In 2018, Cornell Tech—a graduate school campus of the Ivy League university—was believed to have been a strong factor for Amazon deciding to bring a new headquarters to New York City.
At the time, the school boasted of the creation and investment in more than 50 start-up companies in which over $60 million in investment was raised and hundreds of jobs were created, according to the New York Times.
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While the Amazon headquarters was later nixed because of backlash from local politicians, Cornell Tech is continuing to leave its mark on the region—and the world.
The end of this year will mark a milestone for the school—the development of more than 100 companies through its Runway Startups program. In total, the companies have amassed a $660 million valuation and created 500 new jobs in New York City.
“We have really focused on creating a system where we’re not just a university— we are a catalyst of start-up creation on steroids, basically,” says Fernando Gómez-Baquero, the director of runway and spinouts at Cornell Tech.
From classroom ideas to multi-million-dollar valuations
One of the most successful start-ups to come out of Cornell Tech is Nanit, a baby sleep monitor that utilizes AI and machine learning technology. The company has sold hundreds of millions in product since its founding—and even Kim Kardashian has used it.
Overall, at the graduate school, the intersection of engineering, business, and law skills are combined in part to aid the nearly 600 enrolled students build companies. By attending Cornell Tech, Gómez-Baquero says students gain not only an academic degree but also a building experience and investment opportunity—something he says overall you won’t find anywhere else in the world.
“The beautiful thing about this—the crazy thing is— if you come here to us in one year, you can have an experience where you get a master’s degree, build the company and get investment,” he adds.
During Rimas Gulbinas’ time at Cornell Tech as a postdoctoral fellow, he founded Maalka—a platform that supports cities and organizations in meeting sustainability goals. The company now works with many Fortune 1000 companies as well as cities like Seattle, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.
The runway program not only helped to provide him with the guidance to launch his first start-up, it fundamentally transformed the way he approached his career, Gulbinas says.
“By incubating my startup at Cornell Tech, I was able to pivot my company at an early stage and enlist our first paying customers, which included some of the first cities in the world to launch data-driven energy and carbon reduction programs,” Gulbinas tells Fortune. “Almost a decade later, my startup is providing similar data solutions to cities and corporations across the United States and Europe.”
The ‘secret sauce’ for success
Gómez-Baquero says that one of the most positive aspects of Cornell Tech’s start-ups is that it’s boosting the local economy and community. And moving forward, he hopes that the program can put its foot on the accelerator and invest heavily in hundreds of start-ups each year—with the hope that some will become unicorns.
“We are building from scratch,” Gómez-Baquero says. “That is our secret sauce.”
Cornell Tech’s model of supporting and investing in student start-ups is something he hopes will spread across the world since universities have a unique role and power to connect with and bring benefit to their communities.
His advice for someone with a business idea? Shoot your shot—and fast.
“Speed is of the essence, and find the places in the connections where you have a better shot of moving as fast as you can,” he says. “And that is, I think, that has always been the secret of Silicon Valley. And whether you like it or not, I mean—one of the secrets was that whatever you wanted to build, you build it very fast, or you fail fast.”
Cornell’s business school—separate from Cornell Tech—ranks No. 12 in Fortune’s 2023 ranking of best MBA programs.
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