Key Takeaways
- • Yale School of Management students competed in the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) Northeast Regionals in February 2026, managing a fictitious $100 million fund to evaluate real startups under a 36-hour compressed timeline.
- • The five-member SOM team—Parmjot Gill '26, Ojaswi Atrey '26, Ari Kanner '27, Duyen Pham '26, and Kenza Moussaoui Rahali '26—leveraged cross-disciplinary expertise spanning healthcare, engineering, technology, financial services, venture capital, and consulting to conduct due diligence and structure investment decisions.
- • VCIC, organized by Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, attracts more than 120 undergraduate and graduate institutions annually and replicates the full venture capital workflow: due diligence on real fundraising startups, term sheet structuring, and presentation to mock investment committees staffed by seasoned investors.
- • The competition format requires teams to receive pitch decks 24 hours before regional events, assign analysis based on member expertise, conduct live founder interviews, and defend investment theses to investor judges providing real-time feedback.
Summary
The Venture Capital Investment Competition represents a high-pressure educational simulation in which student teams assume the operational role of venture capital investors with real capital deployment constraints. At the February 2026 Northeast Regionals, a Yale School of Management team competed in this 36-hour marathon exercise, managing a hypothetical $100 million fund while evaluating actual startups in active fundraising processes. According to Parmjot Gill, a participating SOM student, the compressed timeline creates authentic pressure conditions absent from typical classroom simulations, requiring teams to operate with minimal sleep while executing institutional-grade investment analysis.
The VCIC framework, administered by Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, has scaled to include over 120 participating institutions across undergraduate and graduate programs. The competition systematically walks student teams through the complete venture capital lifecycle: conducting due diligence on real companies, structuring term sheets with specified investment terms, and presenting recommendations to panels composed of practicing venture investors who observe and critique the decision-making process.
The SOM team's composition reflected deliberate portfolio construction. Five students drawn from four different degree programs brought complementary technical and industry expertise. By assigning specific startup evaluations to team members based on their professional backgrounds—healthcare specialists reviewing healthtech companies, engineers assessing deep-tech ventures, and finance professionals analyzing unit economics—the team optimized analytical depth. Twenty-four hours before the regional competition commenced, participating startups released comprehensive pitch decks, enabling teams to conduct preliminary independent analysis before engaging in live founder interviews at the event itself.
The competition's educational value derives from its fidelity to actual venture capital workflows. Student teams conduct structured due diligence on bona fide businesses seeking capital, participate in founder Q&A sessions, exchange observations among team members, and incorporate feedback from investor judges observing their analytical process in real time. This experiential design bridges the gap between theoretical venture investing education and the high-stakes, time-compressed decision-making environment venture capitalists encounter in practice.
The VCIC framework, administered by Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, has scaled to include over 120 participating institutions across undergraduate and graduate programs. The competition systematically walks student teams through the complete venture capital lifecycle: conducting due diligence on real companies, structuring term sheets with specified investment terms, and presenting recommendations to panels composed of practicing venture investors who observe and critique the decision-making process.
The SOM team's composition reflected deliberate portfolio construction. Five students drawn from four different degree programs brought complementary technical and industry expertise. By assigning specific startup evaluations to team members based on their professional backgrounds—healthcare specialists reviewing healthtech companies, engineers assessing deep-tech ventures, and finance professionals analyzing unit economics—the team optimized analytical depth. Twenty-four hours before the regional competition commenced, participating startups released comprehensive pitch decks, enabling teams to conduct preliminary independent analysis before engaging in live founder interviews at the event itself.
The competition's educational value derives from its fidelity to actual venture capital workflows. Student teams conduct structured due diligence on bona fide businesses seeking capital, participate in founder Q&A sessions, exchange observations among team members, and incorporate feedback from investor judges observing their analytical process in real time. This experiential design bridges the gap between theoretical venture investing education and the high-stakes, time-compressed decision-making environment venture capitalists encounter in practice.
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