Behind the Scenes

I am a second year MBA student at MIT Sloan School of Management and am a lead organizer for this year’s conference. With less than 2 weeks to the conference, I am very excited about the conference!

The preparations for the conference started over 6 months ago. But the bulk of the conference has been put together during the last 3 months (Fall semester) mostly by first year MBA students who just started school. I am highly appreciative of their efforts, particularly so because they have stepped up during the intense ‘core’ semester which has a heavy course load. Thank you all of you!

I was actively involved in organizing last year’s conference which was a great show in itself. But every year it gets better and I am very excited this year for several reasons:

1. The theme, “Enabling the Entrepreneur”, is compelling since it brings the spotlight on entrepreneurs without whom the VC community does not exist. To that end, we organizers have laid tremendous importance to fill our events with a significant number of entrepreneurs.

2. We have introduced the first ever MIT Entrepreneur Showcase (http://www.mitvcconference.com/showcase.htm) which will be held at the MIT Museum on Thu, Nov 29th from 5-8pm. When we started we had no idea what it will end up being. Now with over 30 companies out of 70 applications from across the world, the showcase is looking solid with companies from life sciences, mobile, Internet, software and energy. I invite each one of you to attend and take a peek at what the entrepreneurs are up to. Remember, it’s open to the public.

3. The purpose of any conference is high quality “content”. To that end we have put in a lot of thought to carefully think through the panel topics which are relevant, debatable and entertaining. Further, we have carefully picked our panelists to ensure the highest quality participation. We hope that every attendee walks away from the conference with a lot of new learnings about the VC industry and entrepreneurship.

Finally, I would like to share what this conference has meant to me. It has provided an excellent opportunity to get to know several individuals both at school and in the New England entrepreneurial system (VCs, Angels, entrepreneurs) Also, it has helped me build strong ties with the MIT entrepreneurial ecosystem, particularly the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. To all those MBA students who are interested in entrepreneurship and Venture Capital, I highly recommend engaging yourself in a conference. It goes a long way in immersing yourself into this field. Further, it helps a lot in personal skill building.

Now I can’t wait to see you all at the conference. More later!