EC is proud to host VCIC 11 Silicon Valley Regional on Feb 8th. VCIC (Venture Capital Investment Competition) is an international competition in which most of the major business school from all over the world compete. Santa Clara team is competing with full-time programs like USC, BYU and University of Washington.

Since the seating is limited for this event, the registration is already closed even though we have to marketed the event heavily. For more information go to http://www.scunetworks-mbaec.org/ and click on vcic 2008.

We all agree that we have great MBA program. Hosting such events really helps us to get more recognition and exposure to the industry and potential students.
I have created a blog to know your input on such events and specific to VCIC and EC.

What is Social Entrepreneurship ?

A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas business entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit and return, social entrepreneurs assess their success in terms of the impact they have on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.

Simply put, social entrepreneurship is to share knowledge of the developed world with the developing, whether that is building water pumps or creating distance learning programs.

Should private sector be interested in Social Entrepreneurship?

The famous social entrepreneurship Guru Prof. C.K Prahlad proposes that businesses should stop thinking of the poor as victims and instead start seeing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs as well as value-demanding consumers. He proposes that there are tremendous benefits to multi-national companies who choose to serve these markets in ways responsive to their needs. After all the poor of today are the middle-class of tomorrow. There are also poverty reducing benefits if multi-nationals work with civil society organizations and local governments to create new local business models.

However, there is some debate over Prahalad’s proposition. Aneel Karnani, also of the Ross School at the University of Michigan, argued in a 2007 paper that there is no fortune at the bottom of the pyramid and that for most multinational companies the market is actually very small. Karnani also suggests that the only way to alleviate poverty is to focus on the poor as producers, rather than as a market of consumers.

Do you think there is really profit to be made at the bottom of the period? If so, what is the best strategy to be successful? If not, are there alternative benefits for the businesses by serving the bottom of the pyramid? Is it really possible to eradicate poverty by increasing the consumption of the poor?

Find more discussion at the Entrepreneur’s Night on Social Entrepreneurship and MBAs

Some starting points

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entrepreneurship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_of_Pyramid

This past Friday, January 19^th, The Entrepreneurs’ Connection held the 10^th annual installment of the Venture Capital Investment Competition. The event itself was a success due in part to an amazing team and set of volunteers. Without their commitment, some over the past 8 months, this event would never have been made possible.

A quick plug and thanks is in order for: Andrew Jones, Manish Garg, Saumitra Buragohain, Vinay Gaonkar, Vivek Mehrotra, Sia Bani, Monty Gray, David Freddolino, Berlin Tsou, Syed Hamid, Rangarao Maddipudi, John Barnidge, Sheshadri Vasudevamurthy, and Caroline Morrissey.  A big thanks goes out to Sonia Gonzalez and AnaKarina White within the Graduate Business office for putting up with us over the past few months…we sincerely appreciate!

To all who’ve helped to make this event a success,  I appreciate your time and effort…As Patrick Vernon, Director of the VCIC, said “This simply was one of the best events I have ever seen….Santa Clara University knocked it out of the park!”. “With Santa Clara located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the three components of the VCIC; Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists, and top ranked MBA students, SCU is well positioned to execute yet another superb event”. We’ll look to Santa Clara to host the VCIC again next year!”

With a packed house at the Adobe Lodge, the day was nothing less than exhausting for our judges, entrepreneurs, spectators and our MBA students. Though the knowledge capture received was unsurpassed, commented a spectator. A big thanks goes out to our judges panel for their willingness to endure the rigor of the VCIC for 9+ hours. Many felt the event should be renamed the VCIC bootcamp!  The judges for the 2007 VCIC were:

David Aslin – 3i Partners

David Lam – The Carlyle Group

Vish Mishra – Clearstone Partners

Joe Addiego – In-Q-Tel

Graham Barnes – Angel Investor (SCU MBA’89)

Mike Scanlin – Battery Ventures

Tom Jackson – Woodside Fund

JJ Freitag – Azure Capital Partners
Sebastian Blum – T-Ventures (Deutsche Telekom)
Jim Swallows – InterVenture Partners
 

For a WildCard Event this was the largest panel of judges, though their broad knowledge and experience helped make this event a superb success. Judges, thank you! You are welcome back next year….assuming we did not drain you too much this year!

Our Entrepreneurs:

Zach Gentry – Adura Technologies
Jorge Fernandes - PayWi