Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition

Late post on this, but better late than never. A couple weeks ago I journeyed down to Chapel Hill, NC with a Darden team to compete in the Sustainable Venture Capital Investment Competition (SVCIC). Our task was to analyze the business plans from three real-life entrepreneurs and make the case to a panel of venture capitalists for which startup we would invest in, then justify why and how. Darden was competing against eight other business schools: Kenan-Flagler (UNC), Saïd (Oxford), Columbia, Stern (NYU), Wharton, Fuqua (Duke), Georgetown, and Ross (Michigan).

I had no experience in the world of startup funding or venture capital (VC), so I was very much looking forward to learning about these in preparation for and by participating in the competition. The Darden core curriculum doesn't make a place for these topics, and I quickly discovered that startup "term sheets" have a different language than what you learn in finance class. Before the competition, my team spent a few weeks learning this new language and the implications of VC terms on how a startup business operates. Soon, phrases such as "liquidity preference", "option pool", and "post-money valuation" became second nature to us.

The first day of the competition started with pitches by each of the entrepreneurs. One business created an online platform for searching through OpenCourseWare materials, one had a product for more efficient power management in laptop computers and servers, and the third created fixtures with superior lighting characteristics for warehouses. After the pitches, teams split up into "due diligence" sessions with the entrepreneurs. We had 15 minutes to grill each entrepreneur with questions we had about his business model. In the evening, our team retreated to our hotel to choose a business to invest in and propose investment terms which would be agreeable to the entrepreneur but also mitigate the downside risk of the investment for our fictional VC fund. On the second day, our team presented our investment proposal to the panel of venture capitalist judges. We were judged on how well we identified and mitigated risk, assessed social and environmental impact, and understood the VC process.

The Darden team didn't win the competition, but the judges told us in our feedback session that our performance fell into the top half of teams participating. Not bad for a group which had no prior VC experience! One thing which really left an impression on me was the importance of the entrepreneur in the success of a new business. Every judge we talked with stressed how the people running the business are more important than the business concept. Our team saw this first-hand -- after reading the three business plans our team was heavily leaning towards one of the businesses, but our judgment quickly shifted when we met the entrepreneurs and saw that a different one had a far better strategic vision for where his startup was headed.

More importantly, I now know something about the wild world of startup financing which may prove valuable if I decide to start my own business after school.

Darden United!

We're on spring break now at Darden, a great opportunity for everyone to catch their breaths after a frenetic winter.  Many students have jetted away on a Global Business Experience, to faraway lands such as Argentina, Spain, and Brazil. Some are working with a Chinese company for a "kaizen" week in Shanghai, and others are in Central America just enjoying the beach. For me and my roommates it has been a very relaxing time in Charlottesville. We've enjoyed the mild and sunny weather that has returned to Central Virginia and having Outlook calendars devoid of any appointments, finally!

With the end of winter means the end of my first UVA intramural indoor soccer season. Darden United is my coed team of first-year students, a group of old fogies who still have the magic to dominate some undergrads, on a good day! Our collective wisdom and knowledge makes us competitive against younger legs, plus we have a former US Olympic gold-medal winning goalkeeper on our squad! (my MIT varsity soccer experience pales in comparison)

Soccer players at Darden have a good support network. We play pickup games every weekend at "The Park" and also are starting a Darden soccer club to travel to MBA soccer tournaments around the country. If you're applying and wondering if you'll have people to play with here, you're in good hands!

Here's some photos of Darden United (courtesy of Filipp Gorelik):

Getting ready for kickoff at Memorial Gym

Starting in the goal...not my natural position!

Packed in defensively

The ball looks like it's on fire!

Summer Internship Set!

Yes! I finally ended my summer internship saga this week by accepting an offer to work for Waste Management at its corporate headquarters in Houston. I will be working with the Organic Growth Group, a team which creates partnerships and makes venture capital investments in companies which have promising emerging waste conversion technologies. Over the past couple of years, WM has invested in companies which can convert biomass to electricity, specialty chemicals, and fuels such as natural gas. Over the long run, WM's corporate strategy is to integrate these technologies into their massive materials collection operation -- WM is the largest waste handler in the United States -- and generate additional income from the waste stream. They literally want to turn one man's trash into another's treasure!

The group recently got a nice little writeup in Fortune magazine and also some press in the green media regarding an investment in a biomass conversion company called Genomatica. Given my interests in sustainability and renewable energy, I think this position will be a great fit!

Like all those at Darden who have accepted offers I'm much relieved to be through the job search -- for now. The culture of first year at Darden, for better or worse, creates a feeling of anxiety around the whole internship thing. My colleague Yumi wrote a terrific post in the fall describing the process of running to company briefings "like a scared mouse", which captures it perfectly.

It needn't be this way -- just about every second year I've met had a worthwhile summer internship -- but at least the career services folks don't breed a feeling of complacency around here. You start by probing your inner self to conjure up what you really want to do, maybe discovering nothing. You run between briefings, collecting the occasional Chick-fil-A along the way. You draft and redraft and nitpick every single little word and phrase on your resume, culminating in Resumania!, an event whose name makes me think that we had sunk into a collective madness. You then network...network...NETWORK!, calling every Darden alum you can find who will speak for 20 minutes (thankfully they have all been through this too and are very gracious). Then you nitpick every little word in your cover letters, culminating in CoverLetterMania!, respond to as many job postings as you can tolerate while managing your Term 3 exams, fly away to a job trek, take a day off for Christmas to catch your breath, interview...interview...INTERVIEW! in January and February (missing several of your classes for final rounds), and finally if you've played the game right you end up with a couple offers.

The feeling is often frantic, but if you put in a full effort and "trust the process" you might end up with a killer job, which is probably why you came to business school in the first place!

Striving for Ethical Improvement

Hard to believe but we are approaching the end of FY term 5 here at Darden. The month of February flew by in the blink of an eye and already spring's bloom is upon us shortly here in Charlottesville.

The most thought-provoking class for me this term has been Business Ethics. We focus on cases with very difficult answers, such as whether natural gas companies should continue hydraulic fracturing in the face of uncertain harm to local drinking water or whether an airline should fire a pilot who is eventually certain to acquire a genetically-transmitted disease. Certainly I have never faced decisions of such magnitude in my lifetime, and I always feared receiving an "ethical dilemma" question in one of my business school interviews -- thankfully one never came up. Because of my general lack of such situations to date, this class is a great learning opportunity for me.

Thankfully, teaching my section is Ed Freeman, a teaching all-star and one of the thought leaders in the Ethics field. Freeman has a skill for steering the classroom discussion to the most difficult issues of each case and always seems to have a counterpoint no matter which side of an ethics argument you take. His style forces us to prioritize our values and develop robust moral frameworks for trying to tackle ethical issues.

Recently, we were asked to craft a "Personal Vision Statement" to think more about the kind of leaders and people we aspire to be and to articulate our values and considerations that we intend to guide our careers and lives. The assignment gave us an opportunity to reflect on the personal meaning of Darden's mission statement: To become a principled leader for the world of practical affairs.

I wrote a draft in which I tried to describe my values and the character I wish to cement. My vision statement, I feel, should be able to survive the "publicity test", so I've posted below. Comments certainly welcome...

Jonathan Harris – Personal Vision Statement

In the year 2036, when I am 53 years old, I want to be able to reflect on my life and affirm that I served as a valuable person in the lives of other people.  I want to be a person grounded in strong family values with enduring relationships both personally and professionally.  I want to be an integral part of my community, trusted and respected for my honesty and reliability.  I want to make decisions not solely based on narrow self-interests but also guided by the interests of those who I know and love.

            In business, I want to be a reputable partner and a trusted advisor to others.  When people ask me for guidance, I want to answer truthfully and in their best interest.  When a conflict of interest exists between me and a trusted party, I want to be mature enough to acknowledge this transparently.  I want to treat my business colleagues fairly.

            In my personal life, I want to live authentically in concert with my values and ideals.  I wish to abide by the golden rule: “Do unto others as you have them do unto you.”  I want those closest to me to regard me as a man of my word, responsible for his actions and how those actions affect others.  I want to be described as a man who was generous with his time and gives willingly to others.  I want to act with compassion towards my family and friends.  I want to be regarded as an optimist, a man who sees the glass as half-full rather than half-empty and works to find solutions, not being stuck by conventional wisdom.  I want to be seen as a man of action who worked tirelessly to impact positive change and was not bound by the status quo.

            Finally, I want to be known as a man who acts consistently when faced with difficult situations and does not rationalize compromising his moral framework to fit the situation.  I want my actions to pass the publicity test – there will be no skeletons in my closet and I will be able to talk honestly about my decisions because I will have nothing to hide.  This means I will have acted consistently with integrity, with the strength to act according to my beliefs even in difficult situations.  I will hold myself accountable for mistakes and acknowledge that I am not perfect, though I have continually strived to be.

Term 4 Reflections

Term 4 for first-years at Darden started on Martin Luther King Day, January 17th, at which point life here hit warp speed.  Wow.  Darden, you continue to amaze -- I had no idea there was another level on the B-school intensity-meter, but you reached it, Darden.  Remarkable.

As I've pointed out on this blog before, business school is what you make of it, and Darden is no exception.  No one is holding a gun to your head and telling you to apply for summer internships (though this is HIGHLY encouraged), no one insists that you strive to win case competitions, no one forces you to volunteer your time for others, and no one forces you to be fully prepped for classroom case discussions.  When you try to balance all of this at once, the going gets tough.

I came to Darden wanting to live life here to the fullest, to make every day count.  You only get two years in this academy of higher learning and I want to make the most of it.  However, there's an inherent danger in this approach: you can easily bite off more than you can chew.  Impactful leadership opportunities come your way, and you grab them.  Exciting learning and social opportunities present themselves, and you sign up for all of them.  Pretty soon you can barely squeeze both sleep and studying into your Outlook calendar, and your life gets the feel of one who has been thrown off a ship, treading water while you try to swim back to safety.  Some days here, I'm just happy that I can summon the energy to continue full-throttle.

My syndrome is common, of course.  I'd be lying if I claimed I was the only student who walked into the business school candy store and ate enough to give himself a stomachache.  Business school can teach you your limits.

I didn't plan on waiting a whole month between blog posts, but here I am...so let me catch you up on my experience!

Jobs
Ah yes, those of you applying to Darden now are probably very curious about this one.  As anyone in the U.S. is well aware, the economic recovery has been particularly "jobless".  One look at the chart below shows the devastating overall picture here...

The red line represents jobs lost in the current recession (in % terms), compared with other U.S. recessions since WWII.

This comes from Calculated Risk blog, a highly informative economic commentary I started reading in the fall -- Dean Bruner likes to pull from it frequently in his blog.  Any reader would look at that chart and wonder, "Where are the jobs?"  At first glance, every B-school student should be shuddering at the thought of being voluntarily unemployed right now...why on earth did we leave our job when there are no other jobs?  And most of us probably know someone who was laid off and has been without work for awhile.

Interestingly, I'm finding the MBA job market to be quite robust right now. There are plenty of companies hiring at Darden, and a slew of job postings. Everyone I know here has had interviews by now, and many of my classmates have summer job offers already.  We're a little over one month into a four month job hunt, and a large number of students here are doing rather well.

Granted, I have nothing to compare this recruiting season with.  Perhaps there were even rosier times before the GFC.  But the hiring cycle could be much, much worse...just ask anyone in the Class of 2009.

Bottom line, my anecdotal evidence suggests that the market for highly educated labor has returned, and the economic recovery is about to blossom.  There are some sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing, which may be permanently battered, and certainly government policy is going to need to figure out how to return the long-term unemployed back to the labor force. From the narrow perspective of an MBA student, though, things are looking up.

Renewable Energy Case Competition

In late January, I joined a team of Darden students at the Renewable Energy Case Competition held at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.  Our team of five competed against 12 other schools in analyzing a real-life business opportunity faced by Duke Energy -- how should the company respond to potential EPA emissions regulations which could shut 18% of the coal plants in the mid-Atlantic US in the year 2015?  Should the company build renewable energy  (biomass, solar, and wind) power plants?  Should the company build traditional (coal or natural gas) power plants instead?  Or will the power generation gap be met by demand response (contracts with large power consumers to use less power on the hottest days)?

The problem was fascinating and highly complex.  Teams were asked to build detailed financial models incorporating fossil fuel price estimates, power price estimates, power plant construction costs, and use our crystal ball to predict future government CO2 regulations and state renewable energy requirements. We had a week to figure all this out, come to a recommendation, and deliver a presentation to a panel of industry judges.  Meanwhile, we were still taking classes at Darden AND interviewing for jobs.

That week of preparation and travel to Michigan will go down as the roughest in my Darden experience -- consistently on 4-5 hours of sleep -- but totally worth it. On presentation day, the Darden team ran into a buzzsaw in the preliminary round called the McCombs School (University of Texas), who eventually won the whole competition, but I think we performed well.  I hope to lead a team back next year!

Volunteer Efforts

I've taken on two volunteer roles at Darden this spring. First, I'm working with a team of four students on a project for the Darden Building Goodness in April effort. This year, the school is working with local contractors and the Building Goodness Foundation to help 14 homeowners with renovations to their homes.  The work is performed for homeowners who otherwise wouldn't have the income to fix their own homes -- all the work is done without any costs to them.  The effort was funded through a big auction week at Darden in December...$67K raised in total!  Between now and Build Day in April, our team will be scoping out a project, recruiting student volunteers for the non-technical work, and making certain we are providing the most effective fixes for the homeowner.  Our team met with our assigned homeowner last week and she is excited to have us helping her out!

Also, I'm working with the Fundraising Team for the Darden Cares 5K, also happening in April 2011.  Funds raised will support the UVA Children's Hospital. I've never gone door-to-door to solicit funds from businesses before, so this is definitely outside of my comfort zone.

School
Oh yeah, and I still go to school full-time!  Last term we had classes in Strategy, Operations, and Economics. The term was a little strange with so many student absences due to job interviews -- took a little bit of the buzz out of the case classroom learning environment.  Hopefully as the administration continues to tweak the first-year system to accommodate the exhausting recruiting commitments many students face they will find a happier medium between case discussion and finding a job.  The case method curriculum certainly doesn't do any favors and the reading load was higher in Term 4 than in the other terms.

With many students struggling mightily with balancing school and work, my job as exam review coordinator in my section (along with another student) became extra important in Term 4.  Preparing exam reviews is difficult with our rapid-fire term system, but at Darden we are all responsible for helping other students learn the material, so I find the review coordinator role to be rewarding.

Term 5 starts Tuesday and I hope to get back to blogging with my usual frequency. Until I decide on a summer job, however, all bets are off!

Darden Students Flock Peru

Hello and Happy 2011 to you all!  I'm finally getting back in the swing of things here in Charlottesville.  Arrived back in town on Saturday, attended an epic men's basketball encounter between UVA and the North Carolina Tar Heels (sadly, a defeat for the Wahoos), and am preparing myself for the next couple weeks of classes and summer internship interviews.

As if there weren't enough good reasons to come to business school, let me add another: long breaks.  When you're working you don't have time to take long vacations, at least in the US where our companies have stingy vacation policies relative to our European counterparts, which makes the Darden 6-week winter break extra valuable.  Most students take a much-needed breather to visit with companies (I took part in a job trek to Washington DC), see family, and prep for interviews.

I at least did the first two, and also took the time for one of my favorite activities: travel.  A couple Darden classmates and I traveled to Peru, visiting Lima, Cusco, Lake Titicaca, and hiked the famous Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.  An incredible trip!

Me with my hiking classmates Anoop and Michael, in the Peruvian Andes

The top of our hike, 4215 meters (13829 feet) above sea level!

While there we met up with 5 of the 6 Darden Peruvians in Lima, who were tremendous hosts in their home country.  Our classmates introduced us to all sorts of delicious cuisine and were incredibly gracious with their time.

Michael and I surrounded by our Peruvian classmates Antonio, Ariana, Javier, and Jaime

After a wonderful dim sum meal in Lima with Dardenites Jaime and Melissa (Peru), and Michael (USA)

We also grabbed dinner and drinks with a group of Darden SYs (Second Years) in Lima who had just come from Machu Picchu and were reminiscing about their trip.  We ate a great meal at one of Lima's finest restaurants named Rafael and talked about the far more relaxing life of a SY with a full-time job lined up.

Fine dining for Darden students in Lima.  Robert (SY), Michael (FY), me, Hilary (SY), and Danielle (SY)

My group wasn't planning on running into anyone else we knew, so what a surprise we felt when we bumped into another group of Darden SYs traveling in our boat on Lake Titicaca!  They had traveled there from Bolivia and onward to Cusco and Machu Picchu.  At a business school of about 650 students, what are the odds that you run into colleagues in another hemisphere?!  Not high, I imagine, but this experience speaks to the international and globally-minded nature of the Darden student body.  I'm delighted and amazed.

Darden Energy Club nerds (Britt and me) admire a solar energy panel on the Uros Islands of Lake Titicaca.

Lunch on Isle Taquile.  Michael (FY), Sarah (SY), Michael (SY), Brendan (UVA law), Britt (SY), and me.

Darden Faculty Profile: Casey Lichtendahl

Welcome to the first of what I hope will become a series of interviews with Darden’s top rated business school faculty!  For my inaugural profile I begin with Casey Lichtendahl, one of the teachers for first-year Decision Analysis.  “D.A.”, as it’s known here at Darden, serves as a rite of passage for many students who had never used a regression or an Excel spreadsheet in their pre-Darden lives.

Casey Lichtendahl

JH: Did you know that you have a fan club on Facebook?

CL: Yes, but I’ve never used Facebook and I’m not a fan of all this social media.  We’re losing out on face-to-face interactions such as what we are doing in this office right now.  It’s as if we are trading baseball cards, but we’re more than baseball cards as people.

JH: So have you also shunned “The Social Network”?

CL: I haven’t seen that movie, but I would like to.  It sounds like a good story about the entrepreneurial experience.

JH: Speaking of entrepreneurial experience, you have some yourself, co-founding Tradewinds Ice Tea in the early 90’s.  Any advice for Darden students looking to become entrepreneurs?

CL: I started Tradewinds with my family.  We recently sold off Tradewinds to Sweet Leaf Tea in Texas, and they plan on distributing it with Nestle so I’m not in the tea business any longer.

Having grown up in and around a family business, I had always found it hard to separate our family life from the work we were doing.  I liked that we were developing a tangible product, ice tea, and I enjoyed designing new flavors and working on labels for the bottles.  Operating in a family dynamic is difficult – you are business partners as well as close relatives.  I think in that environment it is important to find ways to create space to be analytical and objective.  With my father and sister involved with Tradewinds, I found that to be challenging.

JH: Why did you decide to leave your business to become a professor?

CL: Coming to business school was the change factor for me.  Probably not too many current students here realize this, but I received an MBA from Darden in 1998.  I came to business school wanting to increase my ability to add value to the family business.  Initially, I didn’t have an interest in the course material in just an academic setting.

In my first year at Darden, I took what was called Quantitative Analysis (now Decision Analysis), and was so turned on by the material that at the end of my first year I was thinking about a PhD.  After I graduated I returned to the family business for a year and tried to translate as much of my MBA experience as I could into improving the business.  I then started at a master’s program at Stanford as I needed more of a quant background to apply to doctoral programs, then I did my PhD at Duke, where I taught D.A. for economics undergrads before returning to Darden four years ago.

JH: Quite an unusual path!

CL: I’m actually not the only member of the faculty with a Darden MBA.  Professors Greg Fairchild and Tim Laseter studied here as well.

JH: In what ways has Darden changed since you were a student here?

CL: The focus on recruiting is much stronger now.  It is a bigger part of what students spend their time doing.  There were corporate briefings going on when I was here, but not to this degree.  I estimate there are about twice as many now.

The curriculum was also structured differently back then.  Instead of the term structure which the school has now, a first-year would just start with “Core”, and topics would come and go in the curriculum throughout the year.  All the classes would build on one another, and D.A. was smattered about with all the other classes.

In addition, the school was smaller back then.  We had four first-year sections instead of five.

JH: Do you still stay in touch with members of your learning team?

CL: I actually have had two of my old learning team members stop by my office.  They are both recruiting managers at their companies now.

Thankfully for many, well beyond the level of math needed to be successful in D.A.!

JH: What does Casey Lichtendahl do when he’s not teaching classes?

CL: This is what I’m working on right now.  [Casey pulls out a document from his desk titled “Habit Formation from Correlation Aversion”]

I’m writing this with my colleagues Raul Chao and Sam Bodily.  We’re hoping to get this published in the journal Operations Research.  Stuff like this is important for the school as it keeps the faculty sharp – we keep up with innovations in the field.

I find that I have a good balance here between my teaching load and research.  While I am teaching a class I put my research on hold.

JH: Have you ever had a day in which you wish you were lecturing rather than teaching using the case method?

CL: No, I really prefer doing things the Darden way.  The case method was brought to Darden by its first dean, Charles Abbott, who had been on faculty at Harvard.  Abbott believed that when there is ambiguity in how to solve a problem, you need students to discuss the possibilities in detail.  You need conversation about the problem spilling over outside of the classroom.   Relying on a single set of answers does not achieve the deepest level of learning.

When I was teaching at Duke I found it hard to keep students’ interest while going through a slide deck.  I’m really glad I don’t get to teach that way here.

JH: But there must be some days where you are thinking, “These students just don’t get it.”

CL: As you saw in class, sometimes an appeal to authority is necessary.  Sometimes we need to reach back to the assigned tech note to reexamine the math behind the business idea.  I don’t want deciphering a tech note to get in the way of understanding an important concept in the case.  I think it is fine, for example, to tell students what three or four statistics are most important in understanding the output of a regression.

When not at Darden, Casey enjoys spending time in Grand Teton National Park

JH: What’s the most unusual thing you ever had happen in one of your classes?

CL: There was a time when I ended up on the “Chips & Quips” page of the Cold Call Chronicle.  I was in class trying to demonstrate the Central Limit Theorem with a coin flip example.  I asked a student if he wanted to bet on the outcome of one coin flip, or on the average of two flips.  To make this a little more dramatic, I told the student that if the coin lands “heads” you live and “tails” you die.

The student, of course, asked me, “What is the outcome in the middle?”  I hadn’t really thought through the problem beforehand, and clearly you can’t end up 50% dead – I needed to think of something else.  So I said, “I’m going to punch you in the face really hard.”

Thankfully, I didn’t get to punch the student, but I really hope I never end up in “Chips & Quips” again.

JH: The holidays are upon us now in the United States.  Any shopping tips?

CL: Well, I rely on my wife to do all of the shopping, so I don’t buy too many gifts myself.  Of course, I need to go to the store personally for her presents, and I’m very much a last minute shopper.  I usually buy my wife something from Best Buy.  For her birthday I bought her an iPhone because she’s not very tech-savvy, and she loves that thing.

One rule I go by is: The more utilitarian the gift, the less romantically appealing.  You might be thinking about buying your loved one a weed eater…NO!  Absolutely not!  No kitchen gear, no appliances, no pots and pans, no knives!  These gifts are insulting on many levels.

JH: My mother loves those types of gifts.

CL: I doubt you have a romantic relationship with her.

Happy students celebrate passing Term 1 D.A. with "x hats" and "dummy variables"

JH: If you could pick only one theme of Decision Analysis that your students would remember in the business world, what would it be?

CL: The most important thing to remember in any decision analysis is to frame the decision properly.  Make sure you lay out all of the alternatives, the uncertainties, and the values of different consequences downstream from the initial decision.  Often when you do this you find you don’t even need to crank through the numbers to decide.

For instance, you might frame your choices as A and B, but downstream of B you might be able to make another decision which offsets the effect of a bad outcome, should it happen.  Now B completely dominates A.  By considering the big structural properties of the problem, you’ve cut short any analysis.  You don’t even need to build a spreadsheet model or do any hardcore number-crunching.

If you can’t make this tradeoff in your head after you’ve talked informally, but rigorously, about the decision, now you can go to the spreadsheet.  If you’re doing any numerical analysis, you need to synthesize your conclusions into pictures.  You need to look at the data graphically.

Hard to believe that we've come to the end of the first semester at Darden!  Most of the students are gone now and an unusual cold snap has descended upon Charlottesville.  I will be away for a couple weeks (follow me on my travel blog if you like), but back blogging to all of you in the new year.  Happy holidays!