It was 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night. I was sitting in front of my laptop preparing for case discussions for classes the next day when an email popped up. It was from the CEO of an early-stage company I had reached out to about my project with Wharton Impact Venture Associates (WIVA).
“I will be at Wharton tomorrow at the Steinberg Conference Center. Can you meet at 1:30?” My fatigue was immediately replaced by a sense of excitement. I quickly responded, coordinated internally to make sure my fellow WIVA team member, Rishabh, was also available at the suggested time, booked a room, put aside the cases, and began getting ready for the meeting.
Before my time at Wharton, I had met with a number of management teams as a private equity associate, but I knew this meeting would be different from my previous experience — I was no longer in control of capital. I needed to convince the entrepreneur to partner with us and go through a yet-to-be-tested internal diligence and crowdfunding process with many uncertainties. The strategy was to convey our value-add from leveraging other resources we had other than capital, all while asking tough questions so that we could at least evaluate the company at a preliminary level.
Prior to this meeting, I had never worked with Rishabh, who is a senior undergraduate student at Wharton. Had I known Rishabh as much as I do today in terms of skillset and capability, I would not have been stressed at all. At the time, I felt I had to be ready to put out fires if needed. I needed to make sure I knew as much as possible about the company as well as about WIVA, since there would not be a more senior team member at the meeting besides the two of us. I took a structured approach in my preparation.
Here were my steps:
- I drafted an agenda for the meeting.
- Brushed up on WIVA’s marketing and communication strategies by looking through documents on my team’s share drive.
- Combed through the research I had previously pulled on the company one more time.
- Reviewed news and headlines to ensure I didn’t miss any significant recent events.
- Re-read the email exchange to-date with the entrepreneur.
- Drafted key questions I had on the business, ranked them by priority, and categorized them into “must know,” “good to know” and “better to ask in subsequent meetings.”
- Finally, I anticipated what questions the CEO might have on WIVA and planned the corresponding answers, and then I attempted to anticipate his potential responses to my “must-know” questions.
Thanks to the preparation and Rishabh, the meeting went well.
This experience was one of my most memorable moments of last semester. To me, WIVA was a lot more than a school project because we were working with full-time staff and with entrepreneurs on an event instrumental to the survival of their ventures — fundraising. WIVA was also an opportunity to research, debate, and potentially influence the strategies of a conceptual best-in-class impact investing fund. WIVA has been a tremendous learning opportunity and I am grateful for the support and the opportunity to be involved.
— Derek Zhao
Posted: February 11, 2019
