MBA VCIC Team Wins Global Title

Georgetown’s Venture Capital Investment Competition team placed first at the 2017 VCIC global finals held April 7-8 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Seventy business schools from around the globe participated in the graduate-level VCIC competition, in which a panel of venture capitalists judged how well each team analyzed startup companies, interviewed entrepreneurs, pitched a deal, and negotiated terms. Georgetown’s team included Chris Cottrell (MBA ’17), Shreya Adiraju (MBA ’17), Sofocles Papas (MBA ’17), Chris Ahern (MBA ’17), and Elaine Chen (L ’18).

“We had really challenging and somewhat esoteric companies this time — a complex life science startup, an Al product, security technology, and an e-commerce site — the latter of which we ended up going with,” said Adiraju about the startup companies the team considered pitching. “While we still spent hours understanding and evaluating each of the companies, we ultimately felt, from a risk/return trade off perspective, this was the best-fit choice.”

This year’s victory marks the third global title in five years for Georgetown’s graduate VCIC team, which also won the competition in 2013 and 2015. The students earned $5,000 in prize money for their first-place win.

The Georgetown students competed against teams from 11 other regions — seven in the United States, three in Europe, and two in Asia — during the global finals. They secured their spot in the final round of the VCIC competition after winning the South Region VCIC in Houston, Texas, in February. In preparation for both the global and regional rounds of the competition, the students underwent extensive training with alumna Sarah Zulkosky (MBA ’14), a Georgetown Entrepreneur in Residence whose team won the global championship title in 2013.