Fun and games as well as serious intern business

WHARTON DIARY:Venture capital job prospects may be grim but there are lots of good things happening, writes GARETH KEANE

THERE IS a sense of urgency starting to make itself felt in many of my classmates – the lucky people with summer internship offers are relaxed; those of us still looking for a job are feeling the pressure.

I spent a few days in San Jose earlier this month trying to remedy this situation, visiting venture capital firms with a group of Wharton students. The conversations with VCs were all very interesting, but not terribly productive from the point of view of securing a job.

Our group did get to visit a good mix of firms, ranging from big to small and from early- to late-stage funds. Their predictions for the VC industry were almost universally pretty grim. Most of the firms we talked to estimated that the total pool of capital available to them would decrease by a significant percentage over the next few years as investors redistribute their wealth to reflect the new macro-economic realities.

One of the firms we visited was Sequoia Capital, which was a great experience. One of their slides showed that companies backed by Sequoia make up close to 12 per cent of the total value of the Nasdaq, which is a pretty impressive statistic.

My trip west also gave me a chance to catch up with some people I know who are doing intriguing things in that part of the world. I met a friend from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business who is working for an algae biofuel company and will be joining them full-time once he has finished his MBA.

Another friend has taken a leave of absence from his MIT PhD program and is working on a startup in Palo Alto. In the midst of all the bad economic news from home, I feel it bodes well for the future of Ireland that we still have driven, talented people doing exciting things.

Besides trying to cope with the usual career and academic pressure, Wharton students have also been doing their best to have fun.

In the past week we have been treated to the annual Wharton Follies, an entirely student-driven production that provided some welcome comic relief to take our minds off the job market. Students produced and starred in a series of comic songs and sketches that mocked many of the student body, the Wharton administration, the school, other business schools and the world in general.

My favourite was a song set to the music of O Fortuna on the theme of the worldwide economic crisis. Truly terrifying, yet at the same time very funny.

In a nice counterpoint to the comic take on current events provided by Follies, we also got a chance to hear Paul Krugman speak on the financial crisis.

It was a great opportunity to hear the current Nobel Laureate in economics share his insights into how the world economy got to where it is, and how it might evolve from this point.

The next major social event on the Wharton calendar is “Philly Fight Night”, a charity event that sees Wharton students boxing with graduate students from other schools at the University of Pennsylvania, with all proceeds going to local Philadelphia non-profits. There are three Irish students in the first-year MBA class, and one of us will be fighting at the event. Donal has boxed before, so we’re expecting great things from him.

The three of us have also become involved with a student-led initiative to increase the profile of Wharton in both Ireland and Europe in general.

While the Wharton MBA program is well recognised by things like the Financial Times MBA rankings, the value and benefit of the Wharton MBA can sometimes be hard for Europeans to quantify when balancing it against the opportunities available in Europe.

One of the ways that we have come up with to help publicise the school and the MBA program involves leveraging something called Knowledge@Wharton. This is a free resource providing access to the research and thinking coming out of Wharton’s strong academic community, somewhat similar to the Harvard Business Review.

The content is used by many business publications around the world, so I encourage anyone who is interested to check it out – you can find it at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/

Gareth Keane, from Moycullen, Co Galway, is studying for an MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennslvanisa.