VCIC 2012: Venture Capitalist Investment Competition
Silicon Valley Regional VCIC at SCU
On February 10, 2012, the MBA Entrepreneurs' Connection hosted the 15th annual Silicon Valley Regional Venture Capitalist Investment Competition (VCIC) at Santa Clara University. The VCIC is a unique competition in which teams of students act as venture capitalists and present an analysis of one of two startups pitched to them at the start of the competition. The teams are then judged according to their analysis of whichever company they chose to present. This year, six universities competed at SCU, including UC Berkeley, Brigham Young University, Texas University, University of Southern California, University of San Francisco, and Washington University. This event is hosted and sponsored annually by the Leavey School of Business, the Graduate Business Programs office and the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The two startup companies presented were: Nexistant, presented by Larry O'Connell, Fred Huey and Martin Yudowitz, and Red Seraphim, presented by Dyuman Bhatt and Joshua Chan.
The Silicon Valley VCIC brought in 18 high profile VC judges to the Santa Clara campus, which allowed for great exposure and networking for students as well as the VCs. Thanks to the following judges who participated:
- Elana Lian
- Stewart Guenther
- Peter Morgan
- Joseph Leong
- Robert Hendershott
- Juan Montermoso
- Alex de Winter
- Richard Zeren
- Fred Rehhauser
- Jared Hutchings
- Vagish Kapila
- Terry Hartsfield
- Sam Beal
- Bill Baumel
- Simon Chin
- Tom Furey
- Rick Rasmussen
- Bill Gurevich
Overall, the VCIC proved to be yet another successful event by the Entrepreneurs' Connection, and was a great learning experience for all participants to better understand the perspective from a VC's point of view rather than that of the entrepreneur.
Congratulations to the winners:
First Place: UC Berkeley 
Second Place: BYU 
Third Place-Entrepreneurs Choice: University of Texas at Austin 
Thank you to the Silicon Valley VCIC management team:
- Amr Darwish
- Ilya Ginzburg
- Abhinav Talwar
- Fiona McAvoy
- Vinod Nair
- Gregory Taketa
- Shashank Saggar
- Quyen Le
- Padma Nagaraja
- Suraj Ayinikatt
- Elizabeth Ford
- Jana Hee
- Eric Hagan
- Dan Aguiar
- Linda Jenkins
- Elizabeth Barron Silva
Special thanks also to the many student and staff volunteers. Please click the photo below for some additional photos from the event:
Regional VCIC - University of Southern California
Congratulations to Team SCU on winning the Entrepreneur's Choice Award at the VCIC West Regional VCIC competition held at USC on March 2!
Team members included: Manoj Yadav, Suraj Ayinikatt, Vinod Nair, Shashank Saggar and Padma Nagaraja. This team won the internal competition held during Global Entrepreneurship Week, securing their competition spot at the regional competition.
Congratulations!
Special thanks to the following team behind the team:
Coach: Finance Associate Professor Robert Hendershott. Bob Hendershott also accompanied the team to the competition.
Advisors: CIE Executive Director Dan Aguiar and Assistant Professor of Management Jaume Villanueva
Mentors: CIE Advisory Board Members Steve Foster, Rocky Pimentel, and Andy Bartley
~Arlene Bhagat
CIE Marketing, Communications & Logistics Assistant
