Student Venture Fund Experience

Posted 1 year, 4 months ago at 12:05 pm. 0 comments

I’ve been talking a lot about the student venture fund that was started at Akron this year. We’ve gone through the entire process and even presented to some experts in the field. We prepared a presentation about the business we were evaluating and ran through it as if we were presenting to a real board. The purpose was to get some feedback about what should be included in a presentation to a board in an Angel fund. The presentation went over pretty well, and we had a good discussion following the presentation.

The venture fund has taught me a lot about the funding process for start-ups. In addition to that, I have been able to apply my knowledge and skills to something “real.” I have spent a lot of time in school learning theories and reading research. Though I feel like I know a lot of things (or at least I should, having spent all of last year studying everything I know all over again for comprehensive exams), I don’t have a long list of applied experiences. It was also good to work with people with a diverse skill set, discover how they approach issues/problems, and ultimately come to the same conclusion in the end. It was definitely one of the more exciting things that I did this semester.

Even though next year I am going to try to cut back on extra things to work on a start-up and my dissertation, I would still like to continue on with the program and try to get other people involved as well.