Hinata, a Stanford GSB student, founded a startup focused on shipping decarbonization while completing her MBA. She discusses balancing entrepreneurship with full-time studies and how Stanford's ecosystem helped her launch the company.
Why would people follow you? And understanding really like, how are you going to create your team, how are you going to motivate them with your idea, how passionate you are about your idea, how much you believe in it. And I think really having that clarity of like who I want to be as a leader and what idea, what I want to create in the world has been, has helped me a lot. Gaining clarity of like the steps forward.
Hi everyone. Welcome back to MBA Golden Buzzer. Today I'm joined again by Hinat, who's currently a student at Stanford gsb. And this time we're diving into something that Stanford is famous for, which is entrepreneurship. Because Hinata is not just a student, she's also building a company while at Stanford. So in this episode we're going to explore about what makes Stanford startup ecosystem unique, how she's leveraging her MBA to launch her business and what advice she has for any aspiring entrepreneurs considering an mba. Thank you so much, Hinata for being here. It's a pleasure to have you back. To start things off, could you maybe tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Yes. Thank you so much, Ellen for having me here. Talking a bit about myself. I'm from Rio, Brazil. I graduated in industrial engineering in the Federal University of Rio. Then I joined Bain for three years, then realized entrepreneurship was my calling. And then since then I've been working on my startup and In September, last September 2024, I joined GSB.
Awesome. And tell us a little bit about your startup. What problem are you solving? What stage is your company at?
Yes, my startup is working on the issue of shipping decarbonization which is very niche but it's something that I'm very passionate about because shipping is very interesting because it's one of the few industries regulated internationally and this brings a lot of opportunities and one of them is that there is a new regulation coming in which is going to start imposing economic penalties on carbon emissions from ships in 2027 and it's likely it's going to be the first global scale economic penalty on carbon emissions. So this is what I'm working on and how to find paths for shipping to decarbonize.
Oh, that's so cool. And how did you find that? It is very niche. How did you find that and decide, you know, this is, this is for me, this is what I want to do.
Okay. So this is like something very different about my entrepreneurial journey which is my co founder who I've been working with is my mother. So I have been working with her in this, in this company. And she has been in the industry for four decades in the shipping industry industry. And then she was started looking into this decarbonization issue. I was like, we talk a lot about, about work, about our lives. And I was very interested in that. And then when I, I decided that I wanted to, to do entrepreneurship, I got the call from Stanford. I said to Bain, like, okay, I'm leaving, I'm doing something else before the mba. And then I agreed with her to spend one month or two exploring ideas in the space and understanding opportunities. And then by the end of this we're like, okay, we have to do something together. We have to build a business. And that's how, that's how it started.
So you guys decided to start the business before you started your MBA?
Yes, exactly. So it was like January 2024 and I had just gotten into Stanford and we've been working full time on this since May 2024. So it's been almost a year at this point and we're still, we're still early stage and we're still developing. We spent a lot of time understanding, understanding the problem, interviewing people in the space like an hour building the product.
And that sounds like a lot of things to balance. So how are you balancing being a founder, founding a company and being a full time MBA student?
This is very challenging. And when I talked to some faculty members, they were like advising against starting something in the first year, so only starting in the second year because it can get very overwhelming. But to me there's like a time sensitive question because the regulations are going to come in in 2027. So I had to, I had to start and I was very sure and I think you have to be very sure because it's so challenging to do it while at the mba. But you, you will always find time. This is your priority. You, you'll find a way. And it's not impossible, I think just like organizing your time very well, understanding where you want to spend, like put a lot of effort or not. And people come into the gsb, they're very used to getting very high grades and getting as. And you have to let go of that a little bit because first of all, grade non disclosure, people don't even know. You cannot even disclose what your grade is. And you have to see like what's going to be the return on the time you spent on it, on each thing. Maybe like I studied like 80% of what I have to, that's enough. And let's put time into something else. I think that it's challenging with the time management, but there's also. There are also so many benefits to being here while building a business, which kind of, like, compensates.
So are you. Have you joined clubs or have you decided? I think I'm going to skip that part to be able to focus more on the business.
I joined clubs. I haven't been very active, mostly just to see the events that are happening. One of the most valuable things is like, coming here and kind of filtering all the opportunities that you have according to what you're doing. So, like, taking classes where you think you can learn.
