‘Sustained’
victory for Kellogg students in competition
Intellectual depth and breadth bring top prize to Kellogg
team in Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition
By
Adrienne Murrill
April
11, 2007 – Leveraging outstanding collaborative
skills and putting to work an array of lessons learned in
the Kellogg School classroom, a team of five Kellogg students
recently earned first place at the second Sustainable Venture
Capital Investment Competition (SVCIC), held March 30-31 at
the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.
Second-year students
Akbar Bhaidani and Jonathan Hornaday and first-year students
Savinay Berry, Heidi Lubin and Kevin Van Culin represented
Kellogg, the only school to maintain a top position both years
in the contest. Other schools that participated in the invitation-only
competition were Harvard, Wharton, Michigan, Haas, Duke, UNC
and Bainbridge.
“Kellogg
was second last year in the same competition and recently
was second at the Wharton LBO competition,” said Berry.
“This shows that the private equity curriculum and the
strength of commitment to venture capital is increasing at
Kellogg.”
The SVCIC is different
from other competitions in that it gives students the experience
to act as venture capitalists and to decide whom to invest
in among a group of real entrepreneurs with real business
plans — opportunities also central to the Kellogg School’s
rigorous experiential curriculum that melds theory with practice.
Prior to the weekend competition, the students received four
business plans, which they studied in preparation for their
meeting with the entrepreneurs at the contest.
“Normally
you have weeks to prepare and a whole day to talk with the
entrepreneurs,” Lubin said. In the competition, the
students had only 15 minutes for questions and answers with
each entrepreneur to investigate the biggest risks associated
with the plan. “Part of the game plan was to get as
much information as possible, but also to be friendly,”
she added. The challenge was to build a rapport and avoid
putting the companies on the defensive under a difficult,
but necessary, line of questioning.
Next the team had
to choose which of the four firms to invest in, organize the
deal and create a presentation pitch for a panel of judges,
which was composed of practicing venture capitalists. Each
team was evaluated on how well it identified risk, assessed
social and environmental impact, understood the VC process
and communicated as a group.
“One of the
keys for us was teamwork and communication,” Lubin said.
She explained that the competition was blind, in that the
judges didn’t know which MBA program each team represented.
“They were surprised at the end when they learned that
we hadn’t known each other very well before the competition.
We worked together very effectively, and that came through
in our presentation,” she said.
“A big benefit
was that we had a fairly diverse skill set,” Van Culin
said. The team members collectively shared experiences in
the VC, technology, consulting, nonprofit, public policy and
legal fields.
“One of the
things the judges commented on was that all of us were asking
questions from all areas,” Berry said, rather than individuals
concentrating on marketing, finance and so on. “Everyone
had done the research of the entire spectrum of challenges
we faced.”
“We worked
really hard not to pigeon-hole each other and to make it a
learning experience for everyone involved,” Lubin added.
The team’s
exemplary performance is a testament to the Kellogg School’s
rigorous and diverse curriculum, from strategy to finance
and marketing, she said. “We have the opportunity to
take classes across the board,” Lubin said. “We
were mustering up all that in our preparations.”
The team
was sponsored by the Ford Motor Company Center for Global
Citizenship and the Heizer Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
at Kellogg. |
