Student-Managed Venture Funds are the Future for College Entrepreneurs

The growth of entrepreneurial activity on campus started with the formation of student clubs and organizations with a goal to bring like-minded individuals together, whether it be to just meet up or actually start companies together. Although, many of these clubs have been around for a while, it's only been fairly recent since these initiatives have been augmented with the addition of business plan competitions, on-campus incubators, and undergrad and grad school entrepreneurship programs. For example, the grand daddy of all competitions, the MIT $100k business plan competition, has only been around since 1989. It's taken some time for other schools to catch on, too. Just take the Boston College Venture Competition, they only launched 2 years.

Business plan competitions and incubators will continue to spring up, but what's next? There are many business schools that have student-managed stock market investment firms...so why not do this with a venture capital model? I predict that this will be the new frontier for entrepreneurs, startups, researchers, inventors, and engineers on campus - Student-managed venture capital funds will take business plan competitions to the next level. We're already beginning to see this at Purdue University.

Purdue University's student-managed venture fund just placed a $100k investment in Kylin Therapeutics Inc. The investment is part of a $2 million dollar round led by In-vivo Ventures and Golden Pine Ventures. Krannert School of Management MBA's made the decision as part of their program, which included the analysis of business plans and allocation of the funding.

The funding will go towards commercializing a cancer therapy, called pRNAi, that grew from research at Purdue University. Kylin Therapeutics is using the funding to bring the technology into its clinical stage and closer to market release.

In a recent article, Professor Kenneth Kahn commented that “the Student-Managed Venture Fund serves as an investment vehicle to spur commercialization of Purdue research...Just as importantly, the fund is an educational vehicle to provide hands-on understanding of venture capital and investment for the university’s entrepreneurially minded students.”

There are countless technologies under development in university labs that are just sitting on the shelf waiting to be commercialized. These technologies have real applications and viable solutions for worldwide problems. The combination of research labs, entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurial initiatives like student-managed venture funds can provide a backbone and model for bringing these technologies to market.

I predict that student-managed venture funds will begin popping up in years to come to help complete this framework and model for bringing new technologies and companies to market. These initiatives will play a critical Just look at the success and track record of MIT entrepreneurs and alumni. Combined, companies that have sprung from MIT entrepreneurs produce an estimated $2 trillion in revenues annually. If you pooled them together, they would make up what would be the equivalent of the 11th largest economy in the world.

Kylin Therapeutics:

Kylin Therapeutics, Inc. is a cutting-edge biotechnology company, employs a revolutionary RNA nanoparticle technology platform called “pRNA” to exploit the enormous potential of RNA interference (RNAi) for treatment of many common diseases. This visionary platform has enormous potential to meet the huge market opportunity for treating cancer and other diseases with RNA-based therapeutics. The unique capabilities of the platform have enabled Kylin to overcome the most significant challenges in the development of RNA-based therapies.

[Summary from their website]