On Saturday, February 25, undergraduate teams from universities across the country competed in the 2017 Central Undergraduate Regional Finals of the Venture Capital Investment Competition® (VCIC) in Chicago.
Team members Shane Goldberg, Greer Clausen, Mike Shepard, Leondre Quallo, and Amar Amin, and coach Paul Jacques
Broad College of Business was represented for the first time at the VCIC by Shane Goldberg (BA Finance ‘18), Greer Clausen (BA Finance ‘18), Mike Shepard (BA Finance ‘17), Leondre Quallo (BA Finance ‘17), and Amar Amin (BA Accounting ‘18), and was coached by Paul Jacques, Director of Student & Community Engagement, at Spartan Innovations.
The team placed third, behind Miami University and Notre Dame, and outpunched teams from the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan and UNLV.
The VCIC has evolved into a marketplace for entrepreneurs seeking investors and a training ground for future venture capitalists. Unlike most other business plan competitions where teams pitch their ideas to investors, at VCIC the students are the investors, and it is real entrepreneurs who are doing the pitching. In the final round of the competition, which takes place every April in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the top team takes home $5,000 in prize money.
The Central Regional Finals, which were hosted at the University of Chicago, are one of three undergraduate Regional Finals taking place before the Undergraduate Global Finals, hosted at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Undergraduate Mid-Atlantic Regional Finals were hosted at Georgetown University and the Undergraduate Northeast Regional Finals at Boston University.
