Guild Education cofounders Brittany Stich (left) and Rachel Carlson. Courtesy photo

Guild

When Brittany Stich and Rachel Carlson enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University, they both did so pursuing MBAs and masters in education. Both had deep roots in education. For Carlson, who grew up in Colorado, education policy was regular dinnertime conversation. Her grandfather was the governor of Colorado between 1987 and 1999. Her father was a state senator from 2006 to 2010. And Carlson herself served on the Obama campaign in 2008. Stich, meanwhile, was a first-generation college student and later served for Teach for America. She personally new the value of higher education.

“My family has worked in education reform since I can remember,” Carlson told us earlier this year. “And for Brit, she’s the first in her family to go to college. So thinking about what allowed her to navigate that path — a lot of that is what we do at Guild.”

Denver-based Guild Education is an edtech company that works with employees and employers to offer job training and degree programs for working adults. Since launch, the company has garnered more than $10 million in VC investments.

“Long-term, we want to lead this new area of education as a work benefit,” Carlson said. “We want to make sure the 64 million Americans who are working adults, who haven’t had the opportunity to earn a degree, can thrive and survive in the working world of tomorrow.”

Charles Baron, co-founder and vice president at Farmers Business Network Inc.

Farmers Business Network

Lofty goals are a theme for this year’s list of our favorite MBA startups. And Charles Baron, a graduate of Harvard Business School and co-founder of Farmers Business Network, has a doosie of a goal: To create an agricultural revolution and reinvent the entire food system. Farmers Business Network is an independent information and analytics source that currently works with more than 3,000 farmers, that collectively own more than 11 million acres of farmland — about the size of Maryland.

“We’ve had a huge amount of growth,” Baron old us earlier this year. “Last year we announced another fundraising round, which was an additional $20 million Series B from Acre Venture Partners, which is the strategic venture part of Campbell’s Soup.”

The platform essentially brings farm commerce online. By selling fertilizers, agriculture chemicals, and seed, Baron believes the company will be able to save farmers 10% to 50%.

“Basically what we’re doing is bringing farm commerce online, which it’s not, despite being a multi-tens-of-billions-of-dollars industry,” Baron said. “And we’re doing that in a way that’s transparent and fair and easily accessible for farms all across the country.”