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Value Captor's Process: Getting the Most Out of Your New Business Ventures

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On a meteoric rise through the fiercely competitive luxury retail market, high-end handbag brand Anima Iris has been picked up by Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, and even Beyoncé. With geometric and bold designs, founder Wilglory Tanjong G22 WG22 expresses her ancestry in a fashionable and sustainable way. The bags are made in Senegal by expert craftspeople who have honed their techniques over decades and draw inspiration from centuries of heritage. The leather and other materials are sourced through local African business merchants. Anima Iris is environmentally friendly and employs a zero-waste model that ensures all materials are used and that no two products are the same.

A Bounty of Business Plans

Entrepreneurship has become a thriving part of the Wharton education experience. Need proof? Consider the fact that Wharton’s Kartik Hosanagar hardly ever walks home alone.

Hosanagar, an associate professor specializing in Internet commerce who co-founded his own Web company, is widely respected on campus as a patient mentor to budding entrepreneurs.

Kartik Hosanagar (Photo credit: Tommy Leonardi)

One of Hosanagar’s classes is called “Enabling Technologies.” Student assignments include taking a real-world business problem faced by a startup and then spending a week developing a solution to it. Hosanagar has taught the class for a decade, and the changes to the class during that time have mirrored the evolving nature of Wharton entrepreneurship teaching and research.

For one thing, enrollment in the course has exploded. It started with 55 in 2003; now, there’s not enough room to meet demand, despite the seven sections offered by two faculty members. Hosanagar’s office hours are booked solid with his own students.

The nature of students’ interests has changed too, Hosanagar says. Nearly all of them now are interested in starting companies. But that wasn’t the case when the class first began; back then, he says, most of his students were planning careers in investment banking and were taking the class simply to better understand how to value a startup company when they helped to acquire it.

With today’s students more interested in building companies than in buying them, “I don’t get that question too much any more,” he says.

Instead, students pitch their ideas—so many that they have broken free from the confines of his classroom or office hours.

Hosanagar has invited anyone at Penn who wants to discuss a business plan to join him at the end of the day as he walks the three miles from his Huntsman Hall office to his Society Hill home. Hosanagar’s walk-and-talk offer has, in the parlance of the Web, gone viral.

“I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have someone with me,” he says. “The amount of interest in entrepreneurship at Wharton is just crazy.”

The “crazy” interest observed by Hosanagar is part of a profound, if perhaps underappreciated, shift in some of the most basic elements of the culture of Wharton and its approach to a business education. Historically, the School has been associated with careers in finance and consultancy. But in the past decade, the business world has changed, and both Wharton and Wharton students have changed along with it.

A growing number are willing to trade wing tips, three-star Manhattan restaurants and Tribeca lofts for sneakers, take-out pizza and sleeping under their desks as they race to get a product out the door. Entrepreneurship, with its attendant risks and potential rewards, is emerging as a core element of the Wharton experience.

In some regards, this is nothing new. Entrepreneurship has been taught for decades at Wharton, though in the early years— the 1970s—the emphasis was more on what might today be considered “small business,” says Emily Cieri , managing director of Wharton Entrepreneurship. As the role of entrepreneurs in the modern economy advanced in the 1980s and 1990s, so, too, did the attention paid to it at Wharton. Today, says Cieri, the School’s commitment to entrepreneurship is realized through three different ways: research, teaching and co-curricular activities that encourage students to pursue real-world startup opportunities.

Much of the research occurs in the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, endowed by Edward M. Snider, chairman of Comcast-Spectacor in honor of his father and led by Wharton’s Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Ian MacMillan . Faculty members at the Center look into current issues connected to high-growth entrepreneurship, such as the role played by new technology or the effect that new financing arrangements or business models have on new-company formation.

Then, of course, there are classes. Curriculum development and teaching at Wharton are supported by the endowed Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program. Entrepreneurship is available as a concentration for undergraduates and as a major for MBAs. Classes cover the gamut of general challenges that entrepreneurs are likely to encounter—financial, managerial, marketing and legal, among others. Other courses explore specialized areas, such as the increasingly popular field of socia entrepreneurship, for students interested in applying their business school skills to help bring about social change.

The third leg of the campus’s entrepreneurship efforts, co-curricular activities, may be stronger and more diverse at Wharton than at any other business school in the country, Cieri says.

The 15-year-old Wharton Business Plan competition typically gets about 150 entries from 400 students from across the University. Students submit written business plans and also pitch them live to judges drawn from the VC and founder community. Throughout the multiphase competition, everyone involved gets feedback; a total of $115,000 worth of cash and in-kind prizes also motivate. The $30,000 Perlman Prize, endowed by Ellen Hanson Perlman and Richard E. Perlman, W’68 , goes to the top business plan. The most recent winner was ZenKars, an online automobile retailer co-founded by Jean- Mathieu Chabas and Venkat Jonnala , both WG’13 .

Editor’s note: Wharton | San Francisco is positioned in the Bay Area for a reason. Full-time Philadelphia MBA students participate in Semester in San Francisco to take advantage of that proximity to Silicon Valley and immerse in the startup scene. Watch this year’s SiSF cohort in our latest video:

Wharton Entrepreneurship’s Venture Initiation Program is designed to resemble the incubators that are popular in technology hubs like Silicon Valley and Manhattan. The program is open to up to 35 student-run startup ventures; it offers them office space from which to work and the chance to build deeper mentor relationships with faculty members and visiting entrepreneurs, as well as to gain the support of other students in the program. A complementary program at Wharton | San Francisco supports up to 10 student-led ventures.

A related activity is the Entrepreneur in Residence mentoring program, which during the school year brings in successful entrepreneurs who hold “office hours,” meeting privately for a half-hour with students who want to ask questions about their own startup ideas.

Another resource is the Wharton Venture Award, which since 2006 has given as many as five grants of $10,000 annually to students with especially promising business plans. Recipients of the award are chosen by an alumni panel of VCs and entrepreneurs. The funding allows recipients to spend the summer building their startups, without having to worry about finding an unrelated, full-time internship in order to pay the bills.

Typical of this new breed of entrepreneurial-minded Wharton student is Betty Hsu , a second-year student who is finishing her MBA while also launching ProfessorWord, an edtech startup that helps students learn vocabulary in context as they read online.

Hsu says that after earning her bachelor’s degree at Harvard, she knew she wanted to continue with an MBA, but was unsure if Wharton would be right for her startup-oriented personality.

Betty Hsu (Photo credit: Colin Lenton)

“Of course, I knew Wharton’s reputation. It is a fantastic school,” she says. “I was a little apprehensive about how useful it would be for someone interested in a startup. But I discovered it is a great place for aspiring entrepreneurs. In fact, more and more of the students are like me. It’s changing the dynamic at Wharton a lot.”

Hsu says two classes were especially helpful to her entrepreneurship endeavors. In “Communication Challenges for Entrepreneurs,” small groups of students practiced startup pitches, benefitting from feedback not only from faculty, but also from visiting entrepreneurs. “Legal Aspects of Entrepreneurship,” she says, was useful in anticipating the legal issues involved with starting a company, especially “given that we don’t have money to be hiring lawyers.”

For Wharton faculty, this increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship is not without its challenges and begs the question: Can you even teach someone to be an entrepreneur?

Raffi Amit , the Robert B. Goergen Professor of Entrepreneurship and academic director of the Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program, says that contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs don’t as a group have very much in common. For every entrepreneur who is especially risk seeking or who possesses a deep knowledge of a particular industry, Amit says, there is another who is risk averse or who has only a passing knowledge of the business field he or she is entering.

Raffi Amit (Photo credit: Colin Lenton)

“There is no single trait, or even bundle of traits, that distinguishes successful from unsuccessful entrepreneurs,” he says.

Hence Wharton’s approach, which includes research into the basic structural patterns of the new entrepreneurial economy, along with a grounding in a cross-section of basic business skills, the sort that are useful in any business setting.

“Especially at a startup, you need to be a jack of all trades,” says Amit. “Things change very rapidly, and you have to be able to embrace change if you are going to survive. There is life after the startup phase of a company, and if you are going to be successful, you are going to need the sort of robust background that will help you think about running the company.”

Which is precisely why another entrepreneur chose to get an MBA at Wharton. Davis Smith, WG’11, G’11 , co-founder at Baby.com.br, a parents-oriented e-commerce site in Brazil, recalls how he decided to attend Wharton only after making a win out of his first Web business, which involved pool tables.

“People thought I was crazy that I would go back to business school after already being a successful entrepreneur,” Smith says. “They told me that I should just take the money and use it to start my next company.

“But I saw it as an investment in myself. Wharton opened my mind to new ways of thinking, and exposed me to new ideas and new business models,” he says. “And it certainly helps with credibility. Some entrepreneurs criticize the MBA, but a lot of VCs have MBAs themselves and really respect the training.”

The entrepreneurial success of Robert Goergen, WG’62 , has earned him respect far beyond Wharton’s Philadelphia campus. Starting in the 1970s, he took a small candle company and built it into Blyth Inc. Now one of the country’s biggest home products supplier, Blyth is a publicly traded company with 4,000 employees whose IPO created 25 millionaires. That latter fact, says Goergen, is one of the reasons he is such a strong supporter of entrepreneurs—at Wharton through the Wharton Goergen Entrepreneurial Management Program and beyond.

Robert Goergen

“Entrepreneurism is what creates jobs in this country,” he explains. “The big companies are usually firing people, because they are always looking for economies. But entrepreneurs, hopefully, create growth companies, and those in turn create jobs.”

Goergen makes a point of staying in touch with other alumni and with current students, becoming part of the extensive support network that is universally regarded as one of Wharton’s most important contribution to prospective entrepreneurs.

In the case of MentorTech Ventures, that support is formal; the outfit is a traditional venture capital firm, but one that works only with faculty, students and alumni from across Penn—not just Wharton.

Why a Penn-only VC firm? Because it works, says Michael B. Aronson, W’78 , a serial entrepreneur himself before becoming managing director at MentorTech.

“I started my first company while an undergraduate, with my professor,” recalls Aronson. “The three other successful companies I started before my career as a venture capitalist had the same mix of Penn students, alumni and faculty. I recognized this as a successful strategy. There is a pretty extensive Penn network we are able to tap into.”

Among MentorTech’s greatest hits are Diapers.com, founded by Marc Lore , and sold to Amazon in 2010 for roughly $540 million, and Yodle, the Nathaniel Stevens, W’10 -founded, profitable but still-private Web marketing firm currently with a thousand employees (which Hosanagar helped grow).

Much of the other networking at Wharton is the informal, old fashioned sort, involving relationships of mutual friendship and support that often last a lifetime.

“There is already a strong entrepreneurial community at Wharton, and it keeps getting stronger” says Wharton senior Evan Rosenbaum , who is currently putting the final touches on Layers, which allows authors to bring books to life on phones, tablets and computers with simple tools. “MBAs often have business experience, and they are always willing to talk about it with undergraduates. And a growing number of undergraduates have already started businesses of their own.”

Rosenbaum, who is president and founder of the Wharton Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club, says his own company may be the best example of the power of Wharton’s extensive formal and informal entrepreneurship networks. While developing Layers, Rosenbaum participated in the Venture Initiation Program and received a Wharton Venture Award. Additionally, two of the company’s initial investors are alumni. The company is targeting independent authors as the first market it hopes to conquer, and its marquee client has a Wharton connection: Chris Maxwell , an adjunct professor of management and senior associate director of the Wharton Leadership Program. Maxwell is using the Layers platform to publish his next book on developing leadership skills.

“Layers simply wouldn’t exist without the Wharton network,” says Rosenbaum.

Layers already raised $750,000 in seed capital, a bit of early success that would come as no surprise to Hosanagar, who spends his evening “commutes” with students who want to follow the lead of Rosenbaum and others. During his evening walks with aspiring entrepreneurs, Hosanagar says, he finds that most of the business plans he hears about are sound ones.

“There is no dearth of good ideas,” he says. “The next step is execution.”

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Professional Certificate in Strategic Management

Offering high-quality products and services at competitive prices is no longer a sufficient business strategy. Increased competition and an evolving digital landscape demand more from organizations and their leaders.

Enhance your leadership capabilities and learn how to develop sustainable, successful business strategies with the Professional Certificate in Strategic Management from Wharton. Offering practical lecture knowledge and hands-on application of concepts, this program teaches you how to decrease costs, increase operational efficiencies, and improve customer experiences.

Created by world-renowned professors at the Wharton School, the Professional Certificate in Strategic Management walks you through how technology has changed the way businesses interact with customers and why this necessitates connected strategies. This program of business strategy courses is designed for managers and leaders of all industries who want to better identify, amplify, and sustain the competitive advantage of their businesses.

Why Study Strategic Management?

• 61% of senior executives admit that their companies have a hard time bridging the gap between strategic planning and implementation. 1
• Only 40% of employees strongly feel their managers comprehend the goals and strategy of their company. 2
• Only 41% of employees feel their companies have the competent personnel necessary to execute strategic initiatives. 3

1 https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/why-good-strategies-fail-report.pdf 2 http://georgejamesltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/What-Employees-Really-Think-about-Todays-Workplace.pdf 3 https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/why-good-strategies-fail-report.pdf

Program Details

Start Dates: Enroll Immediately

Duration: 6 weeks per course

Commitment: 2-4 hours per week

Program Format: 100% Online

Program Tuition: $537.30 $199 (per individual course)

READY TO START?

Professional certificate in strategic management course descriptions, business strategy from wharton: competitive advantage, course description.

Price: $199 Duration: 6 weeks Hours: 3-4/week

What sets your organization apart from others? How can you maximize and sustain its impact over time? Understanding and maintaining your competitive advantage is no small task.

Business Strategy from Wharton: Competitive Advantage will give you the tools and frameworks necessary to execute a well-designed strategy. You’ll understand the drivers and barriers of competitive advantage so you can sustain your distinct advantage. You’ll also learn how to assess the impact of your competitors’ strategies.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to enhance your strategy to maximize your competitive advantage and drive revenue growth.

Course Modules

• Analyze Your Firm’s Internal Fit
• Analyze Your Firm’s External Fit
• Maintaining Your Firm’s Dynamic Fit
• Creating New Strategies and Initiatives

Participants Will Learn How To:

• Evaluate your firm’s strategic environment
• Distinguish between organizational effectiveness and strategic positioning
• Identify barriers to organizational change and strategy implementation
• Map central and supporting firm activities, understanding how they interact with each other
• Engage in sustainable strategic management and planning

INTRODUCTION TO CONNECTED STRATEGY

Price: $199 Duration: 6 weeks Hours: 2-4/week

Technology has fundamentally changed the way businesses operate and how leaders engage in the strategic management of their firms. Understanding the customer journey has become essential to creating and executing connected strategies.

Connected Strategy examines how technology has evolved and changed the ways businesses interact with their customers. Professors Christian Terwiesch and Nicolaj Siggelkow will walk you through the connected customer experience and how connected delivery models are used in various industries. You’ll learn about connected strategy examples and analyze existing frameworks that can inform connected relationship design.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to identify, assess and implement connected strategies for your organization.

• Connected Strategy and Value Proposition
• Connected Customer Experience and Customization
• Connected Producers and Connected Strategy Matrix
• Revenue Model, Technology Infrastructure, and Disruptive Innovation
• Analyze innovation frameworks and value propositions
• Identify connected relationships and their potential for your firm
• Examine customer experiences as they relate to the greater customer journey
• Create customization strategies by leveraging positive customer feedback loops
• Develop connection architecture and connected customer relationship strategies for your business

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT CAPSTONE

You understand connected relationships, but how can you apply this knowledge to excel the strategic management of your firm?

Connected Strategy Capstone Project provides you with the necessary tools to ideate, plan and execute a connected strategy for your business. Tailored worksheets and lecture videos from Professors Siggelkow and Terwiesch will guide you through each step of connected strategy creation. The final capstone project will be a combination of your worksheets and analysis of the strategy you created.

Throughout the capstone project, you’ll be able to reflect on your organization and develop actionable strategies.

• Connected Customer Experience
• Connected Customer Experience Strategy
• Connected Delivery Model Strategy
• Apply the concepts learned in the Connected Strategy course
• Approach connected strategy planning and creation
• Move beyond traditional customer interactions to create a new business model
• Create a connected customer experience and connected delivery model for any organization
• Envision and develop a connected strategy that can be directly applied to your business

Want it all? Take the complete program for $537.30.

Key certificate program takeaways, participants will learn how to:.

• Identify business’ competitive advantages
• Amplify competitive advantages and drive profits
• Leverage connected strategies to create continuous customer relationships
• Transcend traditional forms of customer interaction and adopt new business models
• Achieve sustainable competitive advantage

Professional Certificate in Strategic Management Faculty

Christian Terwiesch

Andrew M. Heller Professor at the Wharton School Professor of Operations, Information and Decisions Professor of Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine Co-Director, Mack Institute of Innovation Management

Faculty Research Interests

He is a Professor in Wharton’s Operations, Information and Decisions department, co-director of Penn’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management, and also holds a faculty appointment In Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. His research on Operations Management and on Innovation Management appears in many of the leading academic journals ranging from Management Science to The New England Journal of Medicine. He is an award-winning teacher with extensive experience in MBA teaching and executive education.

Professor Terwiesch is the co-author of Matching Supply with Demand, a widely used text-book in Operations Management that is now in its third edition. Based on this book, Professor Terwiesch has launched the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in business on Coursera. By now, well over 250,000 students enrolled in the course.

His latest book, Innovation Tournaments, was published by Harvard Business School Press. The novel, process-based approach to innovation outlined in the book was featured by BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, and the Sloan Management Review and has lead to innovation tournaments in organizations around the world.

Professor Terwiesch has researched with and consulted for various organizations. From small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, he has helped companies become more innovative, often by implementing innovation tournament events and by helping to restructure their innovation portfolio.

Most of his current work relates to healthcare and innovation management. In the healthcare space, some of Professor Terwiesch recent projects include the design of patient centered care processes in the VA hospital system, the impact of emergency room crowding on hospital revenues and the patient experience at Penn Medicine, and the usage of patient portals and remote patient monitoring.

In addition to his teaching and his research, Professor Terwiesch is experimenting with a new career as a host of a national radio show on Sirius XM 132. Also, after 20 years of Ironman racing, he is trying to become a competitive rower, a transition that unfortunately turns out to be harder than expected.

Nicolaj Siggelkow

David M. Knott Professor Professor of Management Co-Director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management

He studied Economics at Stanford University and earned an M.A. in Economics from Harvard University. He received a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University and the Harvard Business School. Professor Siggelkow has been the recipient of multiple MBA and Undergraduate Excellence in Teaching Awards, including the Class of 1984 Award presented to the faculty member with the highest teaching rating in the MBA classroom, the Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Teaching Award, the Wharton Award, and the Wharton Graduate Association Student Choice Award. His research has been published in the leading management journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Industrial Economics, Management Science, Organization Science, and Strategic Organization. In 2008, he received the Administrative Science Quarterly Scholarly Contribution Award for the most significant paper published in ASQ five years earlier. Nicolaj is a member of the Editorial Review Boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Organization, and Academy of Management Perspectives.

His current research focuses on the strategic and organizational implications of interactions among a firm’s choices of activities and resources. In particular, his research has focused on three broad questions: How do firms develop, grow and adjust their set of activities over time? How does organizational design affect a firm’s ability to find high-performing sets of activities? What role do interactions among a firm’s activities play in creating and sustaining competitive advantage? To address these questions, he has employed a range of methodological approaches, including in-depth field studies of individual firms, econometric methods for large-scale data sets, formal modeling, and simulation models.

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Business plan template: a step-by-step guide for entrepreneurs.

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What should be in your business plan?

Creating a business plan is a key part of starting any business venture. Even if you’ll never use it in this format for attracting investors and raising capital, it can be vital for helping all entrepreneurs to ask and think through essential questions.

Nowadays business plans are used as an internal roadmap for the execution of the company since pitch decks have taken over when it comes to fundraising required materials.  For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel ( see it here ) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million ( see it here ).

Don’t skip this part of the process. Though, do not let it become a distraction and slow you down from creating an actual business either.

For key insights on the why, when and how to create a business plan, and emerging alternatives for startups versus small businesses, see my Forbes article on How To Create A Business Plan .

There are many variations of business plans today. Especially, with the rapid growth of lean startups. A few minutes on Google will provide plenty of free business plan template options. The following is adapted from the SCORE Association’s recommended outline of categories, which covers most of the bases for exactly what to include in your business plan.

Executive Summary

This is the most critical part of your business planning. If you never flesh out a full business plan, make sure you create a fantastic executive summary. This brings together all of the key elements of your plan and will often be the make or break document which decides whether commercial lenders or investors will have any interest in seeing the rest of your documentation or pursuing a relationship with you. For additional guidance, you may want to review the Executive Summary Template that I recently covered on Forbes as well.

Company Description

This section provides a further overview of your company now.

• The company purpose, mission and vision
• Company formation information
• Who the founders are
• Location and geographical markets served or where you have a presence
• Current status and stage of business
• Any notable achievements so far

Products & Services

List what products and services your company has been formed to create. How are you solving the main problem and are serving the community with your business?

• Definition of the core product or service
• Development stage
• Screenshots or diagrams
• Current pricing
• Past test results
• Anticipated future products and services you hope to develop and roll out

Marketing Plan

This is another section which is an absolute must-have, even if you never develop a fully fledged business plan in its entirety. This holds key information that all financiers and potential investors are going to want to know. Even if you hope to just get away with using a pitch deck to raise the capital you need.

This is also a vital guide for yourself as a founder, and for your growing team as to what needs to be done and how.

Every minute invested in this section can pay great dividends over the longer term.

• Competition and market research
• SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats)
• Target market research (total market size and total addressable market (TAM))
• Brand and product positioning
• Elevator pitches and tag-lines
• Target customer personas and profiles
• Results of any testing conducted so far
• Marketing channels to be used
• Marketing budget
• Estimates of cost per action (CPAs)

For further guidance on this section, you may want to review the piece on Forbes with the title How To Create A Marketing Plan . 

Operational Plan

This is your opportunity to organize and demonstrate your understanding of this industry and business.

• Facilities and space needed
• Technology needs
• Equipment needs
• Supply chain management
• Logistics and distribution plans
• Order and fulfillment processes
• Quality control checks
• Legal and accounting needs

Management & Organization

This section of your business plan will help you to identify your own needs, and demonstrate to investors and other licensing bodies and agencies that you are the team to get this job done.

It basically shows your management and industry experience and who will do what.

• Founders and executive team
• Any owners and shareholders
• Board of directors
• Consultants and special advisors
• Key team members and department heads

Financial Plan

Provide an honest snapshot of where you are and where you reasonably hope to go, providing you secure the funding you need.

• Current balance sheet
• Past 2 years’ financials if applicable
• Financial projections for 12 months, and annually through year 5
• Break even analysis
• Cash flow projections
• Income and expenses

In this section you may also be including startup cost and capitalization requirements, or funding and loan requests.

Startup costs should be thorough, have some additional cushion built in, and focus on development of physical product or intellectual property and growth. Not what you want to pay yourself as a salary.

If fundraising, be sure to include a repayment schedule for any loans, use of funds, runway to follow up fundraising rounds, and the milestones you expect to achieve by then.

Include all other information, references and required documentation here.

This will typically include:

• Articles of incorporation and status
• Resumes of founders and key team members
• Copies of insurances
• Trademarks and patent registrations
• Deeper research data or links to references

Stay Flexible

Just like your first attempt at coding a website, practicing your pitch, or riding a bike, it’s not going to be perfect. Do your best. Get outside input from an expert. Just don’t wait until you think your business plan is perfectly polished and cannot possible go any further in depth. Otherwise, chances are you will have missed your window of opportunity by a long way.

It is also crucial to understand that nothing in this document is set in stone. Pretty much everything will absolutely change over time. Roles will change, marketing will change, financial projections will change, and your product and service menu can change.

Having raised money for startups, exited them, and after interviewing many of the most successful founders and angel investors on the DealMakers Podcast , I’ve got to experience both the struggles and wins in startup life. Things change rapidly overnight and for this reason you need to adapt quickly to the market and change whatever is required. 

This is a great guide and exercise. It’s a gateway to getting to the next step. Get it done, start taking action and stay flexible.

Creating a business plan remains a valuable part of launching any new business venture. Formats and business plan templates may have evolved, and new documents like pitch decks are becoming even more important.

Though without going through this process many entrepreneurs will find they have huge gaps in their ideas and may fall short when it comes to fielding questions from serious investors. Using this template you will cover most of the bases and will be able to take the next steps with confidence.

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All Wharton single-degree undergraduate students³ must complete a minimum of 37 course units (CUs)¹ and meet the curricular requirements described below.² Students enrolled in a coordinated dual-degree program or Joseph Wharton Scholars should check with their program advisor to learn about their unique requirements. For a Wharton single-degree undergraduate student, the standard course load is 4 to 5 CUs per semester (see a sample course sequence ).

The requirements of the Wharton single-degree curriculum are delineated on the academic planning worksheet . Details about these requirements are available via the links below. Students are encouraged to see an academic advisor for any questions about the requirements of their academic program.

First-Year Foundations (3 CUs)

Economics BEPP 1000: Introduction to Economics for Business (formerly ECON 010)²

Math 1 of these courses: MATH 1070, MATH 1400, or MATH 1100 (formerly Math 104 and 110)²

Writing 1 required course: Critical Writing Seminar

Business (22 CUs)

Leadership Journey 3 required courses: WH 1010 (0.5 CU), WH 2010(0.5 CU), MGMT 3010 (0.5 CU)² 1 senior capstone course (0.5 CU)

Business Fundamentals 11 required courses: ACCT 1010 & 1020, BEPP 2500, STAT 1010 & 1020, FNCE 1000 & 1010, LGST 1000 or 1010; MGMT 1010, MKTG 1010, OIDD 1010²

Global Economy, Business, and Society 1 required CU

Technology, Innovation, and Analytics 1 required CU

Business Breadth 3 required CUs

Concentration (Business Depth) 4 required CUs

Liberal Arts & Sciences (7 CUs)

Foreign Language

Liberal Arts and Sciences 7 required CUs

Unrestricted (5 CUs)

Electives 5 required CUs

1 While many colleges and universities list the weight of their courses in credits, Penn uses a course unit (CU) system. Most courses at Penn are worth 1 CU (with the exception of lab courses, which are typically worth 1.5 CUs, and mini-courses, which are worth 0.5 CU). 2 Starting with Advance Registration in spring 2022, all course numbers are changing from 3 to 4 numbers/characters. In general, if the old course number was <100, the new course number will be the old number prefaced by a zero. If the old course number was >100, the new course number will be the old number with a zero appended to the end, e.g., FNCE 100 becomes FNCE 1000. ³ Students who entered Wharton prior to fall 2017 can find their requirements on this page .

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About Wharton

The world’s first business school, for more than 135 years, wharton has been the place where visionaries, inventors, and trailblazers get their start..

In 1881, American entrepreneur and industrialist Joseph Wharton established the world’s first collegiate school of business at the University of Pennsylvania — a radical idea that revolutionized both business practice and higher education.

Since then, the Wharton School has continued innovating to meet mounting global demand for new ideas, deeper insights, and  transformative leadership. We blaze trails, from the nation’s first collegiate center for entrepreneurship in 1973 to our latest research centers in alternative investments and neuroscience.

Our strategic plan guiding us towards greater influence, innovation, and engagement.

5,063 Students Spread Across Four Degree Programs

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199 Doctoral Students

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Since 2015 more than 200,000 certificates earned from wharton online., 241 standing faculty spread across 10 departments.

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243 Non-Standing Faculty Members (Full- and Part-time)

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2024-2025 Wharton MBA Essay Tips and Example Essays

Jun 17, 2024

• Who is Wharton looking for?
• How should I answer Wharton essay questions?
• Get into the Wharton MBA
• Wharton Deadlines

UPDATE : This article was originally posted on July 10, 2018. It has been updated with new information and tips below.

In 1881, Joseph Wharton started the world’s first collegiate business school. In the more than 100 years since, Wharton has maintained its position as one of the world’s top destinations for talented business professionals. 

With numerous opportunities (many of them overseas) to develop your leadership skills and build relationships with fellow students, Wharton offers a highly challenging yet highly collaborative approach to business education. 

However, with increasing competition to join this innovative, collaboratively-minded university, it’s more difficult than ever to successfully apply to Wharton. 

That’s why we’ve prepared this guide to help you use your Wharton admissions essays to stand out . We’ve rounded up our best tips and links to Wharton MBA sample essays to ensure you give your Haas application your best shot.

1. Who is Wharton looking for?

“Our mission is to develop leaders who act with a deeper understanding of themselves, their organizations, and their communities, and contribute positively to the growth of each.” Wharton Admissions

As one of the most consistently top-ranked business schools, Wharton has become almost synonymous with elite business education. With a strong focus on innovation and their unique Lauder dual-degree program in international studies and Health Care Major , it’s no surprise that Wharton is at the top of many applicants’ lists of dream schools. 

Each year, Wharton selects just under 900 students from 70 countries to take part in its two-year program. Though there is no one “perfect” type of Wharton student, the university does favor high test scores. The median GMAT for the Class of 2025 was 728 (slightly down from 733 for last year’s class) and the average GRE score was 162 Quant, 162 Verbal.  

Though often called a “finance factory,” Wharton builds a diverse class each year by looking beyond traditional investment banking professionals to fill its class. In fact, the number of Wharton post-MBA graduates breaking into industries like tech has only increased over the past few years. With the launch of Tangen Hall last year, that number is only likely to continue growing. 

Beyond the numbers, Wharton tends to value students who demonstrate a collaborative personality, leadership potential, global mindset, and an ability to think outside the box and innovate. 

If this sounds like a community in which you’d be right at home, you’ll first have to prove you’ve got what it takes by successfully answering Wharton’s admissions essay questions. 

2. How should I answer Wharton essay questions?

2.1. essay 1.

Essay 1: How do you plan to use the Wharton MBA program to help you achieve your future professional goals? You might consider your past experience, short and long-term goals, and resources available at Wharton. (500 words)

Before starting, you might want to review the tips the Wharton admissions committee gives on how to approach the essays. 

In this essay, you have a big task. In around 500 words , you need to discuss:

• Context for your goals
• Your specific-post MBA goals and why you are pursuing them at this moment
• Why you believe an MBA is necessary to reach these goals
• How a Wharton MBA will help you reach these goals

Each of these elements must be included and must build off of each other. 

First of all, many candidates think they do not need to specifically state their goals, or that it’s better to leave “their options open.” If you are applying to elite business schools, however, you must have and present absolute clarity about your goals. 

TOP TIP : If you’re having trouble figuring out what your post-MBA goals are, we’ve prepared this post to help you decipher this essential part of the application process! 

However, goals without context can be a little confusing to decipher or understand (or they can just seem a bit lackluster). For this reason, we suggest starting your essay with context. 

For example, a client last year initially started his essay by saying: 

“I want to become a Business Development Director at a Brazilian company.”

While interesting, it’s better to give a little bit of context to help these goals come to life. Check out the final version of the same essay’s introduction:

“In the 1970s, the phrase “think global, act local” came into use, suggesting that to have global impact, one must be active locally. With this mindset, I focused my career on Brazilian multinational companies to start creating global change at home. While at Company 1, I led a diverse global team, which showed me that clear communication is essential. I later accepted a finance position at a real estate company where I learned how new technologies can impact traditional local industries and that leaders must adapt to these trends to maintain competitiveness. Most recently, I joined Company 2 to participate in its daring globalization plan. At Company 2, I have learned how challenging it is to formulate effective global strategies to thrive in diverse markets. I have also developed management skills since becoming Financial Coordinator, learning how important establishing a culture of collaboration is to providing stability for organizations.

I now seek to take the next step to becoming a “global” leader by becoming Business Development Director at a Brazilian company pursuing globalization, giving me the experience to assume my long-term goal of CEO of one such company.”

Second, you should clearly demonstrate why you need an MBA. 

An MBA is not a catch-all degree that serves a purpose for all career paths. As such, you need to demonstrate that the goals you have set for yourself require the additional training an MBA can provide. 

Be thoughtful about this particular section. If you don’t need to improve in any meaningful way, you might be presenting the argument the admissions committee needs for why you can’t actually benefit from an MBA. 

Furthermore, if you show fluffy or unsupported reasons you need to hone your skills, you’ll also likely see your application tossed aside in favor of an applicant who was able to clearly demonstrate how they plan to leverage their time at business school. 

Third, add how Kellogg can specifically help you grow in the areas you’ve identified. Mentioning that you want to go to Kellogg because of its ranking will not cut it here. 

Instead, show that you understand the unique offerings Wharton’s curriculum provides (I highly suggest you mention the pathway or major you’re interested in) and have done significant, thoughtful research into how the opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom can help you grow. If you have space, it’s also highly recommended that you mention how you can contribute to the community. 

End with a winning conclusion statement that reinforces your personal brand and ties the whole essay together. 

Need more guidance? 

Our MBA Resource Center has dozens of Wharton MBA essays that worked to get our clients admitted to help you plan out a winning Wharton essay. 

Our library also includes guides for all top global MBA programs, detailed essay brainstorms, interview tips and mocks, CV templates, and recommendation letter guides. Click to join ! 

2.2. Essay 2

Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to make specific, meaningful contributions to the Wharton community? (400 words)

For this essay, we highly suggest that you focus on multiple examples. In our experience over the years, 3 ways you plan to contribute tends to work best, though we have seen essays with 2 examples and 4 examples work in very special circumstances.  

There are many different ways you can contribute to the Wharton community, so many different stories and “lessons” you can apply at Wharton are valid here.  

For example, if you have worked extensively as part of an international team, highlighting a specific experience where diversity was the key to “winning the day” and showing how you would promote diversity while at Wharton could work very well. 

Or, you might have a specific ability that has proven valuable in analyzing business challenges, might be an outstanding communicator, etc. There really are endless opportunities for this essay. 

When telling your stories, make sure to use the STAR method to ensure you clearly demonstrate what happened, your role in the events, and what you learned. Then, link this lesson to specific resources and opportunities at Wharton, showing how you will improve the overall community. 

To create an amazing essay, stay focused, do your research on Wharton, and choose your examples wisely. Showing you’re a leader and team player who fully understands the Wharton experience and who is prepared to contribute to the Wharton community is the key to success. 

2.3. Reapplicant Essay

Required Essay for All Reapplicants: Please use this space to share with the Admissions Committee how you have reflected [on] and grown since your previous application and discuss any relevant updates to your candidacy (e.g., changes in your professional life, additional coursework, and extracurricular/volunteer engagements). (250 words)

We have written two extensive posts on how to approach reapplying to business school and on how to handle the reapplicant essay . Make sure to check them out!

2.4. Optional Essay

Optional Essay: Please use this space to share any additional information about yourself that cannot be found elsewhere in your application and that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee. This space can also be used to address any extenuating circumstances (e.g., unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance, areas of weakness, etc.) that you would like the Admissions Committee to consider.

As with nearly all elite business schools, Wharton does not want to see a summary of your profile or a restatement of why you want to attend Wharton. 

However, if you have extenuating circumstances that merit additional explanation (a good overview of what kind of circumstances quality can be found here ), make sure to explain them clearly and directly. 

Looking for Wharton MBA essay examples? Check out our real sample essays that got our clients admitted here .

3. Get into the Wharton MBA

One of the most common mistakes we see in MBA essays is that candidates fail to tell compelling stories . This is important because if your stories are not compelling, they will not be persuasive. At the same time, they must be backed by strong examples that establish a track record of success and prove to the admissions committees why you belong at their school. 

Striking this balance between content and creativity can be tough, however, as succeeding means not only choosing the right stories but ensuring they are told in an optimal manner. 

This is why our iterative developmental feedback process here at Ellin Lolis Consulting helps you mold your message through the application of our storytelling expertise until it reflects exactly what makes your profile stand out and show fit with your target program.   

Not only can you take advantage of our iterative feedback process through multiple edits – you can also benefit from it after a single review! If your budget is tight, our editors will be happy to help polish your text as much as possible and leave “bonus comments” so you can keep working on it on your own!

No matter how long we work with you, we will always ensure your essays shine . Sign up to work with our team of storytelling experts and get accepted.

4. Wharton Deadlines

The deadlines below apply to the 2024-2025 application cycle. You can start your online application here . 

Wharton Round 1 Deadlines

Application Deadline : September 4, 2024

Interview Notification : October 24, 2024

Decisions Released : December 10, 2024

Wharton Round 2 Deadlines

Application Deadline : January 3, 2025

Interview Notification : February 19, 2025

Decisions Released : April 1, 2025

Wharton Round 3 Deadlines

Application Deadline : April 2, 2025

Interview Notification : April 18, 2025

Decisions Released : May 13, 2025

Wharton Deferred Admissions Deadlines

Application Deadline : April 23, 2025

Interview Notification : May 29, 2025

Decisions Released : July 1, 2025

Real MBA Essays That Got People In

School-specific sample essays that got our clients accepted

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The Wharton Business Plan Competition: Can You Pick the Winner?

May 26, 2016 • 23 min read.

At this year’s Wharton Business Plan Competition, one team took home more prizes than any predecessor. Check out the field of finalists – and make your guess for the winner.

Each year, the Venture Finals of the Wharton Business Plan Competition pits eight tried-and-tested teams of students from throughout the University of Pennsylvania against each other. Winnowed from a much larger field of applicants, the “Great Eight” vie for the votes of a panel of judges for $125,000 in combined cash prizes and services.

Finalists this year presented products and services including, among others plans, “smart-ranch” analytics provided by automated drones; the “Uber of personal training”; a company offering genetically modified bacteria that can break down plastic waste either completely or to a point where the byproduct can be sold to textiles manufacturers; and a curated platform for investment in Africa’s growing middle-class real estate market.

This was the competition’s 18 th year, and it won’t soon be forgotten — one team took home more prizes than any predecessor. The finals also were streamed live online, as were the two-minute elevator pitches for the Michelson People’s Choice Award, for which the digital audience was allowed to vote.

The six-month competition featured 150 venture concepts, with more than 350 individual participants from six schools at Penn. Judges cut the field to 25 semifinalists, each of which chose one of three industry tracks: health care, technology and other.

Each finalist had 10 minutes to pitch to the judges — who represented Karlin Asset Management, Golden Seeds, Jet.com, ExamWorks Group, the University City Science Center, and Gilt and Hudson’s Bay Company — followed by 10 minutes of follow-up questions.

Here, in alphabetical order, are descriptions of the eight finalists’ business plans. Which would you choose? At the end of the article, learn how your pick compares with the BPC panel’s choices.

Barn Owl Systems: More than 40% of the United States is rangeland used for livestock, and the top concern of the ranchers who tend to them is ensuring an adequate supply of water. So says Josh Phifer, a Wharton MBA student who was raised on a Wyoming ranch and knows first-hand of the profession’s most time- and capital-consuming tasks.

The average ranch spans 30 square miles and has about 1,500 livestock. Every day, the rancher checks the water levels of his or her 20 to 30 water tanks.

“They drive around or get on their horse and check it,” said Vincent Kuchar, also a Wharton MBA student. “Every day.”

Such infrastructure monitoring is costly and inefficient, which is where Barn Owl Systems comes in.

Phifer also is an experienced Air Force instructor and test pilot with a background in leading aerospace test programs. Kuchar has operated dozens of small drones and has experience integrating sensors and drones into wireless networks.

Along with their Penn-educated engineering team, they provide the software that drives the system’s value. The drones are autonomous, collecting imagery of livestock and natural resources. Persistent sensor monitoring tracks water levels. GPS-enabled ear tags provide real-time locations of livestock. Altogether, Barn Owl offers custom analytics for management of rangeland and livestock.

The United States’ roughly 77,000 ranches account for a $92.5 billion livestock industry, and it’s growing annually by 8.7%. Barn Owl’s addressable market, Kuchar said, is $3.7 billion, comprising water monitoring ($117 million), ranch monitoring ($600 million) and agriculture analytics ($3 billion). Barn Owl’s revenue model includes hardware sales, an annual fee for hardware maintenance and an annual subscription for software and data.

They intend to establish a foothold by distributing water tank sensors and a corresponding smartphone application to all ranches at no cost to ranchers. With that, Barn Owl will have a network of clients who can tap one another, for example, during droughts, shifting livestock to regional ranches with abundant resources.

BioCellection: It began as a high-school science fair project for Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, best friends from Vancouver. They entered a biotechnology competition with a proposal about the biodegradation of plastics, won a national prize and were invited in 2013 to speak at a TED conference.

With two provisional patents for genetically engineered bacteria that eat waste plastics, the co-founders of BioCellection say they’ve found a $42 billion opportunity.

Wang, a Penn undergraduate student, framed plastics pollution as a global crisis — exposure to chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA), she noted, is highly correlated with diseases such as prostate and breast cancer. And despite efforts to keep plastics from spending an eternity in landfills, more than 90% of post-consumer plastics are not being recycled.

BioCellection’s bacteria consume polystyrene waste 80 times faster than naturally occurring bacteria. “Using this technology,” Wang said, “we can either break down plastic pollution completely, or we can actually turn plastic pollution into a higher value material.”

That, she said, is the core of what can make BioCellection a $100 million business in four years. The proprietary bacterium can convert, say, a Styrofoam cup into non-toxic carbon dioxide and water. By altering the process by which the bacteria are grown, they can produce a high-value compound called rhamnolipid.

“That means the same bacterium, this one technology, yields two revenue streams: one for a highly valued product, and another for a bioremediation service,” Wang said.

BioCellection’s rhamnolipid byproducts are cheaper and of lower purity than what the textiles industry currently uses to process fabrics. Conventional rhamnolipids are priced at $5,000 per kilogram; BioCellection’s version is $300 per kilogram. That’s a potential boon for the textiles industry, which doesn’t require the high-purity versions used in the saturated markets of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and foods.

For the complete breakdown of plastics, BioCellection will park an onsite mobile processor on beaches, in malls, in recycling centers and waste stations.

“This technology right now is non-existent,” Wang said. “We are inventing this, and this is the first one in the world. The opportunity for breaking down plastic pollution around the world is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and is completely untapped.”

“This technology right now is non-existent. We are inventing this, and this is the first one in the world.” –Miranda Wang

The company is focusing at first on China — once BioCellection has demonstrated prototype feasibility, it can qualify for funding by the Chinese government to the tune of $20 million toward the completion of product trials. Competitors for the funding tend to produce “green plastics,” which doesn’t solve the existing pollution problem.

At pilot scale, Wang said, BioCellection can generate $240,000 a week in rhamnolipid production alone. That’s possible, in part, because sourcing ocean plastics for use in clothing, Yao said, is increasingly popular.

“The implication of this technology succeeding,” Wang said, “is tremendous.” (To read an additional interview with Wang, see our Knowledge at Wharton High School article, “ Biotech Innovation That Breaks Down Plastic and Feeds the Fish .”)

brEDcrumb: Scott Elfenbein went to a large public high school in Miami where more than 50% of his class was Hispanic and more than 30% was black. Most of the students qualified for free lunches. And despite the fact that he and his best friend, Juan Gomez, shared similar academic attributes — they ranked 16 th and 15 th , respectively, in their class; carried GPAs of 3.97 and 3.98; and scored 2250 and 2220 on the SAT — Elfenbein, whose family’s annual income was about $100,000, went to Harvard, whereas Gomez, whose family’s annual income was about $25,000, went to a community college.

His friend, a first-generation college student who worked after school to support his family, had no home computer and didn’t apply to top schools due to cost. Both of Elfenbein’s parents had master’s degrees, and he was able to take an SAT preparatory class. The schools to which they applied saw none of those facts.

Every year, Elfenbein said, 1.5 million of the 3.3 million college-ready high school students will undermatch — they either won’t go to the college best suited for them, or they won’t attend any college.

“When you are underrepresented and underserved,” said Elfenbein, a Wharton graduate student, “you don’t actually have steps to follow; you have obstacles. Finding a fee waiver is incredibly hard. If you’re in a community where no one has ever gone to college, it’s incredibly stressful to find a way to actually go through the application process.”

Academic institutions, meanwhile, have related problems — they’re spending $6 billion a year inefficiently recruiting high schoolers at $2,300 per enrollee, and still they miss 40% of the market. Despite intentions to find underserved students, Elfenbein said, universities aren’t meeting their goals for diversity.

He and his Penn-educated team created a platform called brEDcrumb to connect college hopefuls with volunteer undergraduates, young professionals or graduate students who have shared backgrounds. The technology provides deadline reminders, cloud storage for application materials, simplified financial aid forms, access to prep resources and automated fee waiver claims. The volunteer, which the company calls a role model, provides the applicant guidance in essay-writing, scholarships and navigating college.

More than 400 people already have joined brEDcrumb’s ranks of volunteers, which Elfenbein said is a result of “tapping into their identity” — if a potential mentor feels geographically, ethnically or socio-economically underrepresented, that person might feel inclined to lend a hand to a hopeful student who shares a similar background.

The platform streamlines the work of admissions officers, who he said typically get only an email address and a mailing address for a prospective student who has met certain criteria. To ensure that brEDcrumb is building a viable product, the company has consulted with admissions officers in Philadelphia and Boston.

“We’ve built a product for admissions officers by admissions officers,” Elfenbein said. Funding has followed, from Penn, the University of Chicago, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This summer, brEDcrumb through its pilot program intends to send 100 students to college. Next year, the goal is 400 to 500. At scale, the company expects that total to reach 250,000 students per year. Universities are willing to spend $2,300 to land each student, and brEDcrumb’s costs will be $800 for each. That’s a 65% gross margin, and at scale it would yield a $375-million-per-year gross profit.

After his friend finished community college, Elfenbein helped him daily in applying to four-year schools. Gomez earned a full ride to Georgetown University and, last fall, he was admitted to Wharton.

Daylight OB, LLC: Every year, there are 300,000 emergency second-stage Cesarean section deliveries in the United States alone. The procedure is necessary when the baby is in distress, when the mother is so tired she no longer can push, or when the baby becomes impacted in the birth canal. An arrest of descent often renders the surgeon unable to deliver the baby through the uterine incision because the baby already has progressed far down the birth canal.

Christina Wray, a Wharton graduate student also in line for an M.D., encountered such a predicament during a labor-and-delivery rotation.

“At this point,” she said, “I had to actually get down on my hands and knees, crawl under the sterile drapes, and then use my hands to push the baby back up through the birth canal into the uterus so that it could be delivered.”

Such is the standard of care, Wray said, despite associations with serious outcomes for all parties. The baby faces an increased risk of skull fracture, intracranial hemorrhage, asphyxia and death. The mother is six times more likely to sustain trauma of the lower uterine segment and has a 50% increased risk of extension of the uterine incision. She’s also nine times more likely to experience a procedure that lasts longer than 90 minutes. All of these factors, due to increased blood loss and infection rates, can extend the patient’s length of stay.

Wray and four colleagues launched the medical-device company Daylight OB, LLC, to improve conditions in labor and delivery units. Its first product is a disposable obstetrics device, called Daylight, used to reposition a baby for an urgent cesarean delivery. It’s a simple, injection-molded device that has a curved handle on one end and a disk-shaped silicone cushion on the other. To use it, an assistant gently applies pressure to the baby’s head and steadily pushes the baby back into the uterus, where it can be delivered through the incision.

As they interviewed more than 50 physicians about their first product to validate the market need and to gather ideas about design improvements, the Penn-educated team, led by Wharton graduate student Neil Bansal, often was asked if it would consider developing other obstetrics devices. The team realized it could leverage what it had learned about the regulatory, intellectual property, manufacturing and commercialization processes for additional devices.

At $150 each, the Daylight would enjoy a shortened hospital approval process, would remain under the reimbursement umbrella of a cesarean procedure and would face no negotiations with payers. The company’s first targets are obstetricians at the nation’s 10 highest-volume hospitals.

Our Frontier Crowd: Wharton graduate student Greg Hagin is bullish on African real estate. He and four colleagues — three of whom, like Hagin, are candidates for an Executive MBA — are building an investment platform that taps into the flow of capital.

“As we know,” Hagin said, “Africa represents the growth story of our time. It’s where investment is moving in terms of infrastructure, development, roads, power, water — it is the economic buildout of our generation.”

Our Frontier Crowd is focusing on the middle-class housing markets of select countries, particularly Nigeria, South Africa and Cameroon, where middle-class incomes have been growing significantly during the past five years.

Major American investors are interested in such opportunities, Hagin said, but “there’s an overhang of unused capital in the system, over $4 billion alone in private equity monies that have been raised have not been invested on the continent at this time.”

The issue, he said, comes down to trust and confidence with local operating partners.

Our Frontier Crowd has consulted with the United Nations; the Canadian government; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; Brian Trelstad, the former chief investment officer of the Acumen Fund; and Dick Henriques, the former CFO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“There’s a striking common theme related to a lack of trust, confidence and the need for local operating partnerships,” Hagin said.

That’s where the purveyors of Our Frontier Crowd see its opportunity — they want to provide a residential real estate platform dedicated to investment opportunities in Africa. They want to connect African real-estate developers and potential home-buyers with foreign investors.

Part of that equation is team member Aristide Toundzi, originally from Cameroon. He has an extensive local network and a family of builders and developers. He is a bridge to local trust.

Part of the equation is mobile technology — desktop computers aren’t necessary when 4G wireless is available. Local users of Our Frontier Crowd can validate, reject or co-invest in the carefully vetted projects on the platform.

“It’s an added layer of due diligence for our properties,” Hagin said, and it sends a strong signal to potential foreign investors regarding quality and risk.

He cited a scalable market opportunity of $181 billion and anticipated revenue of more than $75 million by 2020, with earnings approaching $30 million.

“Africa represents the growth story of our time. It’s where investment is moving in terms of infrastructure, development, roads, power, water — it is the economic buildout of our generation.” –Greg Hagin

“A lot of people are salivating about the opportunity in Africa,” Toundzi, a Wharton executive MBA student, said. “A lot of people will lose a lot of money. We will leverage our networks. It’s really through those connections that we can understand who, between Developer A and B, is a good person to work with.”

Qorum: While working in technology and nightlife with his last venture, Andrew Pietra, a Wharton graduate student raised in Southern California, grew frustrated with liquor companies’ “Drink Responsibly” ad campaigns. He found them to be poorly targeted, squandering hundreds of millions of dollars as they glamorized partying and placed the burden of responsibility on the consumer.

On-demand ride services, meanwhile, had taken the nation by storm. Pietra, who said he lost several friends to drinking and driving, thought there might be a way to have alcohol brands sponsor rides home from bars. With Qorum, he believes he has a solution.

Alcohol brands want to target millennials. They also spend mandated “Drink Responsibly” dollars. Qorum helps alcohol brands sponsor up to 10,000 free Uber rides home from bars per month. In exchange for guaranteed product placement and distribution throughout a network of bars, participating brands will pick up the fare. Qorum gets 10% of the value of each ride.

A suite of mobile apps, along with point-of-sale integration, also can be a boon to bars. When a participating bar wants to increase traffic, it can increase a discount to, say, 20%. Qorum’s platform automatically starts delivering thousands of customized social media ads to non-Qorum users nearby. As new customers arrive, the bar can view relevant information — how often they visit, how long they stay, how much they spend and how they rate competing bars.

“The data that they have now is so terrible,” Pietra said. “When I was in college, I used to go to [a market research company], and they’d pay me $25, and there’d be six other kids. We’re 21 — the liquor companies want to know what we’re doing. They’d ask us survey questions — what’s your favorite spirit, what brand — and everyone’s lying. Everyone says, ‘Oh, I like Grey Goose.’ No you don’t. That’s not what you drink. And so this actually gives them real data that can tell them, what does this 26-year-old male drink when he’s in Los Angeles versus when he’s on vacation in Miami?”

The data help Qorum identify a bar’s customers with the highest lifetime value and “retarget them daily on social media to keep them coming back.” Aggregated user data and customer feedback are displayed on a dashboard within the app. A bar’s owner can explore his or her best customers based on factors such as age, gender and location. The software learns which customers are most likely to become loyal patrons, and it delivers the appropriate ads. Qorum has 26 bar partners, Pietra said, in its launch market of Southern California.

QTEK: Have you ever wondered, Wharton graduate student Mengya Li asked, if the toilet seat you just sat on was clean? How about that sticky handle on the subway car? Or the visibly worn baby-changing station?

Bacteria and fungi can grow anywhere, and where they thrive, infections can spread from person to person. Plastics companies use three types of antimicrobial additives — organic compounds, ionic silver or other metals — to counter this. Those options, Li said, are inadequate.

Organic compounds, which account for 67% of market share, contain toxic chemicals that consumers have been avoiding for many years. Over the past couple of years, she said, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies have banned the use of most organic compounds in human-interaction applications.

Ionic silver and other metals, she said, are expensive, ineffective and bad for the environment.

Li and her company, QTEK, have a solution. Their first product is Surfion, an ionic copper-based antimicrobial powder additive that is mixed into the plastic — one application, with no required maintenance. The material and process are patented. And they’re working on new applications.

“In fresh produce packaging,” Li said, “it can keep delicious strawberries and mushrooms fresh for much longer. It can prevent mold growth in your own bathroom. Used on school desks or toys, it can prevent infections spreading from one child to the next.”

QTEK will supply the raw material to chemical and plastics companies, which in turn serve consumer, industrial and medical needs.

Surfion, Li said, protects against bacteria and fungi; organic compounds and ionic silver cover only bacteria. Surfion’s patented technology allows its active ingredient to be released over 13 years; organic compounds and ionic silver aren’t durable for even a year. Surfion’s price, $50 per kilogram, is less than half the $120 of ionic silver.

“This is an existing market valued at $4 billion today and growing at a rate of 10% every year,” she said.

QTEK, Li said, has received more than 60 requests for samples of Surfion and is in production trials with several Fortune 500 companies. Stricter regulations, she said, make North American plastics companies QTEK’s first target.

WeTrain: Jonathan Sockol and Zach Hertzel bounded into the auditorium of Huntsman Hall, trailed by a dozen people who clapped in syncopation and flanked the aisles. All were fit, and all wore the t-shirt of the pair’s venture, a company that bills itself as the “Uber of personal training.”

“In fresh produce packaging, [Surfion] can keep delicious strawberries and mushrooms fresh for much longer. It can prevent mold growth in your own bathroom. Used on school desks or toys, it can prevent infections spreading from one child to the next.” –Mengya Li

Sockol, a Wharton graduate student, spoke of losing 60 pounds and feeling energized, then lamented the cost of hiring a personal trainer — nationally, gyms charge an average of $60 per session. Hertzel, a master trainer and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was a medic in the U.S. Army, spoke of frustrations from the trainer’s perspective — of that $60 average session, the trainer typically sees no more than $15. That, he said, contributes to a high burnout rate among trainers.

Personal training is a $40 billion market, with 700,000 daily sessions in the United States, and the founders of WeTrain say they’ve created an opportunity that will benefit both trainers and their clients.

The service, which charges $49.95 monthly for access to reduced rates and $99.95 for even more perks, offers its members training sessions for as low as $15 per half-hour. The company keeps the membership fees; the trainers keep the member client’s entire session fee. WeTrain also offers single-serving sessions ($29.95 for 30 minutes, $49.95 for 60), of which trainers keep $15 and $25, respectively.

WeTrain says its personal trainers and yoga, pilates and cycling instructors can train clients anywhere, anytime, with or without gym equipment. They can visit in-person or virtually, via live video chat in which they offer guidance as the client practices.

To request an immediate session or to schedule one (80%-85% of sessions thus far, Sockol said, have been scheduled in advance), a user of the mobile app chooses a start time, selects either a 30- or 60-minute session and focal area (i.e. core, cardio, strength, flexibility), and confirms his or her location.

All instructors are certified, insured, have background checks and interview with the training team. A ratings system adds a layer of popular vetting.

“We are really redistributing the power from the gym to the trainers,” Sockol said.

Within three months of WeTrain’s first push of mainstream marketing, its more than 100 trainers had led more than 1,000 sessions within the Center City launch’s three-mile radius. It recently signed a $30,000 contract with a residential community.

And the Winner is …

BioCellection won the Perlman Grand Prize, which includes $30,000 and opportunities to represent The Wharton School/University of Pennsylvania at other business plan competitions. It was the first undergraduate team to win the Grand Prize.

It also was the first team in BPC history to win five total awards. BioCellection took the Wharton Social Impact Prize ($10,000), the Gloeckner Undergraduate Award ($10,000), the Michelson People’s Choice Award ($3,000) and the Committee Award for Most “Wow Factor” ($1,000).

Wang and her team, which officially launched BioCellection last May, secured another $60,000 in investments during the two weeks immediately following the competition. She said the company is “well on our way to closing our $400,000 Series 1 Bridge Round because of the exposure we’ve received” through the competition. Plastics manufacturers in China and the United States have contacted BioCellection for opportunities to collaborate.

Luke Chow, for example, owns a Maryland-based plastic-injection company, Prime Manufacturing Technologies. He attended the finals with BioCellection in mind; this summer, Wang said, Chow will produce, on a small scale, different types of plastics for laboratory use. He also will connect the BioCellection team with U.S.-based experts in plastic polymer science.

Michael Chea, meanwhile, expressed interest from a fashion perspective — he spoke with the team about building a textiles manufacturing center in Philadelphia, and those discussions will continue.

For now, BioCellection is moving to its own lab at the San Jose BioCube. There, Wang and her team will work with two companies to develop BioCellection’s tech and business. Wang will visit China to form early partnerships with outsource manufacturers, to make early contacts with government agencies, to gather scientific data from contaminated beaches and to find a market entry point for bioremediation. Within six months, she said, they will hire a full-time genetic engineer and file their first non-provisional patent.

Second prize ($15,000) went to brEDcrumb. Third prize ($10,000) went to WeTrain, which at 2015’s Venture Finals won the Committee Choice award.

Each of the top three prize winners also will receive up to $10,000 of in-kind legal services and $5,000 of in-kind accounting services.

Qorum won the Committee Award for Best Pitch ($1,000), and Barn Owl won the Committee Award for Best Use of Technology ($1,000).

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