Smith MBAs Compete at Picking Winning Start-Ups

The winning team of second-year MBA students (left to right) Sean Rankin, Eric Atallah, Helen Payne Watt, and Chi Perrus (not shown) will represent the Smith School at the VCIC regional competition in Chapel Hill.

Teams of Smith MBA students called upon their entrepreneurial, financial, and strategic business skills to select the most appropriate investments from among several local start-up companies as part of the 2003 Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC). The eight student teams competed January 30-February 1, 2003 for the right to represent the Smith School in the regional competition, scheduled later this month at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A Smith School team finished second in the national competition in 2001.

Each student team played the role of a venture capital firm evaluating the opportunity to invest in five companies. The teams analyzed each company as a venture capital firm would: by reviewing the business plan, listening to the company presentation, questioning the companys management team, and performing additional due diligence. The teams then prepared term sheets for the investments they would offer to the entrepreneurs, and presented their analysis to a panel of judges. Area venture capitalists served as judges and selected the top team to advance to the regional competition.

The team of Eric Atallah, Chi Perrus, Sean Rankin, and Helen Payne Watt won the competition and will travel later this month to the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where theyll face teams from nine other top business school in a regional contest. Two teams from each of the four regionals will advance to the VCIC final round in April.

All the teams did an outstanding job evaluating the deals, said Brian Bartholomay, manager of special events and entrepreneurial and social internship programs at the Smith Schools Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. We will have a formidable team going to Chapel Hill.

Helen Payne Watt noted that the Smith School classes and experiential learning opportunities were key to her teams command of the venture capital process. The perspective gained from my experience as an associate with the Dingman Centers New Markets Growth Fund and in the New Venture Financing class made a huge difference, Watt said. From deal screens to the term sheet, our team had a pretty good sense of the process a venture capitalist uses to approach investment opportunities.

The Kenan-Flagler School of Business established VCIC in 1998. Students at business schools with top entrepreneurship programs are annually invited to compete.

VCIC gives students the opportunity both to interact directly with people whose start-up companies are seeking funding, and to receive valuable feedback from venture capitalists. Its a case analysis with an extra dimension, noted Lisa Nam, Dingman Scholar and president of the E-Club, which coordinated the Smith School competition with the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship.

In addition to being an exceptional hands-on learning experience for entrepreneurial and venture capital-minded students, the business people who participate also benefit. For entrepreneurs, VCIC provides an opportunity to sharpen their funding proposals and presentations as well as to interact with local venture capitalists. The venture capitalists gain an opportunity to learn more about local start-up firms and entrepreneurs, as well as to spot VC-savvy students for possible recruitment.

March 2003: The Smith School team did not advance to the finals. Visit the VCIC Web site for more information: http://www.vcic.org.