Winners & Success Stories

The New Venture Competition has been the launching pad for many ventures, and not just from the winning teams. With more than half of Harvard Business School alumni classifying themselves as entrepreneurs at some point in their lives, the Competition supports students in the process of creating and evaluating new business and social impact ventures.

New Venture Competition Grand Prize Winner trophy, 2024.

2024 Winners

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    2024 New Venture Competition Winner, Business Track: Crop Diagnostix

    Crop Diagnostix is redefining precision agriculture through AI-powered, genetic insights. Team: Brandon Chi, MBA 2024; Joseph Swift; Amitesh Pratap; Leonie Luginbuehl.

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    2024 New Venture Competition Winner, Social Enterprise Track: Solara

    Solara provides an on-demand solar irrigation service to Indian farmers, increasing their access to affordable, reliable, and clean irrigation. Team: Rea Savla, MBA 2024; Vishesh Mehta

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    2024 Alumni New Venture Competition Winner: Elisa

    Transforming child nutrition in Latin America through fresh and additive-free meals.

2024 Runners-Up

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    2024 New Venture Competition Runner-Up, Business Track: Sanso

    Sanso is helping drug manufacturers produce life-saving biologics more efficiently, in order to deliver cheaper drugs to patients worldwide. Team: Narek Dshkhunyan, MBA 2024; Daniel Erdosy

  • Video duration:1:32

    2024 New Venture Competition Runner-Up, Social Enterprise Track: Trans Health HQ

    Trans Health HQ is a tool built by the trans community that addresses clinicians’ barriers around learning and advocacy. Team: Ivan Hsiao, MPH 2024.

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    2024 Alumni New Venture Competition Runner-Up & Crowd Favorite: Harken

    Harken reimagines joy-inspiring, iconic treats, infusing them with superfoods that nourish and satiate: a healthier alternative candy bar snack.

Success Stories

Many people are aware of HBS entrepreneurial successes such as Tom Stemberg (HBS ’73) of Staples and Michael Bloomberg (HBS ’66); more recent examples include Mark Pincus (HBS ’93) of Zynga and Jeremy Stoppelman (HBS ’05) of Yelp. This year’s New Venture Competition may yield the famous names of the future. The following represents a sampling of past participants who executed their plans upon graduation.

@hoc

Guy Miasnik, MBA 1999
Ly Tran, MBA 1999

@hoc enables e-business to significantly strengthen the critical relationship between the business and its customers. @hoc’s Persistent Communications™ technology creates a continuous Channel of communication between a company and its customers.

Birchbox

Hayley Barna
Katia Ververis

Birchbox is a new concept in beauty retail: fruit of the month meets Sephora, meets Allure.com. It is a monthly box filled with a curated assortment of the hottest samples from high-end beauty brands. The samples are paired with a website that includes an online magazine and store to purchase full-size products.

Bluesolid

Xavier Aubry, MBA 2001
Kimberly Lei, MBA 2001

Bluesolid (now Appear Networks) has created a software company focusing on WLAN and Bluetooth networks (the so-called WLAN hotspots). The company has gained 15 large corporate customers during its first year of activity, and garnered numerous awards since the HBS Business Plan Contest.

Brontes Technologies

Eric Paley, MBA 2003
Micah Rosenbloom, MBA 2003

Brontes Technologies has developed and commercialized a revolutionary 3D imaging system that eliminates the need for the conventional dental impression. In October 2006, Brontes Technologies was acquired by 3M Company and today the product is marketed as the 3M ESPE Lava Chairside Oral Scanner.

CloudFlare

Matt Prince, MBA 2009
Michelle Zatlyn, MBA 2009

CloudFlare enables websites to intelligently protect themselves from online attacks and to help clean up malicious botnets while receiving faster, more reliable and more robust network services.

Diagnostic-for-All (DFA)

Jon Puz, MBA 2008
Gilbert Tang, MBA 2008
Krishna Yeshwant, MBA 2009

Diagnostic-For-All (DFA) is a non-profit enterprise that seeks to deliver affordable point-of-care diagnostic solutions to the global medical community. Millions of people are dying around the world because they cannot access diagnostic tools to manage their health. DFA aims to solve this problem with an elegantly simple solution that puts the power of a diagnostic lab at a patient’s fingertip. DFA has developed a low-cost, paper-based “lab-on-a-chip” that is simple, flexible, and can be used in resource-poor areas of the globe to support public health. In 2008, DFA won both the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Business Plan Contest and the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Endeca

Steve Papa, MBA 1999

Endeca’s innovative information access software helps people explore, analyze, and understand complex information, guiding them to unexpected insights and better decisions. More than 500 leading global organizations including ABN AMRO, Boeing, Cox Newspapers, the (US) Defense Intelligence Agency, Dell, Ford Motor Company, Hyatt, IBM, John Deere, the Library of Congress, Texas Instruments, and Wal-Mart rely on Endeca to power business-critical applications that increase revenue, reduce costs, and streamline operations.

Evertrue

Brent Grinna
Arjun Ohri

EverTrue, LLC (“EverTrue”) develops mobile software that allows college and university alumni to better connect with their alma mater and one another. EverTrue’s solutions enable client organizations to better communicate with members, develop local alumni networks and increase fundraising to support their missions. EverTrue is complementary to current communications strategies and our standardized solutions address key challenges that are faced by the 4,300 postsecondary education institutions tasked with serving over 40 million alumni nationwide.

Extend Fertility, INC.

Christina Jones, MBA 2004
Nadia Campbell, MBA 2002

Extend Fertility is dedicated to enriching women’s lives through revolutionary egg freezing science that gives women the option to effectively slow down the biological clock.

EyeView

Tal Riesenfeld, MBA 2008

EyeView is transforming online conversion through the use of online video. EyeView’s solutions create an effective video experience on websites, keeping visitors engaged and providing a proven and significant increase in conversion rates for online businesses such as: Trading, Gaming, Software, Forex, eCommerce, Affiliates, Banking, Printing, Communication, Finance, Social communities, Hosting and more.

Finale

Paul Conforti, MBA 1997
Kristen Krzyzewski, MBA 1997
Kim Moore, MBA 1997

Finale is a full-service, upscale restaurant concept serving desserts and beverages (coffee, tea, wine, and spirits). The business also includes a retail store featuring take-out desserts and signature ingredients. Finale operates four units in and around Boston.

Global Citizen Year

Abigail Falik, MBA 2008

Global Citizen Year is building a movement of young Americans who engage in a transformative “bridge year” between high school and college.

Global Reference Check

Josh Green
Claire Levy
Takuo Mitsui
Ricci Wolman

GRC (now Panjiva) will help smaller businesses find overseas suppliers they can trust; unlike existing supplier databases, GRC’s “reputation database” will feature feedback from previous customers about what it’s like to do business with the suppliers in our database.

Good Start Genetics

Paris Wallace, MBA 2008

Good Start Genetics is developing a low-cost, sequencing based, pre-pregnancy test for multiple genetic disorders that will replace one-disorder-only tests currently on the market.

Insightsquared

Frederick Shilmover
Jacob Flomenberg

ClearInsight (now InsightSquared) helps small and medium businesses draw meaningful, actionable insights from across all of their disparate data sources.

Jana Care

Sidhant Jena, MBA 2011

Jana Care is a health technology startup that aims at democratizing chronic care management in the developing world by leveraging the ubiquity of mobile phones and PCs. The team is based in India is currently focused on developing an affordable mobile phone based diagnostic platform for Diabetes. No longer a disease of the wealthy, Diabetes is the one of the leading causes of death and disability in the developing world, affecting nearly 250 million people. The vast majority of these patients today can’t afford glucose monitoring which is needed to appropriately manage their condition. Jana Care is addressing this issue by developing a platform that will transform the mobile phone into a glucose monitor, and thus allow patients to not only test their blood sugar but also seamlessly transmit it to their physician or nurse for appropriate feedback on diet, nutrition and medication. Eventually the platform can be extended to measure other parameters such as HbA1c, Ketones and Hemoglobin, which are equally critical for diabetes management.

Local Motors

John B. Rogers, Jr., MBA 2007
Jeffrey R. Jones, MBA 2007

Local Motors will design, manufacture, and bring to market innovative, lightweight, efficient cars. These cars will revolutionize not only automobiles, but also the very structure of auto-making, auto-selling, and auto-servicing. At Local Motors, automaking and product choice is a participative open-development process taking place both at Local Motors’ regional Micro-Factories, and via www.local-motors.com. Local-motors.com hosts monthly car design competitions inviting the community of customers, designers and enthusiasts to design, vote and choose winners, as well as which cars are developed and brought to market for specific local regions. Local Motors customers join experts at regional Micro-Factories to build their cars.

New Leaders for New Schools

Monique Burns, MBA 1993
Benjamin Fenton, MBA 2000

New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS) is a national nonprofit organization devoted to improving education for all children by attracting and preparing the next generation of outstanding leaders for urban public schools. NLNS aggressively recruits extremely talented people to become urban school principals. The organization provides rigorous, hands-on training (including coursework and a year-long internship with an exceptional mentor principal), helps place our graduates in urban public schools, and provides them with ongoing support, networking, and a community of peers after graduation. Our organization is devoted to making possible the American dream for every child. NLNS is dedicated to leaders with dreams of creating and leading schools that can prepare all of our students for the 21st century.

Platform Learning

Matthew (Mugo) Fields, MBA 2002

Platform Learning’s mission is to deliver high-quality instructional services that help students make considerable achievement gains while building their self-confidence. The Company collaborates with parents, schools, community organizations, and local educators to implement programs that will help students succeed in school, and ultimately in life.

Potentia Pharmaceuticals

Alec Machiels, MBA 2001

Potentia is a clinical-stage biotechnology company with a world-class scientific team and scientific advisory board. The company’s mission is to bring the first treatment targeting the root cause of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) to market by 2014. AMD affects more than 10 million people in the US alone and is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Potentia’s first drug candidate, POT-4, has just successfully completed Phase I clinical testing. Potentia has raised $25M through private capital and government grants.

Really English

Patrick Hooper, MBA 2001
Nigel Killick, MBA 2001
Fabien Mousseau, MBA 2001

Reallyenglish.com is an on-line English language teaching company, with offices in Japan and London. The business model is to offer students a combination of the highest quality content with an e-learning platform designed entirely around the most effective delivery of English language learning. This content and platform combination allows the company to deliver all content in a format personalized to meet individual needs.

RelayRides

Shelby Clark
Nabeel Al-Kady

RelayRides is the world's first person-to-person car-sharing service.

Rent the Runway

Jennifer Hyman, MBA 2009
Jennifer Carter, MBA 2009

Rent the Runway rents in-style, in-season designer clothing at a fraction of retail price (i.e. $50 for a $500 dress) delivering fashionistas and fashionista wannabes a quick-fix of designer fashion. The business operates through two channels: designer websites and RenttheRunway.com.

Shokay

Jose Dias de Barros, MBA 2006
Shawn Tan, MBA 2006

Hidden from most of the world by its remote location, Shokay yak down derives its unique origins from the mountainous Himalayan regions of Western China. Our fibers are hand-combed from the yaks that dwell there, whose ancient existences continue to serve as a life source for the Tibetan herders. From this down comes a soft and beautiful fabric, unlike any other.We aim to source our yak fiber directly from Tibetan herders, enabling them to earn a sustainable living while preserving their traditional lifestyle. A portion of our profits is subsequently returned to these communities to assist the herders with local development needs in areas such as health and education. We believe that by investing and reinvesting our success into the local communities, we ensure the opportunity of choice for future Tibetan generations.

Spring Wireless

Marcelo Condé, MBA 2000

Spring Wireless (SW) was founded in Brazil in March of 2001 and has grown to 73 full-time employees. According to the Yankee Group and Exame magazine, the leading Brazilian business publication, SW has become the leading player in the wireless data services arena in Brazil. SW has successfully concluded 2 rounds of financing, its main investors including Softbank, Intel Capital, Ericsson and Pactual (Brazil’s largest investment bank). SW offers a host of compelling, next generation wireless data services through distribution partnerships with Brazil’s largest wireless carriers.

SupplierMarket

Jon Burgstone, MBA 1999
Asif Satchu, MBA 1999

SupplierMarket.com (purchased by Ariba) is an online marketplace for buying and selling manufactured direct materials. The site enables buyers to find new suppliers and suppliers to find new business using only a personal computer, Internet connection, and Web browser. The SupplierMarket.com site can provide mutual benefits to both buyers and suppliers, eliminating the current problems of a fragmented market, poor information flows, and an imbalance of supply and demand.

ThredUp

James Reinhart
Andrew Ferrer
Neil Shah

ThredUp is a refresh button for your closet. ThredUp is the easy and inexpensive way to refresh your closet by exchanging great clothes you don’t wear anymore for great new clothes you probably will.

Travelguru.com

Ashwin Damera Venkata, MBA 2005
Jarad Fisher, MBA 2005

Travelguru.com will be India's first one-stop on-online travel portal (similar to Orbitz), which through the strength of its relationships with airline and hotel partners, will offer a wide range of travel-related services.

Unlocking Potential

Scott Given, MBA 2010

Unlocking Potential is a nonprofit school turnaround organization which rapidly transforms chronically underperforming urban public schools into extraordinary, high-performing, sustainable schools. Our turnaround schools ensure that students acquire the knowledge, skills, and strength of character necessary to succeed on the path to college and to achieve their full potential.

Viglink

Oliver Roup

Affiliate every link on the web.