A team of five CU-Boulder MBA students will become venture capitalists for a day at the West Regional Venture Capital Investment Competition at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, Lloyd Grief Center for Entrepreneurial Studies on Feb. 8 and Feb. 9.
The one-of-a-kind competition gives MBA students from top business schools a real-life venture capital experience. Teams are placed in the role of a venture capital firm reviewing business plans and presentations from real companies seeking investment.
The students interview the company's managers, prepare valuations and term sheets, and present their fund allocations to a judging panel of venture capitalists. Eight universities (UCLA, San Diego State University, Michigan, Arizona, UC-Berkeley, Colorado, Washington and Maryland) are invited to participate this year. The top three teams will divide $6,000 in prize money.
This year's CU-Boulder team includes Dave Brownlie, Fernando Castillo, Doug Elenowitz, Rick Silva and Nancy Zierman. The alternate is Rady Fahmy. The team is sponsored and funded by the Robert H. and Beverly A. Deming Center for Entrepreneurship.
Leeds School of Business finance professor, Sanjai Bhagat, has served as this year's faculty adviser.
The Deming Center for Entrepreneurship is a joint program of the Leeds School of Business and the College of Engineering at CU-Boulder. The center supports entrepreneurship studies at the graduate and undergraduate levels in a "connected learning" environment between students and Colorado businesses.