COURSE NUMBER: MBA292T.7

COURSE TITLE: Berkeley Impact Venture Partners: Investing

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1

INSTRUCTOR: Adair Morse, Julia Sze

EMAIL: morse@haas.berkeley.edu, juliawsze@berkeley.edu

PREREQUISITES: Impact Finance and Entrepreneurship or New Venture Finance (or equivalent experience)

CLASS FORMAT: Experiential course with 10 hours of lecture time, faculty oversight, and student led research on promising early stage companies for BIVP 2.0 Fund investment. Student experience directly proportional to effort and initiative.

REQUIRED READINGS:

https://www.toniic.com/early-stage-e-guide/

https://vilcap.com/

http://theimpact.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/TheImPact_EarlyStagePrimer_2016MR.pdf

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: 40% participation, 60% final presentation

ABSTRACT OF COURSE’S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: Part of the new Sustainable and Impact Finance Initiative, this course will provide classroom instruction on sourcing and diligencing early stage social enterprises, and will allow students to create an investment thesis, develop their investment networks, source promising ideas, diligence the companies and their founders, and present these companies at the end of the semester at a campus-wide “Pitch Day”. External judges and experienced early stage investors will provide feedback and recommend the top companies for seed stage to Series A investment from the BIVP 2.0 Fund.

This course is designed to provide students with the tools and experience to evaluate both the financial and impact proposition of social enterprises, and be able to present the opportunities and risks of investing in these companies with conviction. Students should expect to take significant initiative in finding ideas from their own networks, Berkeley organizations and alum, and off-campus leads.

CAREER FIELD: Venture Capital, Private Equity, Investment Banking, Wealth Management, and any career that involves critical thinking and evaluation.

SELECTION PROCESS: We believe the optimal size for this class is 20-25 students. If there are more than this number interested in the class, the program office can provide a random lottery.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Adair Morse is Associate Professor of Finance at Berkeley Haas and a Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Business. She holds a PhD in finance from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and Master’s degrees in statistics and agricultural economics from Purdue University. She began her career as an entrepreneur in Poland and has since taught New Venture Finance, Global Entrepreneurial Finance, and Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity at Berkeley Haas and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Her research covers the areas of household finance, impact investing, entrepreneurship, corruption, and asset management. Adair is the 2019 recipient of the Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Julia W. Sze, CFA is Professional Faculty at Berkeley Haas and teaches Impact Startup Launchpad and the Sustainable Investment Fund. Julia started her career investing in Asian equities in the early 90s and has since managed money on behalf of foundations, endowments, and family offices across all asset classes and geographies. Since 2008, she has been at the forefront of the impact investing field, helping to create new products, measure and report on impact, and identify solutions to ongoing challenges in an emerging field. Julia has been a judge at social venture competitions for over a decade, and has mentored and invested in a number of early stage social enterprises.