MBA Blogs @ Manchester Business School

The check list questions 

• Have you heard about the VCIC?
• Do you know how they do it?
• Do you know what the ‘Due diligence’ is?
• Do you have Finance background?
• Do you know DCF/ How to value the company?
• Do you know how to negotiate?

My answer is ‘No’ to all of the above when I entered the competition this time last year but I joined anyway. I learned that it is one of the challenges that pushed me through the limits. The knowledges I gained from it can be applied to at least more than half of the MBA courses I took so far. Although my team didn’t win the competition (we were no.2) but looking back, I love every moment of it.

From the picture: From the Left, Me, HaoLu, Sophy, Dan, and Sherjeel (The Domino’s members!)

VCIC training for newbies:

MBS encouraged everyone to join the competition. The school was very helpful by walking me  through the process I needed to complete in the VCIC such as how to evaluate the company, how to choose the company/entrepreneur, how to do the negotiation, and what is and how to do the due diligence. There is a 2-hours class dedicated to train the students every week. (Total 4-5 weeks). So, if you do not have any background experience (like me), no worries! Also, thanks to McGum (Winning team from class 2011), they gave us a lot of info and tips for this VCIC.

Apart from that, my team had regular meeting every week for an hour to go through the things that Professor taught in the training class/everything we need to know about VCIC. So basically, it was only 3-4 hours/week of meeting and maybe another certain amount of time (2 -3 hours) for your own reflection. Is it a time consuming project? Yes. But we are the MBA, we can do it.

You can attend the training although you don’t join the competition.

The Selection Process:

Every team was given the case. We had to submit the questions we wanted to ask the entrepreneur during the due diligence. Five best teams were selected to compete in the final round.

The Final Round:

The 5 teams were given the cases at 5pm. We had the whole night to decide what company/project we wanted to invest in. We came up with our top 3 and the list of questions we wanted to ask the entrepreneurs.

At 9am of the next day, we met the entrepreneurs. Each team had  a certain amount of time meeting with each entrepreneur. (I think 15 mins) We are scored based on how well we negotiate.

In the afternoon (same day), we picked the company we wanted to invest in. Submitted the due diligence. Negotiated our last round (another 15 mins, I think).

After that, the judges asked us some questions. And the best team won

Looking Back:

I think it was good to be one of the the best five teams. We had a lot of experiences: analysed many cases, gained the opportunities to look at the business from all the angles, and did the real negotiation. These VCIC cases involved the development of the new technology as well, so they gave us the insight about the IP management. It was sad that we didn’t win but some how, some part (not so) deep down in our body was screaming with happiness that we did not have to go through so many many many hours of training and team meeting and faced the tough night of only 3 hours of sleep and litres of coffee again.  Thank God and Cheers!

The picture of the Winning team:)

From the left, Laura, Adil, Alex, Tania, and Tamir.

P.S. I feel like I am writing the essay for this post.