Our newest episode features Jen Barnwell ‘96, president of Curator Hotel & Resort Collection. Curator is a collection of hand-selected independent hotels and resorts whose mission is to have independent hotels join forces and get the power of scale without sacrificing the spirit of independence.

This month, we talk business, mentorship, life lessons and spirituality with Smoke Wallin '88, a serial entrepreneur and managing director & partner at STS Capital, a global boutique investment bank focused on mergers and acquisitions.

Our newest episode features Josh Gully ‘83, managing director of NewEdge Wealth and founding member of their New York office. NewEdge was started in 2020 and has grown to manage more than $55 billion for ultra-high net worth and family office clients.

Our new episode features Jamey Edwards, president & chief strategy officer at Koko Home, a company providing radar driven, AI-enabled solutions for healthcare and an Entrepreneur in Residence of StartUp Health, which was founded in 2011 to invest in global health entrepreneurs.

Cornell alumna Andrea Ippolito, CEO and founder of SimpliFed, has launched and scaled a maternal health operating system. Her core business focuses on breastfeeding and baby feeding support, but she's also tackling broader maternal health issues.

Our new episode features Trisha Behar '25, founder of Women Leaders of Color at Cornell and the Art Shine Foundation. Trisha is a student in the College of Business who founded Women Leaders of Color as a first-year student to unite and empower women of color and prepare them for leadership roles in their fields.

Our newest episode features Tim Barry ‘93, the chair and CEO of VillageMD, and this year's Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year. Barry founded VillageMD in 2013 with the idea that he could use technology, population insights and a network of expert health care professionals to provide high-quality care, better patient outcomes and a reduction in total costs.

Our newest episode features Peyton Johnson, a member of the Class of 2024 and founder of a company that helps students find off-campus housing. Her company is part of this year's eLab, a Cornell student accelerator powered by Student Agencies Foundation and Entrepreneurship at Cornell. Peyton is also a Milstein Scholar at Cornell and is majoring in math with a concentration in computer science.

Our new episode features Harman Singh Narula ‘09, co-founder and CEO of Canary Technologies, a hotel technology company. Canary provides a host of guest-facing operations technologies to thousands of hotels across the globe.

Our newest episode features Matt Nastos '10, CEO of Maison MRKT, a digital marketing agency specializing in growth marketing, customer acquisition, lead generation and business intelligence. Matt founded the agency with his brother, Lexi. Using technology and data analytics, the agency helps brands manage their customer relationships from discovery all the way through to retention and loyalty. They also support early-stage ventures with marketing mentorship, as well as offer marketing help to non-profits and academic organizations.

Our newest episode features Osei Boateng '18, MHA ‘20, founder of OKB Hope Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to transforming healthcare delivery in Africa especially in rural and low-income communities.The organization offers mobile health clinics that travel to remote locations in Ghana to offer routine medical care. Boateng is also one of the finalists for CNN's Hero of the Year contest. You can vote for him every day until Dec. 5 at this link: https://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cnn.heroes/vote/10/

Our new episode features Lauren Brand '12, co-founder of Fatty Sundays, a company that creates chocolate covered pretzels in an array of unique flavors that are customizable for any occasion. Lauren and her sister Ali founded the business to share their mom's famous rainbow sprinkle recipe with the world, as well as other gourmet pretzel varieties. We talk about how they choose new flavors, what it's like to work with your family and some exciting new changes coming for the brand.

Our newest episode features Colin Day '97 founder and former CEO of iCIMS, a company that offers cloud software for recruiting to help organizations attract, hire and advance employees who will build a diverse and winning workforce. Now an advisor to iCIMS, Day is helping to give back to the business community through advising and board memberships. He's also engaged in philanthropy centered on climate justice.

Our newest episode features Seth Feuerstein ‘94, founder of Oui Therapeutics, a company developing a digital therapeutic going through the FDA process and seeking to be the first prescription product available for people at risk of dying by suicide. A psychiatrist and an attorney, Seth is also the executive director and founder of Yale School of Medicine's Center for Digital Health and Innovation. We talk about the incredible impact this new product could have and about Seth's other digital health companies.

Our new episode features Kim Hehir '94, cofounder and president of Brutus Broth, a family-run business created from a passion and commitment to enhance canine diets. Kim talks about her journey to founding Brutus Broth with her sister, after starting her career in the hospitality industry, and also shares how they navigated the complicated pet food and supplement marketplace.

The 22st episode of this Entrepreneurship at Cornell podcast features Steven Izen '13, founder and CEO of Lokai and Elements. Lokai, the iconic bracelet brand, inspires its community to find balance in life and Izen's newest venture, Elements of Balance, is a functional beverage brand that uses clinically-effective levels of adaptogens to support energy, focus, calm and sleep. Izen talks about the family member who was his inspiration for starting Lokai, how he grew the company and some of the best advice he's ever been given as an entrepreneur.

The 21st episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Nona Ullman ‘88, CEO of LessonLoop and president of Improve LLC, companies focused on the public education and information technology sectors. Ullman talks about building her business to help improve learning for kids in K-12 classrooms by helping teachers to measure student engagement and offers advice for young entrepreneurs. The Startup Cornell podcast, which launched in summer 2021, features interviews with Cornell entrepreneurs, who tell their stories of successes and failures and offer actionable advice for building and growing a business.

The 20th episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, features Barry Beck '90, co-founder and former CEO of Bluemercury, the nationwide luxury beauty brand that was acquired by Macy's in 2015. Beck is also the founder and CEO of Evenly Technologies, Inc., a technology and telemedicine orthodontic platform, and co-founder of M-61 Laboratories, creators of M-61 Skincare and Lune+Aster Cosmetics, the first clinical vegan and sustainable cosmetic brands. Beck talks about how he built his businesses, offers advice for new entrepreneurs and shares his thoughts on the importance of family.

Our 19th episode features Trishala Dessai '17 MBA ‘23, founder of Gig-Up, a startup that matches gig-economy workers to consumers to complete the consumer's to-do-lists. Dessai is a member of eLab, Cornell's student business accelerator.

Natalie Egan '02 (she/her), founder of Translator Inc., a startup that builds diversity, equity and inclusion software for corporations, schools and nonprofits, talks about how she started her business.

Our new episode features Jared Karson ‘13, co-founder and CFO of Horatio, a business that allows companies to outsource their customer support and back-office support tasks.

Our 16th episode features Julie and Alexander Littauer, co-founders of Sovi Wine, a company that's created high-quality non-alcoholic wines for times when you want a glass of wine but not the alcohol. They tell the story of how they launched this business after graduating with MBAs from Cornell, how their extensive experience in the wine industry helps them to create their product and what's next for the company.

The 15th episode of our podcast features Ken Babcock ‘13, co-founder of Tango, a company that helps you to create beautiful step-by-step how-to guides with screenshots. He talks about how his product, a free-to-use Chrome extension, works to capture and create written, step-by-step how-to guides in real-time without the need for video recording, solving a time-consuming problem for anyone who has to document a process.

The 14th episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features David Stein MBA ‘20, co-founder and CEO of Ash Wellness, a company that makes healthcare more accessible and inclusive by offering at-home testing kits. The company started offering kits for sexually-transmitted diseases, but has expanded to offer tests for hormones, metabolism, thyroid and numerous other conditions, as well as screenings and routine testing needed to manage chronic conditions.

The 13th episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Aziza Glass D.V.M. ‘15, owner of Personal Touch Veterinary Clinic and a star on the Disney XD and Hulu show“Roman to the Rescue.” She also has her own line of hair, face and body products and is launching a line of planners and organizational tools.

The 12th episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features highlights of each episode this past year, including; Nick Nickitas, Brooke Wingo, Jehron Petty, Jamie Kim, JP Pollak, Stephanie Cartin, Laura Ciccone, Taly Matiteyahu, Rich Horgan, Kayla Foley, Jasheah Howard, Ghali Jorio and Stephanie Wisner.

The 11th episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Stephanie Wisner '16, co-founder of Centivax, a therapeutics company that's creating universal vaccines to reduce and eradicate the remaining complex pathogens of the 21st century. She is also the author of a newly-released book, “Building Backwards to Biotech: The Power of Entrepreneurship to Drive Cutting-Edge Science to Market.”

The tenth episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Ghali Jorio '22, founder of AfriTrip Advisors Morocco, a travel company that offers private and customized trips around Morocco.

The ninth episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Kayla Foley, MBA '22 and Jasheah Howard MEng '22, co-founders of Staff on Tap, a digital marketplace that fills long-term care provider's scheduling needs by connecting them to temp nurses in the area. Through their platform, full-time and part-time nurses looking for extra money through additional shifts can post listings on StaffOnTap's marketplace with customized rates, schedules and locations and then are connected to nursing homes in need of temporary help.

The eighth episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Rich Horgan ‘14, founder of Cure Rare Disease, a non-profit biotech company working to create individualized therapeutics using CRISPR technology to treat people impacted by rare diseases.

The seventh episode of a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell features Laura Ciccone ‘11 and Taly Matiteyahu, co-founders of Blink, a voice-first blind speed dating app that helps people build meaningful connections based on genuine compatibility. They also host Date in a Blink, a voice-only speed dating podcast experience. Both of them say they are obsessed with the psychology behind how people connect and how technology can help people find and build strong relationships.

The sixth episode of our podcast, hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, features Stephanie Cartin, founder of Socialfly, CEO of Entrepreneuristas and co-author of "Like, Love, Follow: The Entreprenista's Guide to Using Social Media To Grow Your Business.”

The fifth episode of Startup Cornell, a podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, features JP Pollak, co-founder and chief architect at The Commons Project Foundation, a senior researcher-in-residence at Cornell Tech and an assistant professor of clinical epidemiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. The Commons Project is a nonprofit public trust established to build platforms and services to make life better for people around the world. Several of their current projects involve apps that provide a secure and verifiable way for people to document their health status – including their COVID vaccination and test results -- as they travel and cross borders.

In this episode, we talk with Jamie Kim from the Class of 2019, founder and CEO of Jamie's Farm, a company that inspires change in the way we eat on a daily basis through the humble form of granola. She started the business as an undergrad at Cornell, after years of gifting unique culinary-inspired flavors of granola to friends, playing with interesting ingredients like clementines, rosemary or curry.

In this episode, we talk with Jehron Petty from the Class of 2020, founder and CEO of ColorStack, a nonprofit on a mission to increase the number of Black, Latinx, and Native American college students in computing through community building and career development. While studying Computer Science at Cornell, he interned at companies like Two Sigma and Google as both a software engineer and product manager. Jehron turned down the Google APM program and instead raised over $500K to seed ColorStack.

The second episode of a new podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, Startup Cornell, features Brooke Wingo '17, cofounder and president of Zone Swimwear, a company offering fully customizable suits for teams.

Startup Cornell, a new podcast hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell, explores the bold entrepreneurial ideas coming from our students, faculty, staff and young alumni. The Startup Cornell podcast will include interviews with Cornell entrepreneurs, who tell their stories of successes and failures and offer actionable advice for building and growing a business. Our first guest is Nick Nickitas MBA ‘14, founder and CEO of Rosie, the industry-leading online grocery shopping platform for mobile and web. Rosie is a locally focused eCommerce company that partners with leading independent retailers and their wholesalers to provide eCommerce, delivery opportunities, shopper marketing and deep data services.