G51 Venture Capital
It is a relatively unknown fact that firms older than 10 years old are net job destroyers. Moreover, the vast majority of jobs created in the United States every year are created by start up companies. This fact came a huge shock to my largely liberal arts brain. However, the fact has served as a catalyst for a quickly growing passion of mine.
This passion began sort of unknowingly with a program I didn’t even know existed when I started the MBA program. The G51 Venture Capital Fellow program is a partnership with G51 Capital Management out of Austin, TX as well as the Baylor Angel Network. The class couples an academic study of private equity and a practical look at deal evaluation and the up close and personal work of a VC firm.
An average week looks something a bit like this.
On Tuesday the 5 of us will meet and talk through something like the various pros and cons to different valuation methods, all of which that aim to quantify the qualitative and put them on some scale that can be used to compare various deals with each other. It’s an odd mix of creativity, conceptual thinking, simple math, and arbitrary preference. Either way the class represents something both conventional in the sense that there are assignments but also something pleasantly unconventional in that their is a highly practical air to the whole ordeal that reflects the fact previously mentioned that start ups are the source of the lion share of create jobs on a yearly basis. These companies are living, growing things that have needs and problems that must be addressed, in many cases, in a rather urgent manner without the years of analyzable data that big, established firm is privy to. We wrap up class with plenty to chew on during our research for deal review.
Friday rolls around and we all pile into one car and head down to Austin, more than likely stopping at Stripes for the free coffee (granted this promotion ends sometime in the next two weeks). Yes, we laugh about the business plans that make absolutely no sense, the ones that are written by the truly brilliant but lack any sort of real life grounding, and the ones that just won’t work in today’s market. And trust me, we’ve seen a fair number of deals that we still laugh about. On the other hand, we each develop allegiances to companies that we’ve developed our own arbitrary affection for, refusing to let the others stop talking about it until they too see the value in the company. And this is all in the car on the way. Once we get there, Nataysha, the administrative assistant for G51, always has some sort of breakfast waiting for us. We grab a bit to eat, refill our coffee cups, and pick up the conversation with Rudy Garza, the managing partner, and the other Venture Capital Fellows. Entrepreneurs pitch their companies and we vet the ideas, walking through the pain points and how elegantly they alleviate the pain. It’s engaging work that requires the brain to be firing at all levels. The conversation remains anemic if the financial is not paired with the more creative, unique portions of the company.
I’ve heard of many Baylor MBA grads say they would do the MBA program all over again just to do G51 again. I’m becoming more and more certain I, too, will be saying the same thing come May 2014.
