Ishaan Gulrajani: Revolutionizing App Development with Watchsend

Ishaan Gulrajani, a Thiel Fellow, had a bright future ahead of him as a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world’s most prestigious universities. He was already becoming known for his brilliant studies and skills, such as when he organized HackMIT, the largest hackathon at MIT and one of the world’s largest hackathons. The halkathon had 20 organizers and over 1,000 attendees with a $250,000 budget donated by over 70 sponsors.

But Ishaan decided to drop out of MIT in the middle of his freshman year because he was unable to take full advantage of it. He decided to focus his attention on his new project, Watchsend, and he is unsure whether he will return to MIT or not.

With a partner as well as the financial and technical support of a start-up accelerator, Y Combinator, Ishaan launched Watchsend in 2012. The software is designed to provide software developers with the effective and efficient tool that will enable them to see how app users interact with programs by recording their interactions. The app is expected to replace the traditional hit-and-miss method (i.e., laboratories with video cameras) that companies currently use.

Jilliene Helman: Taking Crowdfunding Model To Real Estate

Jilliene Helman comes from a family of entrepreneurs so it came as no surprise when she quit her job as Vice President at Union Bank to start her own company. In 2012, she co-founded RealtyMogul.com, an accredited investor platform using the crowdfunding model for the real estate industry. She is now its Chief Executive Officer who oversees the company’s strategic directions and operations.

RealtyMogul.com is considered as one the world’s fastest-growing crowdfunding companies, a feat that earned Helman her recognition as the 2013 Crowdfunding CEO of the Year by CrowdfundBeat.com and one of 2013’s 100 Most Influential Real Estate Leaders. The company was also recognized by Business Insider as one 2013’s top start-ups.

The website has more than 17,000 active accredited and institutional investors with investments in 250+ properties in more than 20 states for over $80 million – and they have received millions in returns, too.

The company attracts many of the best institutional investors inside and outside of the real estate industry, all of whom want to diversify their portfolios. The fast, easy and convenient platform provided by RealtyMogul.com provides them with the invaluable opportunities to invest their wealth in previously inaccessible or unavailable real estate investments.

Real estate investment sponsors also find the RealtyMogul.com platform as a useful venue to create joint equity ventures. Borrowers also come to the website for the opportunity to avail of flexible debt. This is because the crowdfunding website provides sponsors and borrowers faster access to equity and debt, which are usually not as easily available through traditional means.

Helman is a certified and licensed wealth strategist. She has comprehensive experience in managing investment accounts of up to $300 million, structuring investment portfolios, and analyzing investment policies, as well as working on acquisition-related integration efforts. She has also underwritten more than $1 billion of real estate.

Neil Mehta: Hitting Home Runs in Investments

Neil Mehta, the founder and current Managing Partner of Greenoaks Capital, has a history of hitting home runs with his early investments particularly in Coupang and Palentir. His extraordinary eye for high-reward investments has resulted in Greenoaks Capital managing over $600 million in investments in a wide range of industries from insurance to e-commerce.

Greenoaks Capital, a privately-held global investment firm, is well-known in the industry for its focus on long-term principal investments worldwide. It supports excellent founders in building compounding franchises.

Mehta was also responsible for multi-million international special situation investments in the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia for OPG Ltd, a Hong Kong-based affiliate company of D.E. Shaw & Co. He was also part of the Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors where he was instrumental in successful investments in technology and financial services.

Mehta has a Bachelor of Science in Government degree from The London School of Economics. He is also a FIELD 3 Advisor and Mentor at Harvard Business School; a board member for Greenoaks Global Holdings Ltd., Lolli & Pops, and Coupang; and a founding advisor of InK (TED India).

Maximilian Kuss: Merging the Old with the New

Maximilian Kuss, the co-founder and current managing partner and managing director of European Media Holding AG (EMH), is a natural entrepreneur whose savvy business skills were evident even in his young age. During his high school years, he established his first online company, Fastplay, which he then sold at a profit to Pingparadise after 6 months.

In 2006, he co-founded a gaming and software publishing company, eraffe media, which was then sold to a consortium of publishers in early 2010. Kuss then used the proceeds from the sale to establish European Media Holding AG, thus, setting him on the path toward extraordinary success in the dog-eat-dog investment industry at a young age.

Today, European Media Holding AG is a multi-million investment company that manages over 250 million euros. Its main focus is on merging digital technologies with so-called old economy corporations, thus, ushering in a new era in investments.

As a venture capital firm, European Media Holding AG specializes in growth capital, seed to series A funding, and even in later rounds. Its investments are in e-commerce and marketplaces, Internet of things (IoT), financial technology, eHealth, smart data, and software as service. It also has concentrations within each sector, such as online retail and marketplaces for e-commerce as well as capital markets technology, data analytics, and corporate banking and finance in financial technology.

For his success in the industry, Kuss has been recognized with several awards and honors. In 2012, he was selected as one of the 2012 Young Global Shapers by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He was also selected to the 2014 Forbes 30 Under 30 for Finance list, an honor that further spread his fame in the industry considering the prestigious nature of the list.

Kuss was also instrumental in the sales of Tirendo, an online tire retailer, for 51 million euros in September 2013 to Delticom, a publicly-traded company. European Media Holding AG was one of Tirendo’s founding shareholders.

Kane Sarhan: Redesigning the Apprentice Model

Kane Sarhan was inspired by his stints as an apprentice to a Coyote Ugly owner and the CEO of LocalResponse in his design of Enstitute, of which he is the co-founder. Enstitute is an innovative learn-by-doing program based on the traditional apprenticeship program but with a twist – students combine online and classroom curricula with 1-2 years of apprenticeship with the founders and chief executive offers at corporations and startups. The learn-by-doing university is the first of its kind with its emphasis on business, entrepreneurship, technology and design.

Kane has been honored for his work including his inclusion in the prestigious “30 Under 30 Innovators in Education” by Forbes Magazine, in the "Top 25 Young Innovator in New York Tech" of Business Insider, and "31 Most Important LGBT People in Tech" by New York Tech. He is also a 2013 Echoing Green Fellow. He is a speaker on education and innovation as well as a featured person in several publications including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and CNN.

Elliot Sanchez: Redefining The One-room Schoolhouse

Elliot Sanchez certainly knows the experiences of being a teacher in the 21st century – he is a former math teacher. But he is redefining the 21st century one-room schoolhouse with his mSchool, a platform designed to assist community center in opening and maintaining accredited, state-funded classrooms with adaptive personalization learning software incorporated into classroom practices.

The software is touted for being easy to use yet effective in its goal of providing personalized learning for students from the third grade onwards. The application allows teachers to apply a three-step process, namely, assess the critical academic and cognitive skills of the students; adjust the learning materials based on advanced analytics of the students’ performance; and analyze the students’ progress with results shown on an easy-to-read dashboard.

Sanchez’ passion for the next-generation education system has resulted in several mSchools now open in Louisiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Florida as well as with other sites in Australia, Canada, and South Africa, either in the works or already in operation. He has received several awards for his innovative education platform including Teach for America's 2013 National Social Innovation Award. He was also featured in several publications including Education Week’s "Nine People Who Will Shape Education in the Next 10 Years” and Forbes Magazines’ “30 Under 30” for Education.

Sanchez also presents mSchool in various venues across the country particularly in the fields of adaptive learning frameworks, applied artificial intelligence, and game-based assessments, among others. His presentations have been well-received for his innovative approaches to education, thus, earning him the reputation of a being a conscientious researcher, successful entrepreneur, and forward-thinking educator.

He is the current Executive Director for teacher development at Leading Educators, a teacher development non-profit organization. He started his career at the Booker T. Washington Alternative Middle school as a math teacher. He managed STEM initiatives in Louisiana and served as an advisor for 2 State Superintendents of Education on a cabinet level.

Aaron Feuer, Xan Tanner, David Carel: Partners for Better Education

Aaron Feuer, Xan Tanner, and David Carel, all Yale University graduates, know the importance of education. The trio co-founded Panorama Education, a data analytics firm designed specifically for K-12 education by providing K-12 schools with the tools to find data-driven solutions to their issues. The solutions are based on the feedback collected and analyzed from students, parents and teachers by the digital platform.

Panorama Education, a Boston-based company, is now a welcome presence in more than 5,000 schools across 26 U.S. states. Its platform is used in school districts, among other education-related organizations, including Teach for America, Los Angeles Unified, Aspire Public Schools, and the State of Connecticut’s Department of Education.

The trio co-designed the Panorama Platform, an easy-to-use yet highly secure technology platform designed for the conduct of classroom surveys, collection of feedback, and analysis of data. The data (i.e., stakeholder feedback) can then be used by the educators to improve the classroom experience, which can include improved teaching practices.

Eren Bali: Encouraging Alternative Yet Effective Education

With Gagan Biyani and Oktay Caglar, Eren Bali launched Udemy in 2012 as an online teaching and learning bazaar where teachers can create their own curriculum and students can choose their own courses – truly, as personalized an education as can be in the digital world.

Udemy is not a conventional MOOC but a digital platform for online learning where experts can create their own curriculum, which are then offered to the general public. The courses are usually not driven by conventional college coursework but are determined by their designers’ view about useful coursework in the real world (i.e., improvement of job-related skills). For example, if students enrolled in the course due to the instructor’s reputation or marketing efforts, Udemy only gets 3% while the instructor gets 95% of the tuition.

The coursework designers can charge interested individuals for enrollment fees, typical fees range from $29 to $99, or offer the coursework for free. Both the designers and Udemy earn income from the arrangement with the profit-sharing ratio depending on several factors.

Udemy’s platform provides coursework designers with the essential tools and technologies for creating and promoting their coursework as well as earning money from the tuition charges. While Udemy courses are not yet credentialed as college credits, these can provide several benefits for students, such as the acquisition of job-related skills and the generation of credits for a technical certification.

At present, Udemy offers over 22,000 coursework alternatives – and growing – as well as served more than 5 million students. With the growing popularity of alternative education for the real world, Bali’s brainchild continues to live up to its branding of “The Academy of You”.

But the path toward its present success has not been without its challenges. Bali and his co-founders were rejected at least 30 times by investors before hitting a series of jackpots, such as Series A funding by Groupon investors, Series B funding by Insight Venture Partners, and Series C funding by Nortwest Venture Partners.

Bridget Hilton Brings Hope Through Sound

Bridget Hilton, founder of LSTN, wants to make social enterprise and entrepreneurship the coolest thing for millennials. She used her background in music as well as Joe Huff’s, her friend, background in fashion to establish the company in her kitchen. She now heads LSTN with its employees and interns from better office facilities although she also travels extensively for company expansion purposes.

Hilton’s bold idea: To empower people by letting them know that each individual matters and that each purchase can make a real difference in the lives of others.

LSTN manufactures durable, beautiful and stylish headphones using various components notably reclaimed wood. For each pair of headphones LSTN sells, the company helps in the restoration of a deaf person’s hearing through the Starkey Hearing Foundation. As a for-purpose company, it has connected thousands of individuals and families, even communities, through sound in general and music in particular.

Hilton has been instrumental in giving the precious gift of sound to more than 17,000 people in various countries including the United States, Kenya, Peru, China, Uganda, and Sri Lanka.