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UC Berkeley
Venture Capital Investment Competition

2009 VCIC Winners

 VCIC

 

February 6, 2009

Karnak Capital wins the UC Berkeley 2009 Venture Capital Investment Competition

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March 6, 2009

Karnak Capital Wins Entrepreneurs Choice Award in VCIC Regional Finals

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Karnak Capital wins the UC Berkeley 2009 Venture Capital Investment Competition


After an intense day of competition, the Karnak Capital team of Josh Ewing, Sean Dalziel, Rei Kasai, Victoria Liang and Jacob Rios emerged as winners of the UC Berkeley 2009 Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC), held at Haas on Friday, February 6.  Thirty students in six teams competed in the all day competition, and were selected from 31 teams that applied to compete.


VCIC Winners

The Karnak Capital winning team from L to R:
Jacob Rios, Josh Ewing, Victoria Liang, Rei Kasai and Sean Dalziel.

Effectively a reverse business plan competition, the students put themselves into the shoes of venture capitalists for the day, evaluating business plans and pitches from start-up companies Alitora, TheCarrot.com, CoderTribe, Photoswitch Biosciences and Vitashi.  After interrogating the entrepreneurs for further detail, the teams worked against the clock to prepare executive summaries and term sheets for their chosen investments.  They then had to justify their decision – and be on the receiving end of some tough questions themselves – in front of a panel of experienced Bay Area venture capitalists from Versant Ventures, Battery Ventures, Claremont Creek, Canaan Partners, Partech International and Sea Change Management.

After deliberation behind closed doors, the VC judging panel declared Karnak Capital the winners.  The team will proceed to the Regional Final at the University of Southern California on March 6.  A win at USC will see them compete in the International Final at the University of North Carolina, April 16-18, and hopefully bring a repeat of the UC Berkeley victory in 2005.

The competition is an annual fixture in the Haas calendar and is hosted by the Haas Entrepreneurs Association and the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.  The 2009 VCIC Organizing Committee would like to thank sponsors Canaan Partners and Cooley Godward Kronish and in-kind sponsors Clos du Bois and Build-A-Sign for their generous support, as well as the judges, entrepreneurs and volunteers who donated their time and enthusiasm to make this a fun and challenging event for the student teams.


Plug and Play
CGK



The Lester Center and the VCIC Organizing Committee wish to thank Plug’N’Play and BuildASign for their generous sponsorship and support, and are also grateful to the venture capitalists and entrepreneurs for helping make this competition possible.

 

 

 

Karnak Capital Wins Entrepreneurs Choice Award in VCIC Regional Finals

 

Karnak Capital claimed the Entrepreneurs Choice Award at the Western Regional Finals of the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) held at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business on March 6.


Berkeley students Sean Dalziel, Josh Ewing, Rei Kasai (EWMBA 10), Victoria Liang, and Jacob Rios (MBA 09), comprised the entrepreneur-honored team of Karnak Capital. They were awarded $500 and also placed third in the competition, which places students in the venture capitalist role of evaluating business plans and pitches from start-up companies. The team moved to the regional finals after beating out five other teams in the Berkeley VCIC held at the Haas School of Business in early February.

Connecting with the entrepreneurs was part of the team’s overall strategy, according to Ewing. “We always kept in mind that the selection process is bilateral, with us choosing the entrepreneur/company that we felt was the best investment, and the entrepreneurs selecting the VC that would most likely meet their needs as a business partner. We made sure we knew what the entrepreneurs wanted from their partners and demonstrated how we would be able to fit those needs.”


Ewing notes that the competition very closely mimics a real VC investment process in having to solve real issues in a very short time frame. The team was well prepared, says Dalziel, by the Haas School’s Private Equity and Venture Capital course. “The many years of real VC experience possessed by instructors Jerry Engel, Terry Opdendyk, and Sean Foote gave us the perspectives needed to do a professional VC's job in the contest, including due diligence, opportunity selection, and term sheet preparation,” says Dalziel.


The competition has been one of the highlights of business school. It was a great experience to apply the fundamentals of strategy, marketing, finance, and negotiations, as well as our own professional experiences to analyze real-businesses and make investment recommendations, while getting real-time feedback from working VCs. Karnak Capital would like to thank Wade Woodson (Haas '92), Managing Director at Sigma Partners, for providing mentoring to help us prepare for the competition.



The Berkeley VCIC is hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and administered by MBA students from the Haas School of Business.  VCIC ® is a trademark of the University of North Carolina.



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