Entrepreneurship has become a huge part of engaging with undergraduates and inspiring alumni to come back and make an investment. We are lucky enough that we are at Cornell which has taken a very strong initiative in opening up avenues for entrepreneurs to not only solve problems but find capital to actually move forward with their ideas. 

Two weeks ago, the Cornell Entrepreneurship Summit was held in New York City with amazing speakers such as:

• Hamdi Ulukaya, the CEO of Chobani which is only in its seventh year of existence and he was named the 2013 Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year and earned the Small Business Administration's Entrepreneurial Success Award
• Andrew Yang, the CEO for Venture for America who has written a book and who has been honored by the White House
• Kegan Schouwenburg, the CEO and Co-Founder of Sols System 
• Matt Blumberg, the CEO of Return Path which is in its fifteenth year of existence and he has written a book to help other people scale their businesses
• Mona Bijoor, the founder and CEO of JOOR
• David Berry, the CEO of Founder Seres Health who has helped build over ten companies in life sciences and sustainability and who was elected a 2014 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum
• Tom Ingersoll, the President and CEO of Skybox who previously was the cofounder and CEO of Universal Space Network
• Healey Cypher, the Head of Retail Innovation for Ebay Inc.
• Joanne Wilson, the writer behind the popular blog www.gothamgal.com as well as a philanthropist and active investor in real estate and other companies
• Scott Belsky, the Vice President of Productions/Community of Adobe and Head of Bahance and was an undergraduate at Cornell in 2002

Each speaker was given a half hour to discuss their career path and give advice out to other inspiring entrepreneurs who want to know what the key is to getting ahead. 

Besides Cornell finding entrepreneurship really important, I've recently found Shark Tank, the TV show to be an amazing sign of what entrepreneurs are doing in the United States and how just a small amount of capital can make a huge difference in companies. 

On November 18th, GrooveBook became the first shark tank company to be bought (no other company has been bought before) for $14.5 million by Shutterfly. Shutterfly bought GrooveBook because it will add to their portfolio by adding a new dynamic mobile experience with photos. Groovebook currently is a mobile application that lets you choose up to 100 photos on your smartphone and creates a photo book of them that is mailed to you at the end of the month. The service is only $2.99 per month which is relatively cheap compared to what people will pay to print their pictures at a Walgreens, CVS, or town photo store. The photos are each stamped with the date and location as well which is very old school (specifically the date part). 

When Julie and Brian Whiteman pitched GrooveBook in the tank they could not have imagined there company would get bought but just as Mark Cuban and Kevin O'Leary, whom invested $150,000 for 80% of the licensing rights, had believed in them Jeffrey Housenbold, the CEO and president of Shutterfly, has a lot of faith in them and believes that it adds value to both companies and will help with scaling GrooveBook. 

I will personally be downloading the application now and taking beautiful pictures of Cornell's campus in the winter to add to my collection and so that I have printed pictures from college instead of just Facebook posts. 

However, the point of me writing this is that entrepreneurship is alive and well. Take a risk and present your application or solution to a problem. Think of all the people who have gone on Shark Tank in the past few years and think of all the Cornell alumni who would love to hear you make a difference in the world. 

So what's your cool idea? Comment below with problems and solutions you believe are worth investing in.