NASHVILLE, Tenn.-The Owen Graduate School of Management will host a
round of the 2004 Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) on Jan.
16.
The all-day wildcard round, new to the contest this year, will be held at the Owen School. It is open to the public.
Teams of MBA students representing six universities will listen to
presentations by the CEOs of actual companies preparing to seek funding
and evaluate their business plans. The team members will then question
the companies’ presidents or CEOs and decide, based on what they’ve
seen and heard, which of the companies they’d invest in. Next, the
teams defend their investment strategy decisions in front of a panel of
real venture capital professionals, who serve as judges. The judges
decide which of the teams had the best investment strategies, and the
top two performing teams progress on to a regional competition. Winners
from the regional rounds go on to the national competition in April at
the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina,
which created the annual competition.
In addition to hosting the wildcard round, Vanderbilt’s Owen School
will send a team of five students to the Northeast Regional at the F.W.
Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College in Boston from Feb.
5-7.
The teams participating in the Jan. 16 contest at Vanderbilt
represent the business schools at the University of Arizona at Tucson,
the University of Georgia, Wake Forest University, Georgetown
University, the University of Notre Dame and Purdue University.
Companies presenting their business plans at Vanderbilt are
W.A.R.N., represented by Donald B. Griffis, president; Diabetes Care
Club, represented by Bradford Gulmi, president; and Neural Robotics,
represented by Mike Fouche, CEO. Neural Robotics is based in
Huntsville, Ala., and the other two companies are based in Nashville.
Entrepreneurs are said to want to participate in the VCIC because it
gives them the opportunity to present their plans to discerning MBA
students before pitching to actual venture capital firms. The students
see the competition as a way to put into practice everything they’re
learning in business school.
The judges for the Vanderbilt-hosted round are Mike Blackburn of
Nashville’s Petra Capital Partners, John Chadwick of Nashville’s
Claritas Capital, Natasha Blackshear of Nashville’s Council Ventures,
Mike Slawson of Atlanta’s Alliance Technology Ventures, Scott Tapp of
Atlanta’s Armada Venture Group and Tony Natale of Toronto’s MDS Capital.
Sponsors are Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, Bank of America,
KPMG, Stites & Harbison and the Vanderbilt Office of Technology
Transfer and Enterprise Development.
Founded in 1969, the Owen Graduate School of Management at
Vanderbilt University is ranked as a top institution by Business Week,
The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Financial Times
and Forbes. For more news about Owen, visit www.mba.vanderbilt.edu.
Media contact: Susanne Loftis, (615) 322-NEWS
Susanne.loftis@vanderbilt.edu