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A Meeting Across the Pond
New internship exposes Wharton students to venture-capital business and strives to stem Philadelphia brain drain.
F or the third week of his summer internship, Craig Vaughn went to Dublin, Ireland. He hadn't expected to. When he'd applied, he thought he'd be spending the summer in Philadelphia, crunching numbers and poring over spreadsheets.
But the venture-capital firm that selected him, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners in Radnor, Pa., also has an office in the Irish capital, and the firm's partners believed that Vaughn should see their operation there, too.
"When Cross Atlantic was set up, there was a lot of high-tech development happening in Ireland and the U.K., and the capital markets weren't as accessible there for early-stage companies," Vaughn explains. "So the partners here met a couple people there and decided to go for it.
"I'd never been to Dublin," he adds. "It was a fantastic experience."
Vaughn is one of three Wharton MBA candidates who participated in last summer's inaugural venture-capital internship. The internship is a joint initiative of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and the Greater Philadelphia Venture Group, and it has a joint mission: one conventional, the other unconventional.
The conventional one is matching capable students interested in a career in venture capital with firms that, when the students graduate, may need a new professional staffer. The unconventional one is stemming the brain drain in Wharton's hometown, Philadelphia. Every year, Wharton educates hundreds of MBAs and undergrads, yet many of them leave for careers in places such as New York and Hong Kong without giving Philadelphia a serious look.
"We figured why not create an internship that exposes students not only to venture capital but also this region," says Emily Cieri, managing director of Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs (WEP). Cieri designed the program with the help of venture capitalist Christine Jones and consultant Jeff Babin. It was funded with a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
In addition to working at the firms, the three interns had lunch each week with someone involved in either the venture industry or high-tech development in the Philadelphia area. They also attended Wharton's Private Equity Boot Camp.
About
40 students applied for the internship, which lasted 12 weeks. GPVG screened
the group, narrowing it to 12. Venture firms then interviewed those students
to decide which ones to offer summer jobs.
Jones' firm, Eureka Growth Capital in Philadelphia, picked Jonathan Reznick.
"They succeeded in the two goals of the program," Reznick says. "I got a full flavor of venture capital and a deep exposure to how it's done in Philly.
"Eureka didn't have any associates. It was just the managing partner, three principals and me. So any deal that the firm worked on, I got to work on. I got to be involved in everything — screening new deal proposals, doing due diligence, negotiating deals and documenting them."
He also learned that venture capital isn't all semiconductors and software. One deal he helped with was a janitorial-services company; another, a gauge manufacturer.
At Quaker BioVentures, where Lisa Jordan spent the summer, the deals were less diverse — the firm specializes in investing in life-science companies — but the scope of her responsibilities just as diverse as Reznick's.
She read and evaluated business plans. And for the two investments the firm closed over the summer, she helped out with due diligence.
"I helped check out patents — reading those — and helped with due diligence on the management teams. The decisions are more people driven than I'd thought they'd be. I expected it all to be objective and financially driven. But you invest in management teams, more so than I ever expected."
For Jordan, the internship met both its goals, not only giving her experience in a field where internships are tough to come by, but showing her a far broader swath of Philadelphia than just the university and surrounding neighborhoods.
"I didn't come to Philadelphia expecting I'd have any desire to stay, but now I would.""
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