A team of TCU MBAs recently won regionals in the invitation-only 2020 Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), beating out Notre Dame, Indiana, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, and Brazil FGV to take first place. Now, the students are en route to the global finals to be held in March.
70 universities in total competed in regional competitions across the U.S., Canada, and India, with the first place winner of each advancing to the global competition.
The Cowtown Angels Fellows Program at TCU’s Neely Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation provided the team a solid background on the skills needed to excel in the VCIC competition.
“Many things came together to make this win possible. The Cowtown Angels Fellowship prepared us with a sophisticated knowledge of deal terms and an advanced framework to guide our due diligence efforts,” said team member Joe Dickerson in a Neely School of Business news post. “The entrepreneurial capital course gave us foundational knowledge. Coaching from TCU Neeley alum Les Kreis and mentoring from the investors at Cowtown Angels gave us a competitive advantage.”
The competition—dubbed the world’s largest in venture capital—has teams acting as analysts with $100 million in potential investment while taking stock of actual startups. Participants listened to pitches, did due diligence on the startups, and finally provided an investment strategy to 18 venture capitalist judges. Scoring was based on term sheets explaining the teams’ reasoning and partner meetings.
“Our familiarity with deal flow and company pitches as Cowtown Angels Fellows gave us more time to strategize as a team during the competition,” said team member Yang. “Our mentors—Les Kreis, Michael Sherrod and Rodney D’Souza—and team captain Joe Dickerson made sure we were all on the same page, and that unified position helped us think quickly on our feet.”
Along with Dickerson and Yang, the TCU MBA team included Cadell Alexander, Alejandro Velasquez, and Andrew Hicks. The team’s next step is the global finals to be held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on March 27-28 where they will go up against the 12 other regional winners from the U.S., Europe, Canada, and India.
This article was updated on Friday, Feb. 14 at 11:30 a.m.
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