Leonard A. Lauder W54

Leonard A. Lauder W54, 92, passed away on June 14. The eldest son of Joseph H. and Estée Lauder, his pivotal leadership elevated his family’s namesake beauty brand to a global company. He also left a transformative legacy at the University of Pennsylvania. Read more about his impact at Penn in “Remembering Leonard Lauder W54.”

The Fall Winter 2025 Wharton Magazine cover and an inside spread, one depicting adventurers on a mountain plateau and the other showing bikers resting in a field.

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Entrepreneurship

Fall/Winter 2025

HUNGRY Marketplace

Traditional catering companies aren’t designed to feed large offices. Enter HUNGRY Marketplace: Jeff Grass WG99’s startup offers a twist on the usual catering model, hiring top chefs to cook in “ghost kitchens.” The result? High-quality restaurant food delivered to corporate teams for a fraction of the budget. HUNGRY features a centralized dashboard and mobile app for easier group orders. The company also donates a meal for every two purchased, totaling nearly three million meals to date. HUNGRY acquired Foodee in May, and the service is available in 13 U.S. cities.

Woman sitting in front of racks of clothing, conversing with others and smiling.

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Entrepreneurship

Fall/Winter 2025

Grey State Apparel

Saima Chowdhury WG05 launched Grey State to “make women’s lives easier” — a mantra that extends far beyond comfortable workwear and relaxed joggers. Using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, the clothing company is rooted in kindness, from using recycled textiles to offering childcare in production facilities to giving back — Chowdhury funded a girls’ school in her native Bangladesh. Tapping further into her heritage, she also employs local Bangladeshi artisans and factory workers, ensuring healthy and safe working conditions. Grey State was featured as one of Cosmopolitan’s 20 Asian-owned fashion brands in May.

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Entrepreneurship

Fall/Winter 2025

Simply Good

This innovative management software is bringing OpenTable-style functionality to recreational sports. Co-founded by Brandon Huang WG25, Simply Good is helping athletic facilities replace outdated workflows for bookings, billing, and other processes with its all-in-one platform. While basketball courts and other sporting venues use Simply Good to handle their operations, players use the company’s GoodRun service — which Huang accelerated in Venture Lab’s VIP-X Philadelphia program last year — to rent spots for recreational games, similar to how diners book reservations on apps. The complementary services together offer a way for facilities to not only rent their spaces, but to manage their businesses at large.

Illustration of a tablet next to a floating pen and a book with ABC written on one of the pages.

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Entrepreneurship

Fall/Winter 2025

Brightwheel

This Shark Tank success has developed software that preschools and child-care providers use to manage billing, communicate with families, handle admissions processes, and more. After appearing in front of “the sharks” in 2016, founder Dave Vasen WG10 made a $600,000 deal with investors Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca. Since then, Brightwheel has expanded its user base, attracted additional investors, and acquired Experience Early Learning, adding that company’s educational curriculum to its own ecosystem.

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Leonard A. Lauder W54

HUNGRY Marketplace

Grey State Apparel

Simply Good

Brightwheel