The Galant Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship — a research center in the McIntire School of Commerce — hosted its third annual Founders Forum Wednesday. The program included in-person events from 9:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. and was followed by virtual events that lasted until 6 p.m. The day was broken into sessions featuring different themes such as “Scaling UVA Startups: From Local to Legendary,” featuring the entrepreneurs of companies founded at the University, and “We Like to Party: Building A Big Booze Brand,” featuring the creators of spirit brands. Out of the 18 in-person speakers, 10 graduated from the University.
The event’s tagline was “Human Connection in a Digital World.” Abby Fifer Mandell, director of the Galant Center and senior lecturer of Commerce, said that the title represents how most of the companies presenting at the Founders Forum sold a physical, rather than software-based, product.
The Galant Center was founded in 2008, and Fifer Mandell said that the Center is “committed to meeting students and alumni wherever they are on their entrepreneurial journey.”
“There are all different kinds of entrepreneurs in the world,” Fifer Mandell said. “Some of them are people with ideas, some of them are the incredible chief of staffs and strategy people that are working in other ways — there's no entrepreneurial venture that is just one human and it's important to have experience and exposure with teams.”
The Founders Forum was created in 2024 by Asst. Commerce Prof. Charles Ransler IV as a classroom exercise teaching students about the power of cold calling professionals. In the past, the event was only for students, but this year, the Founders Forum was opened up to all members of the University and Charlottesville communities. Over 2,000 people registered, with around two-thirds of registrants being students, and the other one-third including alumni and local residents.
David Roselle, Class of 2023 alumnus and Chief Executive Officer of DoorList, was a speaker this year, and he also spoke at the 2024 inaugural Founders Forum. DoorList is an app that helps manage social events, and Roselle launched the app in 2022 at the University. He said he sees the event as an opportunity to show Commerce students that there are other career paths to take in the entrepreneurial world, other than banking and consulting.
His primary advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to focus on solving a primary, applicable issue. Roselle noted that for himself, he was inspired to create DoorList because of his frustration with inefficient social hangouts. When he was a student, gatherings required big group chats or paper wristbands.
“Don't set out to create a business, set out to solve a problem that you're actually interested in,” Roselle said. “The problem we initially set out to solve was niche and it wasn't obvious it would become a big business … [DoorList] has become a business because we were just much more focused on … providing an awesome product.”
First-year College student Vishruth Anugula said he attended Founders Forum to understand the paths each founder took to achieve success. He said he was particularly inspired by one of the keynote speakers, Reggie Aggarwal, CEO of Cvent — a meeting and event technology provider — and Class of 1991 alumnus. Anugula said he enjoyed hearing Aggarwal’s story of bringing his company back from the brink of bankruptcy.
“I just really want to understand … how [the founders] became so successful,” Anugula said. “I’ll say it was cliche, how [Aggarwal] took a gamble on himself and believed in himself. Even though [Cvent was] in a really poor position financially.”
Founders Forum also attracted many alumni as both attendees and presenting founders. Julie Nolet, founder of Corner Juice and Class of 2017 alumna was in attendance to speak with students and was also a presenting founder. Corner Juice is a cafe based in Charlottesville that opened on the Corner in 2017, and Nolet said she originally opened her business on the Corner because of her love for the University, and appreciated that the Founders Forum serves as inspiration for students hoping to pursue entrepreneurship.
“It's just so great to talk to young students and hear their experience with not only entrepreneurship, but also U.Va.,” Nolet said. “There's so many great minds here, and this University does a really good job with encouraging [entrepreneurship].”
Students were not the only attendees hoping to learn from the speakers. Alex Russell, founder of KEANU and Class of 2016 alumnus, said he attended the Founders Forum this year for the opportunity to learn from an abundance of successful business creators. KEANU is a company that specializes in the sale of kava, which their website states is a zero-sugar, non-alcoholic drink that can provide social relaxation similar to alcohol. As someone in the food and beverage industry, he said he was excited to hear from other founders in the industry.
“It was really a no-brainer, especially as someone that's in food and beverage, that's in consumer packaged goods, you know, [seeing] the founder of Vita Coco, the founder of Just Ice Tea, the founder of Chipotle — you can't ask for better advisors, mentors, fellow entrepreneurs,” Russell said.
First-year Education student Cole Deaso is enrolled in Ransler’s course — ENTP 1010, “Startup: An Introduction to Entrepreneurship.” As part of the class, Deaso reached out to alumni and students asking them to attend the Founders Forum, and said he attended the forum to get insight into how founders grew their companies. He heard from speakers of Faherty and Howler Brothers, which are lifestyle clothing and apparel brands, respectively.
“I thought that Mike Faherty and the Howler Brothers did a really good job, and they were talking about what the difference between a brand and a company is,” Deaso said. “They said … a brand is something that makes you feel a certain way … It's vital to understand what your brand is and what it is not.”
Kabir Wali, third-year exchange student from Bocconi University, Milan, said that as a student who wants to start a business, he found the stories that founders shared interesting and applicable to his own goals
“I think the fact that U.Va. has these kind of opportunities where you can talk to the founders of Peloton or Chipotle, and sort of be able to ask some questions … [is] definitely appealing,” Wali said. “To hear about their struggles, but then their eventual successes, about how they sort of built these empires … it's been really interesting”
Fifer Mandell said now is an “exciting time” for entrepreneurship at the University given the multitude of resources devoted to students interested in founding a business, including the Founders Forum.
“The list of entrepreneurs that have come out of the University of Virginia in every discipline is a vast and deep list,” Fifer Mandell said. “The University can count many innovators, entrepreneurs, rebels, disruptors, thought leaders from every major and every discipline across the University.”
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