Most Disruptive MBA Startups Of 2024

STARTUP LESSONS LEARNED FROM BUSNESS SCHOOL…AND EXPERIENCE

Megan Burton, BrainFood, Wharton School

Looking back on their time in business school, the biggest MBA disruptors came away with some unforgettable lessons. Babson College’s Tina Lee cautions student to move slow and deliberate, “take things one step at a time {and] ask as many questions as possible.” IESE Business School’s Konrad S.J. Stolte, the founder of grocery chain technology disruptor MarketVista, urges founders to continuously fill the top sales funnel to guard against downturns. For Wharton’s Megan Burton, the best advice is don’t skimp on your Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

“I wish I’d known is that you really need to put some money into getting your product to an MVP stage,” Burton tells P&Q. “For a product like BrainFood, a beverage, it’s not enough to just have a great idea—people need to taste it and experience it firsthand to truly understand its value. I spent too long trying to secure grant funding without a tangible product to show for it, and I realize now that building the product should have been the first priority.”

That said, Dartmouth Tuck’s Adrian Heneveld warns aspiring founders “not to wait until all the answers are clear.” Instead, advises Stanford GSB’s Joseph Kao, students would be wise to “dive in” and “just do it.”

“While iterating the prototype with customers is a key step in design thinking, it’s not always the most efficient way to understand market needs, especially in an emerging industry,” Kao adds. “I found that even completing one trade of used batteries taught me more than countless interviews or theoretical exercises. That real-world experience was invaluable and gave me the insights I needed to better shape and scale the venture.”

At Washington University’s Olin School, MBAs are taught to “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution,” says Samuel Brehm, founder of Status Flow – a medical device designed to manage blood flow. However, the University of Texas’ Sean Finney would tag a caveat onto this maxim: “No one cares about your company as much as you do.”

“I often outsourced work to external contractors to speed things up, but the results were mixed,” he continues. “Looking back, I realize that patience and doing things myself would have saved time, reduced costs, and spared me a lot of frustration.”

If anything, these year’s Disruptive Startup founders would counsel MBAs to get in front of potential users sooner rather than later, says NYU Stern’s Colton Margus. After all, ‘no plan survives first contact.’ More than that, adds Northwestern Kellogg’s N. Scott Tsangeos, don’t be shy about asking for the sale…and a check.

“Conducting customer research and collecting product or concept feedback without asking people to pay for the product is only marginally useful. These “out of context” interviews don’t tell you anything about how much customers actually value your product and are willing to pay for it. The minute you try to sell your product or service the pace of learning rapidly accelerates – I wish I had done this earlier.”

MBA Startup	MBA Program	Founding MBA Students	Industry	Funding
Proper Pack	Arizona State University (W. P. Carey)	Jeff Watkins	Sustainable Packaging	$37,500
PETCH	Babson College (Olin)	Tina Lee	Pet HealthTech	NA
ReviMo	Babson College (Olin)	Aleksandr Malashchenko	Healthcare	$160,000
Skuling	Boston University (Questrom)	Yudha Pratama Situmorang	Education Technology	$100,000
Rumi	U.C. Berkeley (Haas)	Ghazaleh Sadooghi	EdTech/Artificial Intelligence	$450,000
ANNDERSTAND	University of Cambridge (Judge)	Ge Yu	Fashion Tech	Seed
Sabana	Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)	Ruben Antonio Quesada	Construction Tech	$120,000
Encore	University of Chicago (Booth)	Will Anema	Marketplace / Resale / Collectibles	$2,150,000
simpleRx	Clemson University (Powers)	Jack Berg	Healthcare	$120,000
Rubicon Robotics	Columbia Business School	Avery Schonberger	Sports/Robotics	Bootstrapped
Cipher	Cornell University (Johnson)	Burke Reimann, Faris Bseiso	Media, Tech, Music	$395,000
Yogger	Dartmouth College (Tuck)	Adrian Heneveld	Sports Tech	$225,000
Acute XR	Esade Business School	Dominik Kirchdorfer	Healthcare and Gaming	$87,000
Shanda	Georgetown University (McDonough)	Dumi Mabhena and Paul Kassar	Technology and Media	Bootstrapped
TestParty	Harvard Business School	Michael Bervell	Technology, Software	$4,000,000
Vulcan Elements	Harvard Business School	John Maslin	Deep Tech / Manufacturing	NA
LEXY	IE Business School	Layth Fahoum, Maria Alejandra Roa, Juan Camilo Silva, Daria Damina, Ennio Pastore	Ed-Tech/ Health-Tech	NA
MarketVista	IESE Business School	Konrad S.J. Stolte	Retail, FMCG, Marketing, Technology	Bootstrapped
RetrievAir	Indiana University (Kelley)	Benton Miller	Pet, Travel, Air Transportation	$650,000
FaceFlow.AI	INSEAD	Dhinil Patel & Simon Zhang	Beauty Tech / AI	$30,000
Sea2Carbon	INSEAD	Utsav Oza	Industrials, Biotech	$25,000
Cell Mind	Johns Hopkins (Carey)	Alfred Landik	Cell and Gene Therapy	NA
Kiro	London Business School	Alisha Chowdhury	Fintech / Edtech	$200,000
Fount	MIT (Sloan)	Henk van Biljon	InsurTech	$1,100,000
LymeAlert	MIT (Sloan)	Erin Dawicki, Brenda Ong, Michelle Ewy	Healthtech	$70,000
Vertical Horizons	MIT (Sloan)	Cynthia Liao	Energy / Semiconductor / AI	$4,025,000
Doc Doc Go	New York University (Stern)	Maria Iliakova (MBA ’25), Colton Margus (MBA ’24)	Software, Healthcare	None
Olympus	Northwestern University (Kellogg)	N. Scott Tsangeos	Fitness + Tech	$250,000
Day1 AI	Notre Dame (Mendoza)	Simba Mubvuma	AI, Nonprofit Tech	$250,000
Oxkair	University of Oxford (Saïd)	Edouard Tessier-Blais, Dr. Yousif Hanna	HealthTech	Self-Funded
Coflux Purification	Rice University (Jones)	Dana Vazquez	Manufacturing, Climate Tech	$500,000
Infinion Technology	Stanford GSB	Joseph Kao & Yutong Zhu	Battery Recycling	$210,000
Teachy	Stanford GSB	Pedro Siciliano	Education	$1,600,000
Tano Skincare	University of Texas (McCombs)	Sean Finney	Skincare, CPG, Future Medical Applications	$300,000
RampMeDaddy	USC (Marshall)	Andrey Chabanov	Global Payments	$300,000
CoFund	University of Virginia (Darden)	Maximilian Martin	FinTech	$12,500
CLARA	University of Washington (Foster)	Melinda Yormick, RN	Healthcare	$200,000
Status Flow	Washington University (Olin)	Samuel Brehm	Medical Devices- Neurovascular	$5,000
Zaiko	Washington University (Olin)	Franklin Taylor	Grocery/Retail Tech	$26,900
BrainFood Industries	Wharton School	Megan Burton	Food & Beverage / Wellness	$35,000
Pairfect	Wharton School	Annie Xu	Consumer Services	$100,000