On September 26, NYU Law’s Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Program (EVC), formerly the Venture Fund, celebrated its new name with a reception and a pitch showcase featuring three young alumni entrepreneurs.
- Liron Brish ’08 discussed his new venture, Mangrove, which aims to help homeowners save on energy efficiency upgrades. While still at the Law School, Brish ran a guitar case business drawing on what he learned in a 1L export law class. Brish co-founded Farm Dog in 2015 and served as CEO of the agtech company, whose app provided farmers with data on weather, pest outbreaks, and other conditions crucial for planting and harvesting decisions. Farm Dog was acquired by Deveron in 2021.
- Samantha Coxe ’17, founder and CEO of Flaus, showed off her company’s electric tooth flosser, designed to make flossing easier, more comfortable, and more effective. At NYU Law, Coxe served as executive editor of the Journal of Law & Business, chaired the Student Bar Association, and received the Vanderbilt Medal at graduation. She founded Flaus in 2019 after working for three years as an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Cox cohosted a “Founders Leap” event with EVC last summer, the first in a series of virtual events featuring NYU Law alumni who worked in law before deciding to start companies.
- Phantila Phataraprasit ’20 spoke about the sustainable furniture company, Sabai Design, that she co-founded and leads as CEO. Sabai produces home furnishings with recycled, upcycled, and other sustainable materials as well as offering repair and resale programs. While still at the Law School, Phataraprasit received a grant from the Venture Fund to work on Sabai. She later won a pitch competition run by the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship at Stern and has received an equity investment from the NYU Innovation Fund.
Members of EVC’s advisory jury also delivered remarks, including Stuyvie Comfort ’95, LLM ’96, founder and managing partner of Conversion Venture Capital and an NYU Law and New York University trustee; Bob Gold ’84, managing partner of Clara Vista Investment Partners and an NYU Law trustee; Andy Appelbaum ’91, managing partner of RiverPark Ventures and cofounder of Seamless; Lydia Cheuk ’97, general counsel and corporate secretary of Away; and Gregory Raiten ’08, co-founder and president of TechGC.
“As a serial founder and now a venture capital investor, I’ve met thousands of young entrepreneurs,” Appelbaum said. “The successful ones have the same traits in common. They can identify a problem, research and iterate over time to find the right operating model. They can persuade talented people to leave their comfortable jobs and join them on a journey. They can convince investors to back them on something that is statistically likely to fail. They need to wear many hats, and they must be relentlessly relentless. These are exactly the skills that you learn here at NYU Law.”
Posted on October 18, 2023