McDonough MBAs To Compete in VCIC Global Finals
Five MBA students from the McDonough School of Business took home the first place at the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) regional event in Boulder, Colo., on Feb. 6. This win places the Georgetown team in the VCIC Global Finals, which will be held at UNC on April 9.
Jordan Edelman (MBA ’16), Eric Ellsworth (MBA ’15), Amir Kabir (MBA ’15), Ben Shopneck (MBA ’15), and Coral Taylor (MBA ’16) trained with Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative Director Jeff Reid and local venture capitalist Sara Zulkosky (EP ’13), who competed on the team that won Georgetown the VCIC global championship in 2013, in order to ready themselves for the competition they would face.
The competition puts students in the role of a venture capitalists, tasking them to assess business plans from three startups. Each team conducts due diligence sessions, mock partners’ meetings and mock negotiations with the startups. The competition is judged by local venture capitalists and alumni of the host school.
“Judging a company is as much an art as it is a science,” Shopneck said. “Each person [on the team] wants to weight our time toward researching a different part of the business or deciding our strategy in the competition.”
Georgetown has a track record for success, have gone to the finals four of the last six years in the MBA division and have won two of the last three national championships in the undergraduate division.
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Max Pulcini
Max Pulcini is a Philadelphia-based writer and reporter. He has an affinity for Philly sports teams, Super Smash Bros. and cured meats and cheeses. Max has written for Philadelphia-based publications such as Spirit News, Philadelphia City Paper, and Billy Penn, as well as national news outlets like The Daily Beast.
