We hear a lot about venture capital and the tremendous returns they produce but what exactly do venture capitalists do? To help demystify the profession, the Johns Hopkins Private Equity and Venture Capital Club invited Nick Superina who is a Partner at QuestMark Partners, a Baltimore based expansion-stage venture capital firm with close to US$1 billion under management with interests in technology and healthcare. Our topic was titled “Behind the Scenes of a Venture Capitalist” and it was held at the Carey Business School on Apr 27, 2016.

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Baltimore is changing rapidly and one of the key actors in changing the narrative of the city is Sagamore Ventures, a division under Plank Industries—the family investment arm of Kevin Plank, Chairman and CEO of Under Armour.

The Johns Hopkins Private Equity and Venture Capital Club hosted Demian Costa, Managing Partner of Sagamore Ventures on Apr 13, 2016 at the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus. This marked the first time that the Club has held an event at the Homewood campus to encourage greater participation from JHU undergraduates and graduates from other schools.

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Getting access to top tier venture capital firms can be challenging as most of the fund allocations are dominated by large established institutional limited partners. Venture capital firms are also subject to macroeconomic trends in the market which may affect the various stages of their investment cycle that includes: fundraising, deal structuring and negotiation, valuation, portfolio management and exit.

Many venture capital firms have shut down as they struggle to grapple with the macroeconomic conditions, failed or mistimed investments and underperformance of their investment returns. To this end, the Johns Hopkins Private Equity & Venture Capital hosted John Avirett, Partner at Greenspring Associates (“Greenspring”) at the Carey Business School on Apr 21, 2016 for a session on “Building a Sustainable Platform for Venture Capital” to understand what it takes to become successful venture capital firm.

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