UW Kicks Off Innovative Student-Run Venture Capital Program

A course on entrepreneurial finance at the University of Wyoming is enabling business students to have a hands-on role in the investment of funds from the UW Venture Capital Program.

Students enrolled in UW’s College of Business evaluate proposals from real-world startups in Wyoming in need of seed-level funding to take their companies to the next level. The program is a cooperative effort among the College of Business, the UW Foundation and UW’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI).

“There’s a funding gap between the startup phase of a company and when it becomes suitable for institutional capital from a large venture capital firm,” CEI Director Robert Macy says. “We aim to fill that gap.”

The program is generously funded by the Fisher Incentive Funds in Entrepreneurship, an endowment established in 2017 by Donne and Sue Fisher. The Fisher funds are aimed at creating a lasting legacy by empowering students through real-world entrepreneurial experiences.

“This is a mission-based seed fund, which means it’s designed to do something other than just make money for investors,” Macy says, adding that it’s specifically geared to promote UW-affiliated startups.

Investment from the fund requires a UW touchpoint such as a student, staff, faculty or alum, or a startup using intellectual property generated by UW. Businesses that wish to work with the program as a source of funding need to contact Macy directly before the process of evaluating investment opportunity begins with the students. Macy serves as the managing director of the fund.

“Qualified businesses will be invited to pitch the fund, and there will be startups referred by various sources in Wyoming’s entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Macy says. “We should always be able to do at least $100,000 each year in the future.”

Once prospective startups are lined up, they will make their pitches to students in the entrepreneurial finance class (ENTR 5603), a course in the Master of Business Administration curriculum at UW. Students then perform due diligence on the companies and vote whether to invest. Typical investment amounts are expected to be about $100,000, depending upon funding availability each year.

Companies will be able to receive money as early as this summer, if deals are accepted. In addition to funding, those startups that are invested in will receive in-kind business services such as training, legal and accounting consultations. If or when a company goes public, gets sold or is acquired, the fund will retrieve any returns on the investments, allowing larger or additional investments to be made in the future.

“Our students are getting invaluable hands-on experience with an important aspect of business funding and growth before they even graduate,” says Parag Chitnis, UW’s vice president for research and economic development. “It’s this type of experiential learning that helps set UW apart -- giving students real-world learning opportunities to be more competitive as graduates of UW. It’s a win-win, because venture capital from this fund can provide qualified businesses with a critical injection of capital to grow and thrive in our Wyoming economy.”