Two MBA alumni from the Georgia Institute of Technology – Scheller College of Business have partnered to develop a successful startup thanks to their strong business education.
Christian Hyatt, MBA ’16, and Christian White, MBA ’16, met during a first-year class at Scheller, a school both selected because they thought it would present opportunities to move toward an entrepreneurial career.
Sharing more than the same first name, the two found each other and realized they shared a desire to develop their entrepreneurial skills together—which, for them, meant creating “services, products and solutions that directly benefit and enhance peoples’ lives and companies’ profitability and sustainability.”
Hyatt and White collaborated on a 17-month capstone project, which looked at software solutions for IT risk management. During a startup business plan competition at Georgia Tech, the two budding entrepreneurs took a top prize for their plan, which ultimately became their business venture. After almost two years of development, Hyatt and White launched risk3sixty in 2016.
Based in Atlanta, risk3sixty is a technology risk-management and regulatory compliance company that offers consulting services around information security, cybersecurity, risk assessment and more. Both Hyatt and White serve as managing directors for the startup. As with any startup—a certain amount of risk was involved in its establishment, but the support of the Scheller community helped Hyatt and White turn their business into a success.
The Scheller network helped Hyatt solicit the support of Robin Bienfait, EMOT ’01, and CEO/founder of Emnovate. Meeting after she spoke during one of his first-year MBA classes, Hyatt and Bienfait developed an important mentoring relationship which helped risk3sixty to grow.
Both Hyatt and White believe that their experience with the Scheller MBA helped to shape their success. According to White, the MBA program at Scheller “presents an environment in which you have world-class professors covering a wide range of business topics and classmates who provide a lot of value because of their diverse backgrounds.”