Columbia Students Win Mid-Atlantic Venture Capital Investment Competition
A team of students from Columbia Business School won first place in the Mid-Atlantic Regionals of the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC). As regional winners, the team received a $1,500 cash prize. The Mid-Atlantic regional finals were held on the campus of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The Columbia Business School team will go on to compete at the world finals of the Venture Capital Investment Competition from April 10-12 on the campus of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.
The winning team from Columbia includes students Patrick Chang ’14, Graham Brown ’14, Rick Zullo ’14, Jen North ’14, and Kevin Weeks ’15.
The VCIC, now in its seventeenth year, compares itself to a series of mini venture fairs. Instead of the typical business school competition where students pitch business plans to investors, the VCIC has students act as investors while entrepreneurs pitch to them. Approximately 25% of the entrepreneurs who participate in VCIC raise venture capital after participating in the event. However, the VCIC is supposed to be an educational event that allows MBA students to learn about venture funding, and none of the venture capital deals that entrepreneurs have received have been officially initiated at a VCIC event.
At the Global competition, the team from Columbia Business School will compete against other winning regional teams from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The Global Competition will also feature regional winners from Northern and Southern Europe, East and West Asia, and the North Eastern and Western United States, but those regions have not held their competitions or announced their winners yet. The last regional competitions will take place on March 8.
