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Challenge Yourself

Explore the PE and VC challenges and competitions open to Kellogg students.

Participating in a PE or VC challenge gives students hands-on experience in your desired field and the chance to be mentored by private equity and venture capital professionals. Depending on the challenge or competition, you may also receive course credit and a potential cash prize at the end.

Private Equity Investment Challenges

Thompson Street Capital Partners Investment Challenge
Thompson Street Capital Partners (TSCP) hosted an investment thesis case competition that more than 30 teams competed in across the Full-Time, Executive and Evening & Weekend MBA programs. Nine teams were selected to present in a final round to five TSCP professionals. Teams presented investment theses such as Warehouse Management Software Solutions, Liquid Biopsy, Wireless Communication Filter Technology, Smart Farming Software Solutions, Language Transcription Software and Remote Patient Monitoring.

Venture Capital Investment Challenges

The Venture Capital Investment Challenge (VCIC) is an international competition run by the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina that started in 1998 and involves 78 universities. In this competition, students play the role of VCs. Real startups will pitch to you and you’ll decide which one to invest in while VCs judge your performance.

An internal competition of talented Kellogg students was held to choose a team to represent the school at the most recent VCIC. The finalist teams spent several weeks participating in workshops and mentoring sessions with professors Pete McNerney and Mitchell Petersen before moving on to represent Kellogg in the regional final leading up to the international competition. 

Congratulations to Collin Bhojwani, Erica Buursma Klenz, Henry Richmond, Eunice Wangadi, Prashanth Somu, and Jason Epstein who represented Kellogg at the 2024 VCIC Global Finals in April and won first place! This is the second Kellogg team to win the Global Finals competition in the past four years.

Featured Challenge Partners

Learn more about the partners and hosts of past challenges and competitions.

Silver Oak Service Partners

Silver Oak is a middle market private equity firm based in Evanston. The firm focuses on making investments in the U.S. in middle market business, consumer and healthcare services companies. Silver Oak is currently investing out of its $335 million Fund III.

Thompson Street Capital Partners

Thompson Street Capital Partners is a private equity firm based out of St. Louis, Mo., investing out of its $1.2 billion fifth fund and invests primarily within healthcare, software and business services sectors.

Venture Capital Investment Competition

The Venture Capital Investment Competition was created as a way for MBAs to learn about venture funding. Each year, VCIC hosts more than 50 events all over the world, serving thousands of students and hundreds of VCs and startups.
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The case competition is a unique opportunity for Kellogg students to practice the skillset of a post-MBA investor in a low-pressure setting. It is a great growing experience to have pure autonomy over an investment thesis and to persuasively communicate it to senior investors.

Eric Frueh '20

Interested in learning more? Get in touch.