Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

How Do You Evaluate and Encourage Start-ups?

Wed, September 13, 2017
Dinner Program
Steven N. Kaplan

Steven N. Kaplan, professor of finance and entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, will talk about the framework he uses to evaluate start-ups and his related research on venture capital. Using this singular approach has helped spawn over one hundred companies and created over $4 billion in market value from companies including GrubHub and Braintree/Venmo.

Steven N. Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Thomas Cole Distinguished Visiting Professor Chair at the University of Chicago Law School. He is also the faculty director of the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Kaplan is one of the world’s foremost researchers on private equity, venture capital, corporate governance, executive talent, and income inequality. His papers on private equity and venture capital are the standard references in the field. His findings and opinions regularly appear in the business media. Kaplan also serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Kaplan teaches advanced MBA, law, and executive courses in entrepreneurial finance and private equity, corporate financial management, corporate governance, and wealth management. His course in entrepreneurial finance and private equity is consistently among the most popular at Chicago Booth and he is consistently ranked as one of the top teachers of entrepreneurship in the country. Kaplan has been awarded the Phoenix Award four times and the Arthur Kelly Prize twice for exhibiting exceptional dedication to his students outside of the classroom. 

Co-founder of the entrepreneurship program at Booth, he helped start Booth’s business plan competition, the New Venture Challenge (NVC). The NVC has spawned over one hundred companies which collectively have raised over $500 million from investors and have created over $4 billion in market value. Companies include GrubHub (market cap $3+ billion), Braintree/Venmo (sold to eBay for $800 million), Base CRM, Bump (sold to Google), MedSpeed, Rise Interactive, and Simple Mills. NVC was rated the top university accelerator program in the U.S. as well as one of the top eight accelerators of any kind in the U.S. in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Kaplan also helped start Hyde Park Angels which was named one of the top ten angel groups in the U.S. He serves on the boards of Morningstar (MORN) and Zayo Group (ZAYO). He also serves on the advisory boards of Correlation Ventures, Global eProcure, NextGen Growth Partners, Uptake and Vistria Group.

Kaplan earned his Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University and received his AB, summa cum laude, in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard College.

Professor Kaplan’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Financial Economics Institute (FEI) and the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), both at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Steven Kaplan

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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