A team of Oxford MBAs was placed first in this year’s Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition (SVCIC) held at UNC Kenan-Flagler in March.

The competition invites teams of students to take on the role of venture capitalists, and to experience the investment process in a condensed period of time. Participants receive three real business plans and have to decide which business to invest in. The process involves carrying out due diligence, creating a written proposal considering the profitability, viability, sustainability and social impact of the business plan, and presenting recommendations to a panel of judges drawn from US-based venture capital funds.

The Saïd Business School team comprising Emily Chew, Lauren Kickham, Simon Jebreel, Brandon Trew, Nicolas Williams and Santiago Alvarez beat teams from other leading MBA programmes around the world, including Columbia, Wharton and Stern business schools to win the first prize of US$1,500. The teams were evaluated on how well they identified and mitigated risk, assessed social and environmental impact, understood the venture capital process, and on their teamwork.

"SVCIC was a fantastic experience that gave us a great insight into the early stage venture investment process," says Nicolas Williams. "We learned a great deal about how VCs structure their investments to create supportive but disciplined environments for entrepreneurs. Getting feedback from active venture capitalists on our approach was extremely rewarding."

Emily Chew paid tribute to the people who supported the team in their bid: “We benefitted greatly from training with local entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, including Martin Fiennes (Gatehouse Capital), Martin Gibson (Accel Partners), Andrew Oldfield (Wheb Ventures) and Dan Marmar (ARK Mobile), and received valuable support from alumni who participated in the competition in 2009.”

For more information, go to www.svcic.org.