Brian Rudolph

Brian Rudolph is the creator of Banza, the first pasta made from chickpeas. Since its inception, the company has expanded to include other products such as pizza, waffles and rice made with chickpeas and beans. The company has been named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in food and been recognized as one of TIME100's Most Influential Companies, both in 2024.

Unable to find a nutritious pasta he liked, Rudolph set out to make his own. He launched Banza in 2014 at the age of 23 with his brother Scott. A lucky break to appear on CNBC's reality series "Restaurant Startup" led to heartbreak when they sunk $100,000 into a big run to meet sudden demands from supermarkets -- and the pasta turned to mush. Following that debacle, Rudolph worked obsessively for months in a factory in Northern Michigan to figure out how to make his pasta in large batches. A year later, TIME Magazine named Banza one of the Top 25 Inventions of 2015, and the company won the $500,000 first prize in Accelerate Michigan's pitch competition.

In 2016, Rudolph was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 - Food & Drink list, Crain's Detroit 20 in Their 20s, and Entrepreneur of the Year by Michigan State University. Rudolph originally moved to Detroit as a 2012 Venture for America Fellow and worked for two years as the first employee at the startup Quikly. He is a graduate of Emory University, where he received his Bachelor of Business Administration degree.