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Global Private Equity Initiative

INSEAD PE & VC - Call for Project Sponsors - Global Private Equity Initiative

To all Friends of INSEAD, Private Equity & Venture Capital Professionals

We have the pleasure to invite you to submit a project proposal for the INSEAD MBA elective course on Private Equity & Venture Capital.

Potential student projects must relate to Private Equity of Venture Capital but could deal with a wide range of topics, from both GPs and LPs alike:

  • Strategically positioning or re-positioning of a new PE fund
  • Pan-Asian vs Country Funds – where are the returns? (LP)
  • Case study of one of your more challenging deals and how your firm overcame it
  • Examining the generational succession in your firm
  • Studying and evaluating a historical deal
  • Assessing the impact of regulatory changes in your specific industry
  • Formulating an entry strategy for your firm into a new market

You might also consider writing a case study on a specific investment or a particularly interesting situation with one of your portfolio firms. Of course – the more challenging the better.

WHY may you want to consider such a project?

It will give you a window on the current talent pool at INSEAD (which might be useful for recruitment decisions both within your own firm as well as within any of your investee companies). In addition, you will get work done that would otherwise consume some of your own costly resources....And it might be fun working with a team of motivated and bright MBA students.

The basic idea behind such a project is to give our students an opportunity to experience what Private Equity is about. We would therefore like the students to work in groups of 4 - 6 team members on projects that (a) are relevant to the practice of Private Equity, and (b) expose the students to issues that affect the core of your and your colleagues' professional activities.

We would discourage students from working on issues that Private Equity firms typically outsource to third parties (such as certain forms of strategic, financial, or technical due diligence), which involve relatively low analytical skills (e.g., web-based prospecting for deals), or on tasks that are typically the responsibility of the entrepreneurs that you coach and support, and in which you (or your colleagues and associates) would normally not become involved.

HOW do we get involved?

Here is how the process works:

  1. Please send us a 1 pager of your project synopsis, per the below template, to ‘[email protected]’. The submission should cover the following information:
    • What is the project/ case study about? [title & description]
      Your preferred location of the team working with you [Fontainebleau, Singapore, both]
      Who will be the project champion within your firm? [name, bio, contact info]
      What kind of resources and information can you make available?
      What do you expect from the students in terms of concrete deliverables?
      What other rules would you like to establish (non-disclosure, etc.)?

  2. Your project proposal will be screened by the course instructors and then made available to students enrolled in the PE elective through a password-controlled website. The students will review the projects and decide on which one to bid.

  3. Once the proposal has been accepted and is available for bidding, we will notify you. Students who are interested in working on your project will respond directly to the PE firm, copying either [email protected] (for Singapore), or [email protected] (for Fontainebleau). Their response will include a 1-2 page pitch to you detailing the backgrounds of their team members, along with their proposed approach to the project.

  4. The sponsoring firm then decides which student team to invite and communicates it to the team as well as Alyssa/Elisa and the Professors. A final agreement is reached in a brief phone call between the student and the project champion within the sponsoring firm, and then confirmed via e-mail. The students send the protocol of that phone call (which establishes a mutually acceptable framework for the project) to [email protected] or [email protected] (cc/ to the project champion within the PE firm).
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Download the template with the following link.

Project Proposal Template

Contact Us

Faculty Assistant

Alyssa Liao
[email protected]

     

We welcome your thoughts and suggestions on our research and outreach activities.

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