David Wu, Motus Nova
Go with the flow. Or make your own flow. Entering his final semester as an Emory undergrad, David Wu’s future as a doctor was all-but a given. He had the grades, he’d scored well on his MCATs, and was in the Essay phase of applying to med schools when he met Andy Butler. And everything […]
Joe Wortmann, QuiNovas
A Take-The-Hill Guy. Assuming You Need The Hill. It’s about 9:30 in the morning local time on a Monday in March, 2006. After 20+ hours in the air, Joe Wortmann lands at the Hamburg Airport — where he takes a cab straight to the I.T. offices for Awarix’s first European customer, and starts work on a […]
Tanveer Patel, ConcertCare
Glass Ceiling? What Glass Ceiling? At the age of 19, Tanveer Patel met her husband, Maqbool, 10 days before their wedding. Two weeks later, the native of Bangalore (a coastal city in the tropical region of India) found herself in Philadelphia — where, according to Weather Underground’s archives, the temperature was 34°, and it was […]
Gary York, Help Lightning
“Focus on your mission, not just ‘the business’.” Gary York still vividly remembers that moment when the foundation was laid for his future as a successful entrepreneur. It was 1997. He’d joined a startup founded by a charismatic man with a great idea for healthcare software, and his boss had just returned from a meeting […]
Malcolm McDonald, Vicinity Capital
Think Local. Act Local. You might say that Malcolm McDonald likes living on the edge. He married his high school sweetheart a year and a half before finishing college — which, by the way, he was paying-for himself. He had his first child four months after graduation, only 2 months after he landed gainful employment. […]