Media Releases

Indiana University wins venture capital competition held at the Rotman School

March 6, 2013

TORONTO, ON – A team from the Kel­ley School of Busi­ness at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty won the North­east Region­al of the Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Invest­ment Com­pe­ti­tion (VCIC), an inter­na­tion­al event for MBAs to learn about ven­ture fund­ing.

Six teams par­tic­i­pat­ed in the region­al final in which teams of MBA stu­dents played the role of a ven­ture cap­i­tal firm that must go through the entire VC invest­ment process by inter­act­ing with real entre­pre­neurs while being judged by ven­ture cap­i­tal fun­ders. The event was orga­nized by the Rot­man Entre­pre­neur­ship & Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Asso­ci­a­tion (REVCA) and held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment on March 2. Teams from Har­vard Busi­ness School, Yale School of Man­age­ment, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester also par­tic­i­pat­ed.

“The North­east Region­al VCIC was a great way of show­cas­ing our school’s com­mit­ment to entre­pre­neur­ship and ven­ture cap­i­tal. Being able to host six top MBA schools helped our REVCA mem­bers learn from the event,” said Chris Siemie­ni­uch, MBA’13, Pres­i­dent, Rot­man Entre­pre­neur­ship & Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Asso­ci­a­tion.

Judges for the Rot­man event includ­ed: Bren­dan Calder, Entre­pre­neur in Res­i­dence, Rot­man School; Tom Corr from the Ontario Cen­ters of Excel­lence; TJ Macha­do of Angel One Net­work; Jor­dan Mayes of Extreme Star­tups; Sunil Sel­by of Trel­lis Cap­i­tal; and, Joseph Oroz­co, adjunct pro­fes­sor and direc­tor of The Hatch­ery at the U of T’s Fac­ul­ty of Applied Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing.

The win­ning team will join the win­ners of nine oth­er region­al finals from the Unit­ed States, Asia and Europe at the inter­na­tion­al finals at the UNC Kenan-Fla­gler Busi­ness School on April 11.

Last month on Feb­ru­ary 9, REVCA host­ed the annu­al Rot­man Ven­ture Cap­i­tal Invest­ment Com­pe­ti­tion. A team of stu­dents from the Rot­man Evening MBA pro­gram, with mem­bers Jonathan Aune, Ronald French, Raeid Saqur, Soumik Sen and Saad Syed, won the event and went on to the Mid-Atlantic Region­al VCIC at New York Uni­ver­si­ty on Feb­ru­ary 22 where they placed out­side of the top three.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on VCIC is online at www.vcic.unc.edu.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
416.946.3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool