Entrepreneurship conference delivers motivation, inspiration, headshots

Ponsi Trivisvavet MBA '99 knew she had found her true north when the seeds she delivered to an Indonesian farmer helped him to increase his crop yields enough that he was able to buy a cow - to provide meat for his family - for the first time in his life.

"Now this man can send his children to school, his grandchildren to college," she said. "He can think about the future."

Trivisvavet, the CEO of Inari, was one of six featured speakers at the Nov. 15 Eclectic Convergence conference, a yearly event hosted by Entrepreneurship at Cornell that brings more than 400 people to Cornell Tech in New York City.

Her company uses multiplex gene editing and AI-powered predictive design to develop seeds that grow plants that use less land, less fertilizer and less water, but provide higher yields.

For now, Inari is focusing on soybeans, corn and wheat seeds, which account for 70 percent of the market, but the company's technology is transferable to other seeds as well.

"It's exciting when you get to work on the most difficult technology, it's exciting when you work on not just a blue ocean but a new ocean," she said. "We are doing something where people might call us crazy or unreasonable, where people will tell us it's impossible, but we choose to work on that route anyway. Seven years ago, we were told that multiplex gene editing can't be done in plants, and now look at us."

The conference also included a pitch contest for new companies - won by Elm AI, which uses AI to help companies review documents from suppliers, streamlining the due diligence process. The company was founded by Advait Raykar MEng '23, Aparajita Thakker MBA '23 and Ken He MS '23, all Cornell Tech graduates.

Conference participants could also take advantage of free headshots taken by a professional photographer, join in networking activities, visit one-on-one with speakers during "speaker hours" and learn about student businesses in a space set up for tabling.

"This gave us the front seat to talk to individuals in the alumni community who care deeply about entrepreneurship," said Noah Lucia '26, whose company, Filmify, is part of the eLab student business accelerator program at Cornell. "It's also unique as a student to get to talk to stakeholders about what you're working on, whether it's HR or tech people or consultants, being able to have those conversations."

Attendees at the event included alumni, staff, faculty and students from the Ithaca, Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell campuses, as well as entrepreneurs and faculty and students from many other campuses, including 20 students and five faculty members from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

"We came with help from an organization at Tsinghua that encourages students to get into the entrepreneurial world, that provides tools and advice and sponsorship, so we see some similarities with Cornell's entrepreneurship program," said Erika Gu '25, a civil engineering student at Tsinghua, who took inspiration from the featured speakers. "All of the CEOs I've heard so far studied something that has nothing to do with what they're doing now, so that's very inspiring because I'm in the same position."

The event ended with a wrap-up of the day by hosts Zach Shulman '87 J.D. '90, director of Entrepreneurship at Cornell, and Scott Belsky '02, chief strategy officer and executive vice president of design and emerging products, Adobe.

"I love this conference because there are fascinating people who, even if they're talking about something completely unrelated to what I'm doing, they're so curious and they have this confidence to take a risk and figure it out," said Jordan Berman '95, founder and CEO of OFC, a creative agency and video production company. "This is like getting a sip of motivation. And being around students who are so excited about getting into entrepreneurship, it brings me back to what I was a student."

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