Our Top Ten Favorite MBA Startups In 2015

4. Lumi Organics, Founder: Hillary Lewis, Virginia Darden

Hillary Lewis kicked off her Wall Street career a week before Lehman tanked. The company filed for bankruptcy and its employees were left scrambling. Lewis learned something about herself as she worked the Barclay’s acquisition of Lehman: she thrived in the pressure-cooker.

And it’s the cool, calm and collected mentality Lewis possesses that led to her pursing an MBA at Virginia’s Darden and eventually starting her own fruit juice company. Lumi Organics cold-presses two pounds of fruit and vegetables into each 16-oz. bottle of juice. The high-pressure way of processing fruit juice is key in preserving enzymes and nutrients that are often lost in other competitor fruit juices. Lewis has battled through a competitive and crowded market to establish Lumi Organics.

3. Cotopaxi, Founders: Stephan Jacob, Davis Smith, Jordan Allred, The Wharton School

Cotopaxi founders and Wharton MBA grads, (from left) Stephan Jacob, Davis Smith and Jordan Allred. Courtesy photo

The son of a traveling engineer and Mormon missionary, himself, Davis Smith spent nearly as much time in Latin America as he did the United States growing up. It’s no surprise he named his newest venture after Cotopaxi, a near-20,000 foot active volcano deep in the Ecuadoran Andes.

Cotopaxi, founded by Smith and fellow Wharton MBAs, Jordan Allred and Stephan Jacob is a Salt Lake City-based outdoor gear company with a social impact side. It’s “Gear for Good” movement provides upscale clothing and gear—similar to Patagonia and The North Face—for the socially conscious-minded outdoors enthusiast. Revenue from purchases is used to invest in more than 11 global nonprofits focused on health, education and job creation. Cotopaxi also hosts pretty cool scavenger hunts in cities across the United States.

The Virtuosa team. Pictured from left to right are Tamara Zagorovskaya (CFO),
Caitlin Palmer (CEO) and Alexandra Holtzman (COO and President). Courtesy photo

2. Virtuosa Beauty, Founders: Tamara Zagorovskaya, Caitlin Palmer, Alexandra Holtzman, Harvard Business School

It probably doesn’t take three Harvard MBAs to create a luxury shower cap. But if you’re in the market for a high-end shower cap, it’s hard to think of one better than what Virtuosa Beauty offers. Tamara Zagorovskaya, Caitlin Palmer and Alexandra Holtzman met at Harvard Business School and formed a team together for the entrepreneurship project in their FIELD course.

The trio, which have an impressive background in investment banking, private equity and consulting, set out on solving the problem of shower caps. Specifically, that they don’t work. The result was Virtuosa Beauty and a $34 shower cap that actually works and a placement on our Favorite Startups list.

1. Earnest, Founders: Louis Beryl and Benjamin Hutchinson, Harvard Business School

Louis Beryl of Earnest. Photo courtesy of Earnest

When Louis Beryl decided he wanted an MBA from Harvard Business School he quickly realized a problem: a Harvard MBA is incredibly expensive. Despite working for Morgan Stanley and living within his means, he needed to take private student loans to foot the cost. And he couldn’t get a loan without a co-signer, which ended up being his mom. Beryl saw a huge problem that he was sure was not exclusive to him. He was a low-risk borrower but private loan companies viewed him as high risk.

So Beryl snatched up banking guru, Benjamin Hutchinson and founded Earnest, one of the latest of a growing amount MBA-launched loan refinancing startups. But Earnest is growing at turbocharged clip. They can’t seem to hire enough people, in November they closed a $275 million Series B funding round, and were the subject of Poets&Quants’ reporting on the MBA startup craze this past summer.