Welcome to Startupland: Entrepreneurship for Sustainability and Resilience

Under the guidance of Suma Reddy, founder of Riffle Ventures and Gather—a robotic harvesting companion—the class of 2026 dug into climate issues as the basis of entrepreneurial explorations during first semester’s Entrepreneurship for Sustainability and Resilience course.

Here are some of our favorite projects from this class, in which students designed business solutions for problems ranging from wildfire mitigation in Canada, rooftop urban gardens to support native bee populations, and the potential for cemeteries to serve as communal parks preserving our connection to the past as well as our environment.

Lauren Palazzi’s Hilltop Harvest Farm

What do unsustainable cashmere practices, forest fires in Canada, and the overuse of herbicides in landscape management all have in common? Cashmere goats!

Lauren Palazzi created Hilltop Harvest Farms, a small but impactful cashmere goat farm located in northern Ontario, Canada. The farm’s residents are multitasking superheroes, taking on sustainability, climate change, and ecology via a threefold offering:

1. Supplying high-quality, raw cashmere to Canadian businesses at competitive pricing; without traveling halfway around the world.

2. Targeted goat grazing landscaping services that replace chemical herbicides and heavy machinery—say goodbye to noise pollution and soil compaction!

3. Strategic grazing to clear fire-prone areas for municipalities, creating natural firebreaks that help save communities by reducing the spread of wildfires.

Is it too cheesy to say that these cashmere goats might be the GOAT?

Polliroof by Sophia Haase

Addressing declining bee populations, with a special focus on sustaining the populations of native bee species of New York State, Sophia created Polliroof—a modular urban rooftop garden system, with bee hotel habitats and native plants that support crucial pollinators and build community spaces for building residents.

Gudrun Torfadottir’s Marvevac Fish Vaccination System

Hailing from Iceland, Mechatronics Engineer Gudrun Torfadottir focused on an issue close to home of origin: the challenges of fish farming. What began as an exploration of net technologies (how to create rip-free nets to stop farmed fish escaping into the wild) changed when she spoke with the CEO of Kaldvík, one of Iceland’s largest fisheries, who told her that disease in farmed fish was the greatest threat to their business.

*Fish, like all creatures, are threatened by various diseases. To increase their survival rates, farmed fish are vaccinated, giving them a 74% chance of survival, compared to 53% in unvaccinated fish.*

So, Gudrun created Marvevac, an AI-automated Vaccination machine for fish, addressing the main challenges of vaccinating fish today: accidental harm to vaccinators, time spent, and imprecision. Using AI for precision, a single operator can use Marvevac to vaccinate more fish in less time via a simple software interface, while collecting data about fish health.

*ReSource Labs’ ReTurn Stations for recyclables.*

ReSource Labs by Ana Aghjayan

Ana Aghjayan chose to tackle wishcycling, taking inspiration from Germany’s Pfand system, in which grocery store customers deposit recyclables to receive credit toward future purchases. Ana reimagines the Pfand system for the US, bringing this circularity to a brand-centric consumer economy by partnering with major corporations to incentivize consumer loyalty through future discounts—and all the while improving the brands’ environmental impact.

Wishcycling, the practice of putting something in the recycling bin when its not recyclable, is not only ineffective, it’s detrimental to our recycling system—causing the entire batch of recyclables to be directed to the landfill instead.

*A look at the Pfand system in Germany.*

*The branded ReTurn Stations roll out at cultural events across the US. Each station is designed to handle brand-specific recyclable materials and offer consumers credit toward future purchases.*

Cycle Cemeteries by Carmel Berg

With Cycle Cemeteries, Carmel Berg reimagines traditional burial practices, seeing land allocated for cemeteries as an opportunity to create community spaces founded on ecologically supportive practices—exploring practices like aquamation and terramation as an alternative to mass graves like those on New York’s Hart Island.

From the high financial cost of burials and cremation, the massive ecological toll, land-use issues, and the modern cemetery’s emphasis on plot maximization rather than serving as a space for reflection or remembrance, cemeteries are ripe for disruption. The details within this project are worth diving into, so we encourage you to click through the slideshow below: