The MBAT is a sporting tournament held every year held in the countryside outside the French capital. Teams from the top business schools in Europe and further afield compete in events varying from touch rugby to billiards to poker to karting mixed with the inevitable evening drinking sessions – it is an MBA event after all!

The action starts on the first day when all the teams, having travelled by planes, trains and converted London buses, converge on campus at the same time sporting their team’s distinctive liveries. For Game of Thrones aficionados it is reminiscent of the banners gathering for war. The bright oranges of Rotterdam merge with the greens of Insead, the whites of IE, the purples of Manchester (yes really, if you come to the school you’d better get used to that colour) and the various hues of blue that represent Oxford, Cambridge, LBS and HEC.

First event up for me was the poker and the biggest personal disappointment of the weekend. Having got off to a blistering start I made the final two on my table with 2/3rds of the chips under my control. Unfortunately my inexperience caused me to reign in my aggression and my opponent was able to turn things round to make the final. Lesson learned.

Day two began with an early, hungover, start and the group stage of the football against Cambridge. My role was mainly to offer encouragement from the sidelines and provide another pair of eyes for the captain. I did, however, get a run out for ten minutes at the end of a 4-0 victory which was great until a couple of kicks reminded me I’m not so young anymore.

Next up, after a spell watching MBS’s touch rugby and womens’ football teams in action, was the cricket, with 90% of the players on all teams seemingly from either India or Pakistan. We played Insead and while I enjoyed the experience I didn’t see much action as our top four batsmen racked up a record score before we saw the game out by catching the bulk of their team on the boundary.

Following this, though, was the highlight of the weekend. Dodgeball, for which I was team captain. For those who are not aware, this sport involves hurling rubberised balls at the opposing team and diving around trying to avoid blows to painful parts of the anatomy. It was a tale of a rag-tag team coming together on the day to steal the prize from under the nose of the big boys. An underdog story if you will…

(Cue 80′s style tournament montage complete with inspiring ballad)

A straightforward win against Rotterdam in the preliminaries….A new player spotted with a golden arm and picked off the sidelines for the quarter final against the LBS….A disastrous start, falling 5-2 down….Despair on the sidelines….A spectacular high risk catch starting the comeback…Back from the dead with a narrow victory….The semi’s against the light blues of Cambridge….Back and forth before MBS claim victory….The final against the catsuit wearing Oxford….A mouthed “you’ll lose” from the opposing captain, wearing his favourite stars and stripes underwear, at the handshake….Another poor start, men down early….The star player picked on and picked off….3-1 down and almost out….A fingertip catch from Chirag pulling a man back for us….Another match winning catching chance narrowly fumbled….Down to a sudden death one on one….Jason verses Captain America….An exchange of fire for what seems an eternity….Balls whistling by, missing flesh by millimetres….The clock ticking down….Oxford will win on countback if there is no outright victor….The final minute….A ball is thrown….It’s at throat height….Jason takes the catch….The crowd explode….Jubilation….Pitch invasion….The most intensive display of man-love this side of Brokeback Mountain….MBS take the trophy.

Purple Power!
2013 MBAT Dodgeball Champions

Sadly this, aside from the celebratory drinks, was it for me at MBAT. I had to return to the UK a day early for a friend’s wedding so I missed the fun and games of the final day. MBS performed respectably with good performances from the football, cricket, table tennis and babyfoot teams but sadly no additional trophies to take home. An overall position of fifth in the medals table was ours.

So will the MBAT experience enhance my CV, my personal network and give me valuable new skills to take into my post MBA career? Well, probably not, but it was a heck of a good time and I wouldn’t have missed it for all the distinction grades in the world.

I, however, have some work related news of my own. I have been offered a Summer MBA internship at Google, split between their Manchester and London offices, and have accepted it. I’ll be working in their Marketing & Sales department, using the skills and contacts I picked up though a decade working in media agencies.

I guess this means my summer will look something like this:

My Summer?

Just hope that I’m not forced to wear these lovely hats!

Workwear this summer?

For those of you wondering about what it takes to get into Google for an internship, there are three things you really need to emphasise in your application:

1. Relevant experience. Unlike the major strategy consultancies like McKinsey, Google won’t just take a chance on you because you are uber-smart.  You need to show that you have already acquired skills that would add value. In my case this came from working on the buying side of the media fence. I have insight into what their customers are looking for and how they decide where to spend their advertising money. For you, however, it could be that you can cite relevant project management experience in tech industries or even just that you are a superstar salesman.
2. Achievement and pro-activity. This probably goes without saying, especially if you have been through the MBA application process, but you can’t get in just on potential alone. You need to demonstrate that your leadership drive has has a direct impact on the companies you have worked for and that you won’t just sit at your desk and wait to be told what to do.
3. “Googliness”. There are no shortage of super-intelligent, experienced candidates lining up to work at Google so the company have another filter. They look for recruits to have done something different and interesting outside the work sphere. Examples they quote are Olympic rowers, people who have climbed Everest and writers who have already published a novel. Of course, most candidates don’t have anything this impressive but you need to show that you are at least a little bit interesting (a smaller scale example is a person who worked as a bee keeper). If you don’t think you have anything like this in your locker I suggest you get on that bungee jumping course as soon as possible…

The interview process for the Google internship was nothing like as intense as the one I went through for McKinsey. It was nothing like the rumours that swirl round the internet scaremongering that you’ll be asked why manhole covers are round or how many ping pong balls fit in a double decker bus.

It consisted of two phone interviews (no face to face ones) where I was asked about my previous experience and also my opinion on various Google related topics. My experience interviewing for McKinsey really helped as I was able to break some of the more challenging questions down and give issue tree based answers – a given in consultancy industry interviews but an approach that probably made me standout here.

So, if you’ve got a phone interview lined up with Google I would suggest you have answers to the following basic questions:

• Why your previous experience makes you the perfect hire for Google
• Why you want to work at Google (make it personal and interesting, not just some waffle about how Google is so great and innovative)
• What you think the main threats to Google are
• Your favourite Google product and why
• If you were tasked with getting a client to spend more, how would you approach this?

Good Luck and see you at the Googleplex!

This term there are only really two modules that we are undertaking:

1. UK Consulting Project – the natural progression from the first term’s Not-For-Profit Project, this sees us working on live consultancy briefs for real organisations. The first two weeks of the module are taken up with pitching to secure your favourite brief. The student teams have to tender for their three top projects, culminating in a face to face meeting with the prospective clients. The client can then choose their preferred team for the project. Of course this does mean that you could end up being selected for multiple projects or, should things go horribly wrong, be selected for none and having to go with one of the leftover project briefs that nobody else wanted. Once this bun fight is all sorted and we have the final brief in our hot, sweaty hands we then have nine weeks to push on and deliver an outstanding piece of consultancy work for client and faculty alike.

At least that’s the theory. I’m sure that, despite having much more time to dedicate to the project than we did for NFP (which had to be fit around lectures, seminars and general settling in), many teams will run into the age old problems of uncooperative/absent clients, free riding team members and general falling out as deadlines loom. I’m hopeful that I’ve landed a good team so that won’t be a problem but even if the worst scenarios arise at least I can take comfort in the fact that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

2. Mergers & Acquisition – whilst UKC is all about working on “live” briefs, M&A is necessarily a mock exercise (don’t think that any company would let us loose with billion dollar budgets to snap up companies we thought were of interest). It is, however, no less intense a learning experience for that. Essentially we play the roles of board members of a major UK conglomerate with a penchant for acquisitions (it is a real company but I can’t reveal the name for confidentiality reasons). Our first task is to use all we have learnt on the course so far to value the company we work for (i.e. what should the stock market capitalisation be based on its future prospects).

Once we’ve done that we then need to do some digging and analyse at least 16 (yes that’s right, sixteen) potential acquisition targets before coming up with a shortlist of three. The target companies should be chosen based on future cash flows, synergies that can be created with the parent business, strategic fit and accessibility (i.e. will the current owners sell).

The following stage is then to put together a bid for one of these companies. In it we need to assess how much said company is worth, what we want to offer for it and how it should be paid for (cash, shares or a mix of both). We then are locked in a room with a member of faculty who will be posing as the board of the target company and have to negotiate a takeover with them. The meeting may be successful or unsuccessful depending on how belligerent your tutor is feeling but you are assessed on the quality of your thinking whether you have a clear strategy for the negotiations.

So, this is the term where the Manchester Method starts to hots up. The term where we exchange the class room for the syndicate room and move from the steady rhythm of lectures and exams to a staccato beat of consultancy and client whim.

Time to re-acquaint myself with the pain of the working world outside the MBA bubble!

The MBS team headed to North Carolina for the global final in hope but not necessarily in expectation. But we did it – beating off competition from Oxford, Stern, Ross, Duke and UNC to take the top prize.

It’s been a long journey which started in the pain of narrow defeat in the school VCIC contest. As promised in my blog post at the time, the hurt spurred us along. There was no way we would be beaten easily this time. We had to jump numerous hurdles to simply make it to the USA – persuading UNC to invite us, getting MBS to fund us and finally making sure we had prepared well enough before travelling to the big show.

The SVCIC Champion Team – myself, Aditya, Satpreet, Monica & Jamie

For those of you who are looking for more insight, a series of articles I wrote for the MBS blogs site are reproduced below:

Blog #1 – Preparation

Four weeks to go before we depart for Manchester Business School’s inaugural entry into the Sustainable Venture Capital International Competition (SVCIC) and the preparation has begun in earnest.

MBS has long entered a team into the standard Venture Capital Competition where participants play the part of VC’s, picking a business plan to invest in (from a selection of four) and negotiating with an entrepreneur to buy a stake in the enterprise. SVCIC, however, adds a new dimension. Whilst you still look at which business will deliver the greatest return on investment you also now need to take into account the impact any investment will have on the external environment and question the sustainability of the business model.

Both of these contests fall outside the main core of the MBA programme. They do, however, provide some of the most intense learning moments of the course.  Analysing live business plans and taking decisions based on real evidence forces you to apply your classroom learning and challenges your thinking more than any textbooks or lectures can. The competitive format adds an additional frisson. You are competing against other teams (from your own school in the preliminary round and from the world’s top business schools in the final rounds) and the innate desire of “Type-A” MBA’s to finish number one inevitably creates an cutthroat battleground.

More to come from the team on our preparation but for now we’re tucked away to bone up our knowledge on the sustainability, cleantech and renewables industries.

Blog #2 – One day to go

Twenty four hours to go before it all kicks off in earnest and the adrenaline is now beginning to pump.

In one day’s time we will be receiving the live business plans for the sustainable venture capital international competition. We will then be expected to pick one of those plans to invest in and prepare our case before we fly out to North Carolina to deliver it.

We’ve tried to cover as many bases so we can be as prepared as possible for the plans’ arrival but there’s bound to be something that comes out of leftfield at us.

We’ve had sessions with sustainability professors to understand the latest trends in the sphere and how projects are evaluated for their long term impact. We’ve sat down with venture capitalists to try and burrow into their mindset and understand their investment criteria. Last, but no means least, we’ve also spent many hours together as a team making sure that everyone is clear about their roles so that no time is wasted once the contest begins.

We’ve split the tasks to suit everyone’s strengths. Monica is our sustainability expert so will handle the environmental and social evaluation of the proposals. Jamie comes from a finance background so is in charge of company valuation. Satpreet will look after the due diligence questions and Aditya is our researcher and will pull together the presentation. I will be responsible for co-ordination and writing the term sheet we need to submit (i.e. the terms and conditions we would need before we would invest in a company).

The clock continues to tick – wish us luck!

Blog #3 – Champions

World Champions!

I write this at Chicago O’ Hare airport, slumped in my seat, tired but still ecstatic after a four day blur that saw the Manchester Business School team win the 2013 global final of the Sustainable Venture Capital International Competition (SVCIC).

I still can’t believe we did it, beating top b-schools from the US and Europe to the prize. As the winners name was read out I stayed rooted to the spot, unable to believe what I’d just heard, whilst my team mates cavorted around like dizzy spring lambs, high on victory.

The process didn’t start well; we almost missed the flight due to chaos at Manchester airport and continued in a jet lagged blur until we reached the host school – UNC Kenen Flagler in North Carolina. There we had a brief chance to chat with the competing teams before hearing the business plan pitches from three sustainable/social entrepreneurs. We then had half an hour to confirm the questions we wanted to ask them before we were thrown into a due diligence session. The challenge there was to establish a good rapport with the entrepreneurs so they felt comfortable enough to answer our probing questions. All this with hawk-eyed judges sitting over our shoulder, assessing us on whether we were asking the right questions.

Finally, we had to present our investment recommendation to all the judges who then had a chance to grill us on our VC knowledge in an intense question and answer session.

You’ll hear more in due course about the ingredients for this momentous success but needless to say it involved teamwork, dynamism, hard graft and determination mixed with a dollop of luck.

I’ll say it again to make it seem more real: we did it. MBS 2013 SVCIC world champions!!!

This time the runners-up garland came in the MBS business planning competition where the team were pipped to the post once more on a split judges decision

So I miss out again. But am I as gutted as when I narrowly missed out on VCIC or McKinsey? I would answer no. We were beaten to the punch by a great idea and there’s no shame in that.This year is the first time that Manchester Business School has run a qualifying competition for the European Business Plan of the Year contest. The school competition attempts to replicate the format of the final itself (held this year in Athens) but you are trained for six weeks in the run up to give you the tools to evaluate business ideas and write a compelling business plan. There are numerous talks from both entrepreneurs – who give you the view from the coal face – and venture capitalists – who tell you what they look for in an investment. There are also numerous sessions where you can develop your business ideas and run them by the experts for their opinion.

The route to a fortune?

Finals day consists of a brief private pitch to a couple of judges (they have your business plan upfront) plus a grueling Q&A on your model and your experience. Four teams are then selected for the final session in the afternoon. You then have two hours to make the suggested changes to the model before presenting it to the full panel of judges and the entire MBA cohort.

The entire day is a panoply of varied and fascinating business ideas, from the downright outrageous to the homespun. In the mix were board game cafes, small cars for little rich kids, travel agencies for the disabled, fish farms and web apps galore.

Our entry was essentially a concierge service for international students. My view on why we didn’t win was that, whilst the plan was extremely solid, realistic and addressed a real need, it didn’t have the wow factor and huge growth potential of the eventual victors. Whilst I don’t want to give away any secrets – the winning team will have to compete on behalf of the school in Athens now – the winning idea did involve financial services to a sector currently under-served and, should it come off, would carry a huge financial upside.

So, what to make of the fact that I’ve been close but had no cigar on so many occasions in my MBA journey? Do I take encouragement from the fact that I have been a consistently high performer or is it a sign that I’m the perennial “first loser”; a choker who falters when in sight of the big prize? For my own sanity and ego I have to persuade myself that it’s the former.

Next time gadget. NEXT TIME!

In truth it’s probably too early to panic. While the banks, top consultancies and a few other sectors run organised MBA internships, most people (70% historically) tend to spend their summer doing more ad hoc projects for local or national companies. These projects don’t tend to be advertised until March / April at the earliest so those who don’t pick up anything from the blue chips still have plenty of time to get themselves sorted.

My summer internship?

In my case, I’m perfectly happy to work on a local project so am not desperate to gain a formal internship. As such, rather than blanketing all companies who have an MBS programme, I have limited my applications to places that would stand out on my CV and also add valuable skills to my repertoire. For me this means the big three strategy consultancies – McKinsey, BCG & Bain – plus Google.

MBS isn’t a target school for BCG & Bain so I’m not holding out too much hope of a response from them. I was, however, lucky enough to be one of the four MBS students invited for a first round internship interview at McKinsey last week.

I headed apprehensively to London ready to don my flak jacket in the face of a fierce grilling, but I have to say that the people at McKinsey couldn’t have been nicer and I left their offices with a warm glow in my tummy (short lived as I started beating up on myself for a couple of mistakes).

For those that are interested, the McKinsey first round consists of two separate interviews, both segmented into two parts:

The first segment is based on your previous experience. However, it’s not like your standard experience interview where they run through your CV point by point. McKinsey’s MO is to focus purely on one situation that you have shown leadership and personal impact. In fact it is actually more like one specific part of said situation (e.g. just down to one meeting or phone call). They then drill down to what you did and said at that moment, why you did it and what the result was. Twenty minutes scrutinising just one event is pretty intense so it is imperative you’ve prepared well and don’t just turn up expecting to wing it. I knew most of this was coming so had boned up on a number of events that I could talk about. I was still thrown, however, when I wasn’t allowed to give any background detail and had to dive right in to the critical incident.

The second phase is a case interview. This consists of a simplified simulation of actual consulting work. The idea is to ask appropriate questions in order to secure the right data needed to solve the problem. You then need to analyse the data and make final recommendations to the “client”. You are judged on the way you structure an analysis and work through the problem rather than whether you end up with the “right” answer.

In terms of my performance, this was the first interview I’ve had that walked out with no clue as to how well I did. Were the interviewers so nice because I’d breezed it or because they had road kill in front of them that they wanted to put out of its misery without undue pain?

The first interview started late and, as such, the interviewer seemed to want to fire through it quickly, even prodding me down the right path in the case interview a couple of times. I get the impression he made his mind up about me early on so wasn’t bothered with mechanically running through the process. Whether that decision was positive or negative was impossible to tell. The second interview was a bit more rigorous but, again, because the interviewer was so supportive it was hard to tell whether the couple of  stutters and minor logical errors I made will count me out or not. Either way, all the preparation I’ve done has certainly sharpened my consultancy and interview skills back up to match fitness so it will still have been worth it.

Results are in tomorrow – I’ll be sure to let you know if the Emperor has his thumb pointed skywards or towards the gutters.

I am, of course, more than happy to help. However, with the winter term starting to rev up with internships search I may not have the time to get back to people before their interview or decision deadline. To this end I’ve compiled answers to the most frequently asked questions that will hopefully help anyone who is currently going through the process:

1. Will I get a job at the end of it all? This is by far the most common query. It is also the most difficult for me to answer, especially as we are only two terms in and not at the sharp end of full-time job search yet. From speaking to the class above and also to career services I do know that the UK situation is tough. With the changes in immigration rules non-EU nationals will almost certainly need sponsorship from a company to stay on after the course (unless you can get a special entrepreneurship visa). However, there are many people who are managing to achieve this so it is far from impossible. This situation will be pretty much the same for all business schools in the UK. What I would say is don’t come here with the idea that you’ll easily pick up a job in the UK and live here happily ever after.
2. What should I prepare for my interview?  It is taken as given that all successful candidates can show great career and academic achievements. What really floats the recruitment team’s boat, however, is what candidates have proactively achieved elsewhere. You should prepare your story with what you have accomplished in spheres such as charity, sports, not for profit, etc. Many of the MBA’s in my class have demonstrated significant achievement in these sort of areas. The other thing you should be clear on is why you want to do the MBA. Even if you are not certain where you want to be  after you graduate you should be able to speak convincingly about some sort of career plan.
3. How does the course prepare you for an entrepreneurship path? None of the core modules are entrepreneurship focused although they will certainly be of use in running a business (particularly Accounting and Finance). However, you can do an entrepreneurship project as an elective. Also, there are two optional competitions that give an insight into the world of the entrepreneur: In VCIC you play the role of venture capitalists. You are required to select one plan out of four to invest in, pull together a company valuation and negotiate with the relevant entrepreneur. The winner of the school competition then gets to represent MBS at the European final. The second contest involves writing a business plan based on your own idea. You then sell this to a panel of VC’s with the winner heading to Athens to represent the school at the European Business Plan of the Year.
4. How much interaction do you have with the rest of Manchester University and its respective societies? Effectively zero. Although everyone agrees that it would be a good idea, classwork and the MBA clubs tend to take up most of our time so people don’t tend to have the inclination to reach out to the wider university.
5. What are the motivations of your fellow students? Hugely varied. There are, however, a few rough groupings that people fall into:

• “Jobbers” – those who have a specific goal as to the industry they want to work in post MBA, usually banking or management consulting with the latter being the most popular at MBS (probably unsurprising given the focus on live consultancy projects during the programme). This makes them pretty focused on their goal and they are often active in the relevant club.
• Sponsored students – these students have had their fees paid by their current employers (usually a government related bank or oil company). Their goal is to return to their home country/company and get a big jump up in position and salary. This sometimes means that they are more interested in enjoying living in the UK and are less committed to optional competitions or to killing themselves on the academic work or projects.
• Entrepreneurs – those who want to set up their own company post-MBA. Not the biggest segment of the cohourt but tend to be pretty clear on where they will be in five years.
• The “not sures” – this group includes myself. These people have reached an impasse in their career and are looking to the MBA to either jump them up a level or provide a route into another industry sector. These students throw themselves into every opportunity but often stretch themselves thinly, potentially affecting their academic grades.

Hope this is of use. Please feel free to leave a question in the comment box if you have any more for me. I’ll then share the answer with all my readers.

Strategy – Looking at how to analyse a business situation and devise the most appropriate way forward.

People, Management and Organisations – Still not sure about this one. The outline talks about the course being a mix of analysing organisational structures and looking at the “people factor” within firms but I haven’t quite grasped this yet. Hopefully, the weeks to come will bring more clarity.

Operations Management – How organisations devise and run their key business processes to deliver outputs from the given inputs. The Prof. on this one seems pretty challenging and likes to put students on the spot which bodes well. It’s always good to be kept on your toes.

International Business and Innovation Management – Another course I’ve not quite got my head round yet but as far as I can tell it is about running businesses in a globalised economy and harnessing the relentless pace of innovation (whatever that may actually mean in real terms).

European Business Plan of the Year – This is an optional module but I’m pretty certain that it will be the one which sticks with me more than any other. Like VCIC in the first term, it is a team competition with the winners going on to represent MBS in the European Business Plan of the Year being held in Athens. The idea is to teach you how to write a top-notch business plan to secure investment from venture capitalists and business angels. Incredibly, the school (and many other business schools) have never run business plan training before so this is a great, new, opportunity for us to unleash the inner entrepreneur.

More MBA reading that may – or may not – be completed come exam week in March!

The lesson structure has changed from the first term. We’ve moved from 90 minute sessions to 3 hour marathons (albeit with a coffee break in the middle) so it could turn out to be an endurance rather than a memory test if we’re not careful.

In addition, this term we are not encumbered with any project deadlines (in the first term we had the NFP project) although there will be a few prep sessions for next term’s M&A and UK consultancy projects. Hopefully it means that the pace of the term will be much more steady away than the last but, given that we have to divert a lot of our energy into securing MBA internships, I’m not holding my breath.

Well, yes and no.

It’s true that we had multiple deadlines all converging simultaneously with the aim of pushing you to the limit and forcing you to prioritise your time. However, if I’m completely honest, I didn’t feel it was the complete life-killer that faculty and students warned us about in our first week. I’ve managed to stay relatively sane, completed assignments on time  and still been able to spend time with my kids at the weekend. There has been only two situations where I’ve had to bust out post-midnight shifts and one of those was entirely voluntary (the VCIC contest).

So why don’t I feel that I have been shoved through the mincer backwards? I’ve had a think and have come up with a few possible answers:

1. It is much easier to manage your time on the MBA than when you are in employment. At work, especially in a client service business, you are only one phone call away from a late nighter. Plans frequently have to be cancelled at short notice and family / friends disappointed. In the MBA there are moments of intense activity but these can be planned for. The deadlines are given to us at the start of term so if you have any sort of organisational skills at all you should be capable of avoiding a pile up.
2. It doesn’t actually feel like work. Spending an evening boning up on corporate finance may sound dull but it’s what we signed up to do. It sure beats the hell out of staying late at work to complete some client or management request that you know if just going to be buried at the bottom of someone’s virtual filing cabinet.
3. We can walk away. The sheer fact that we are doing this of our own volition means that you don’t resent it when you do have to work hard. If we don’t like it we always have the option to leave which is strangely liberating.

So what have I learnt in my time so far? I look back three months to a time when I didn’t have a clue about balance sheets, net present value or venture capital exits and its easy to see how far I’ve progressed. However, academics aside and in-keeping with the reflective nature of the MBA, here is my rundown of the good, the bad and the ugly from my learnings over the past three months:

• My classmates are dedicated to a level I can never know. Travelling halfway across the world, leaving family behind to study an MBA in a foreign language leaves me in awe.
• Academics’ sartorial standards haven’t improved in the fourteen years I’ve been out of education. Nipple high trouser lines and ill-fitting shirts are still par for the course.
• The most stimulating elements of the MBA program come from the fringes rather than the core. That’s not to say that finance, accounting, economics and marketing are not important. It’s just that the non-compulsory contests, speakers and debates are the ones that draw you closer to the real business world and engage you in the direct practical questions that will be of most use to you.
• Learning a few swear words in multiple languages is an easy source of bonding for those upcoming deadlines.
• Never accept an invitation for a quick lunchtime drink from a Russian. It can only end badly.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year all!

The VCIC is all about walking a mile in the shoes of a venture capitalist, assessing investments and negotiating with entrepreneurs. A kind of Dragon’s Den for MBA’s. It all kicked off about two weeks ago with the school preliminary contest where thirteen teams were whittled down to five. That involved a couple of late nights evaluating a VC case study. We had to decide what the company was worth, how much we should invest and put together a term sheet with the clauses we wanted in the deal. Our Anglo-Sino-Indian team managed to put together a solid proposition and make it through to the school final with the chance to travel to London in March to represent MBS in the regional heat if we were to become the Manchester champions.

The school final replicates the regional and global contest format. It’s like the investment process on amphetamines. At 5:30pm on Thursday evening you are handed four business plans. You then work deep into the night deciding which one to invest and then doing as much of the valuation and term sheet as you can as there certainly won’t be enough time to do them the next day. Our team of four eventually got to bed at 5am so we could build up a sleep bank of three hours for the final push.

D-day kicks off the following morning with a presentation from each of the entrepreneurs on their business. No questions are allowed as you spend the following hour and a half in intensive due diligence sessions. You are expected to push them on any areas of concern you have about their firms and expose any hidden gremlins that may be lurking. You then have to make your final decision and hand in your term sheet and an investment hypothesis explaining why you invested in a particular company and not in the others.

There then follows a short chance to practice your negotiation strategy before you are summoned to the debating chamber to face the music. We were second up so our preparation was pretty scrambled. We then had fifteen minutes to negotiate a deal with our chosen entrepreneur before facing a severe grilling about our strategy from a panel of hostile judges.

When the final reckoning came in, late on Friday evening, we finished just short. So no glory for us, no showdown in London with the best in Europe and no car with the thin tyres. But we did get a hell of a lot of learning in a short space of time in what was certainly the most engaging and stimulating MBA experience so far.