Alumni entrepreneurs shared their stories at the Entrepreneurship & Venture Fund (EVC) Program’s Fall Showcase on September 18, offering advice and encouragement to students and other NYU Law alumni who dream of creating their own business.
The evening also celebrated EVC and the support it has provided to student and alumni entrepreneurs since its founding in 2019 as the NYU Law Venture Fund. Several members of the EVC’s advisory board offered remarks, including Lydia Cheuk ’97, general counsel of Away; Stuyvesant Comfort ’95, LLM ’96, founder and managing partner of Conversion Venture Capital; Robert Gold ’84, managing partner of Clara Vista Investment Partners; and Brandon Nelson ’99, senior advisor at JetBlue Airways.
“When you think about the mission of NYU, entrepreneurship and leadership…are going to become so much more critical for the students here,” Comfort said.
Dean Troy McKenzie ’00 underlined the importance of supporting entrepreneurship at the Law School. “I think it is important to put a stake in the ground for an aspect of our educational mission that is not just about preparing people to enter the world as day-to-day practicing lawyers,” he said. “Part of being educated, well-educated,” McKenzie added, “is the ability to see around corners, be entrepreneurial, understand and manage risk, and frankly, to see opportunities and pursue them as part of a longstanding vision.”
Five alumni gave brief talks about their paths and the companies they have founded: Alan Gould ’90, founder and CEO of MutualMarkets; Busayo Olupona ’05, founder of Busayo; Anna McGrane ’10, founder and CEO of PacerPro; Sam Coxe ’17, founder and CEO of Flaus; and Esosa Ohonba ’23, founder of Layman Ltd. Each told about finding a compelling idea or passion that inspired them to take the leap from pursuing a traditional law career to launching their own companies. At the same time, several said, their legal training and experience had prepared them, sometimes in unexpected ways, for a career as an entrepreneur.
- Gould described a career that led from running political campaigns to digital marketing to venture capital and, most recently, to the launch of MutualMarkets, an AI-powered marketplace that helps brands identify media partners. “If you have ideas and you have a knack for making them happen, [and] as long as your definition of risk is that the riskiest thing you can do is not to do the thing that is most important to you—those two things combined, you are an entrepreneur,” he said.
- Olupona was an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton when she started making clothes inspired by the textiles and styles of Nigeria, where she had spent much of her childhood. Other Cleary lawyers helped her make the fashion industry connections that led to the launch of her label, Busayo, in 2012. “The lawyers in my life are such a significant part of my journey,” said Olupona. Today, her designs have attracted fans such as Madonna and Lupita Nyong’o and have found a market with retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Rent the Runway.
- McGrane recounted her path as an “accidental entrepreneur,” who teamed up with her brother to start up legal technology business PacerPro. She credited NYU Law’s alumni network with providing crucial support in the start-up phase, noting that the Law School’s culture facilitates collaboration. “I think lawyers are fundamentally problem-solvers,” she said, “and you can do that through a law firm or you can do that through bringing a company into the world.”
- Coxe described how a painful visit to the dentist led her to conceive the idea of an electronic dental flosser. When she left Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom to start Flaus, she took some valuable skills with her, Coxe said. “I am so grateful that I had my legal background,” she said, adding, “Honestly, I know a lot of people say that being a lawyer, you’re very risk-averse, but oh my gosh, what a blessing to be aware of the risks and the challenges. There are so many people that just run forward, and I’m always looking for the grenades…. That has been such a superpower.”
- Ohonba was still a student at the Law School when he began working on his start-up, Layman Ltd., which offers AI-enabled tools and resources to pro se litigants in civil court. In his remarks, he recalled the encouragement he received from his Complex Litigation professor, Samuel Issacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, and from Anthony Thomas, director of what was then the NYU Law Venture Fund. The law, Ohonba said, “helped me to be that self-advocate necessary to advocate for an idea that has not existed before.”
Posted November 25, 2024