The NYU Stern team won first place at the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC®) South-Eastern Region held at Georgia Tech from March 2-4. Professor Glenn Okun selected and coached a team that was comprised of Gadi Bashvitz (Part-Time MBA), Keshava Dasarathy (Part-Time MBA), Ben Hurst (MBA1), Sallil Kalayanarooj (MBA2), and Ken Wang (MBA1).

Organized by the University of North Carolina, the VCIC is the most prominent venture capital related competition in the country. The competition draws teams from all of the top business schools each year including Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, INSEAD, and other prestigious programs. Each team initially competes in one of five regional sites (West, Central, Southeast, Northeast, and Europe) and two wild-card sites in which a total of 54 business schools compete for a national championship and over $50,000 in cash prizes. VCIC requires students to play the role of venture capitalists, assessing real companies in a high-stakes competitive environment. Much like other business plan competitions, VCIC requires intense focus, teamwork, and of course very little sleep, but unlike other competitions in this one the students analyze real business plans and investment opportunities and do not create business plans.

The event began on Thursday night with each of the teams receiving related venture fund information and five business plans of real companies: 2 medical device companies, a bio-tech company, a media/technology company, and a product/services organization. Our team then spent the night reviewing the business plans, doing some initial research, and formulating questions to ask the entrepreneurs the next day. The following day teams were given a presentation from each of the entrepreneurs detailing the different opportunities. Teams then conducted 15 minute Q&A sessions with each of the entrepreneurs. With such a short timeframe, the Q&A sessions were extremely intense; one of the Stern team members likened the experience to speed dating.

Following the Q&A sessions, our team regrouped to discuss the investment decision. The key factors our team considered were the management team, the market opportunity, the product, and the deal terms. After an intense discussion, we selected one of the medical device companies to invest in. The team then spent the night creating a term sheet, a presentation, and an executive summary detailing why our team chose to invest in the company we did and why we didn’t select the other companies.

On Saturday, the team presented their recommendations to a panel of Venture Capitalists judging the competition. After the presentation, the judges peppered our team with various questions. One team member was even cold-called during the session.

Stern was awarded first place winning a prize of $3,000, while Duke received second place. The results of the competition are tremendous for everyone involved. Speaking with other students following the competition, everyone commented on how great a learning experience this has been. One of the judges even spoke with me about how closely this competition simulated what he goes through on a day-to-day basis. VCIC has been one of the best educational experiences of my MBA career, and I would encourage anyone interested to take part in this event next year.

Next stop for the Stern team, a trip to nationals held at the University of North Carolina from April 6-8 to compete against the first and second place winners from each region (visit www.vcic.org for this list). Wish us luck!

-Ken Wang
MBA 1