8. Game Truck Party
Tempe, Ariz.
Founded: 2006
It was 2006 and Scott Novis was frustrated with the pizza arcade experience at his son's 4th birthday party. Children were running around unmonitored, and the games were boring and static; most of the kids had better games and graphics on their home game boxes than what was being offered at the party. So not long afterward, he went home and, in his garage, retrofitted a truck with gaming consoles, flat-screen monitors and cool interiors, creating the first GameTruck portable gaming party. He threw a birthday party for a friend and, soon, GameTruck was a thriving weekend business. Since then, the company has grown to nearly $2 million in revenue, and is thriving with nearly 40 trucks in 20 locations across the country and 12 employees in its home office. The company also offers franchise opportunities.

9. RetireLife.net
Charlestown, Mass.
Founded: 2009

The Census bureau estimates that the number of people age 65-plus will shoot from 40.2 million in 2010 to 88.5 million in 2050, and some estimates put the eldercare market at nearly $200 billion. At 26, Meagan Shea isn't anywhere near that demographic, but she's serving it well with RetireLife.net, which helps aging adults and their caregiver children more easily find care solutions. Shea came up with the idea after going through the onerous process of relocating an aging relative across the country, trying to find appropriate medical and care facilities and services. It inspired her to make an online information and content center for caregivers of aging relatives. RetireLife.net was one of 15 of 42 businesses selected for development by Shea's business school peers as she was finishing her MBA at Babson College. Using $79,000 from family and friends, she launched last July and now has a database of more than 5,800 services. Two of her classmates have joined the company, and they will be rolling out nationally in late 2010.

10. GiftZip.com
East Lansing, Mich.
Founded: 2008

In 2008, then-MBA student Sam Hogg opened his wallet and stared at one of several plastic gift cards he had received for Christmas, thinking how wasteful the cards were. So, instead of paying attention in class, he began to form a business model. Later that year, he launched East Lansing-based GiftZip.com, an electronic gift-card aggregation site that has the potential to dramatically downsize a wasteful supply chain of tiny plastic cards. "I looked at gift cards and saw that 75 million pounds of them go into landfills every year," Hogg says. "If people heard that, they would never buy another plastic gift card." And the site is catching on. Since Giftzip.com's founding, use has increased 2,100 percent and has grown from 120 to 275 retailers. Hogg created his own website, which places competing retailers next to one another--a model outlined by a college marketing professor who suggested consumers are more likely to buy a product when given multiple choices, even if those choices sit next to competing brands. He gets ongoing support from the professors and classmates at his alma mater, Michigan State University. "You don't need an MBA to start a business, but I couldn't have gotten that from scratching my head in a basement," he says.