On this morning’s Business Beat, Jeff welcomes Dr. Craig Everett, finance professor at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio Business School, who shares details of the Pepperdine Most Fundable Companies competition. Built to help great companies succeed, the contest provides the opportunity for companies seeking funding outside of major investment areas like Silicon Valley to find investors.
Tune in to the Business Beat to learn more about Pepperdine Most Fundable Companies, and how you can enter:
“What makes a company fundable is their attractiveness to investors. We’re going after the characteristics that the VCs are looking for essentially and building our competition around that.”
– Dr. Craig Everett
To apply for Pepperdine’s Most Fundable Companies competition, visit pepperdine.edu/mfc.
Tune in to News/Talk 760 AM WJR weekday mornings at 7:11 a.m. for the WJR Business Beat. Listeners outside of the Detroit area can listen live HERE.
Are you an entrepreneur with a great story to share? If so, contact us at [email protected] and we’ll feature you on an upcoming segment of the WJR Business Beat!
Good morning, Paul.
We’ve got a really interesting competition that companies seeking funding in our area can enter. If they want to see if they’re a good venture capital investment candidate. The competition is known as the Most Fundable Companies competition, and we’ve got Dr. Craig Everett, executive director, to tell us all about it.
The idea is that we wanted to democratize the startup process. A lot of the money is in Silicon Valley and Austin, New York, and such. Sometimes it’s hard for businesses that are not in those areas to get attention. And so, we wanted to do a nationwide competition that levels the playing field and allows a lot more companies and a lot more areas to participate. Last year, we had 4,500 companies participate.
And so, what is the criteria by which you measure whether or not a company is fundable?
What makes a company fundable is their attractiveness to investors. We’re going after the characteristics that the VCs are looking for essentially and building our competition around that. Investors look for founders that are looking to have a liquidity event, they’re looking to sell or be acquired or go public, they’re looking for founders that have experience. They have experience building companies and selling them.
And why should companies think about entering, and if they want to, how do they do it?
Well, obviously every company wants to be on the winners list because that is very good publicity for the company. Historically, all of our winners have been funded. It’s a very good conduit into a funding situation and companies through going through our process, they get feedback at each stage along the way.
So if you’re looking to better understand what venture investors are looking for and to see if your company matches up, check out the most fundable companies competition by going to pepperdine.edu forward slash M F C, as in most fundable companies.
I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of StartupNation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.
