Competition Overview

Competition Overview:

BeAVC's aim is to give undergraduate students exposure to the Venture Capital community by connecting teams of 3-4 students with a VC industry mentor as they prepare a written and oral presentation for a panel of current VC professionals.

Competition Details:

Student teams of three to four will put together a 15 minute presentation addressing the case given in the Context section below.

Context

Venture capitalists spend a large amount of their time identifying and tracking emerging technologies and behavioral trends. Investments in the venture business typically have an incubation period of five to seven years before realizing an "exit" - the act that converts the VC firm's original investment for shares in a company back into liquid/cash assets, typically through acquisition or IPO. Thoughtful projection of emerging trends today is the first step in the process of creating the successful companies of tomorrow.

One approach that many venture capitalists take to identify intriguing investment opportunities is to develop an investment thesis from analysis of emerging markets. An investment thesis helps to focus the investor on the type of company that will best take advantage of emerging market opportunities.

Your Venture Group will soon be holding its yearly strategy session. The Partners in your firm have turned to you to create an initial investment thesis on ONE of the two following sectors: Cloud Computing or Mobile . Given that your fund has a 5-year investment horizon, $200 million of capital, and reserves up to $20 million of capital per prospective investment, you will make a 15 minute presentation to lay out your investment thesis on the chosen sector and recommend an attractive investment opportunity to the partnership based on your thesis .

Deliverables due by 11:59PM on April 20 include:

A 10-slide Powerpoint presentation

A 1-page outline of your presentation talking points (font 10, single-spaced)

Some issues to consider addressing include:

Sector
  • Market - How big is the market opportunity in dollars today? How big will it be in five years?
  • Competitive Landscape - Who is competing in this market and how do their products, services, offerings compare/differ?
  • Trends - What macro drivers are affecting the development and growth of this sector, how has this evolved over the last few years, where do you expect it to go?
  • Customer Needs - Who is the target end user and what does the end user really care about? What will users pay for? What will make users' lives better?
  • Go-To-Market Strategy - How do the players reach their users/customers? Who are the key strategic partners, what sales channels are important to compete effectively, are there disruptions happening in the distribution channel?
  • Ecosystem - Can this product/service be offered standalone, or does it require a partner ecosystem? If so who are the key partners and how have
  • Valuation - what are public market trading, or recent private acquisition valuation multiples for this industry? How has this changed, what are the key financial/operating metrics used to value companies in the space?
  • Defensibility - How unique and defensible is a foothold in this industry? Is there anything to prevent competitors big and small from launching similar products/services tomorrow?
  • Policy/legislation - What are key existing and expected policy drivers behind the development of this sector, what needs to happen to further facilitate growth?
  • Capital Efficiency - Do some companies in the space have a more capital efficient approach, how will this be advantageous over time?
  • Historical Perspective - Have there been previous companies that were unsuccessful in entering the market, what caused them to fail, what can be learned from their inability to grow successfully?

Company
  • Differentiation - What is it about this company's approach that will allow them to become a market leader?
  • Management Team - How is this team positioned to effectively execute on the opportunity?
  • Exit Strategy - How can this company return liquidity/cash to its investors in the long term? Will it be able to go public on the strength of its offering? Who might be likely acquirers? A formal exit analysis is NOT required.

Note: these are suggestions - please do not feel constrained by/committed to them. Use whatever approach you think is most effective at communicating the investment attractiveness of the company.