Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteUniversity of Washington students in the Foster School of Business learn to assess early-stage companies from the investor’s side of the table, then represent UW in the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC). In 2025, the UW team finished third at the global finals after advancing through regional competition, according to GeekWire’s April 21, 2025 report. That was the team’s best finish since 2015, as GeekWire described it.
How the role reversal works
Most student startup competitions put students in the founder’s seat. VCIC, as the University of Washington Foster School describes it, flips that arrangement. Students act as investors while real entrepreneurs pitch to them. Teams evaluate opportunities, then defend their decisions before venture capital judges.
That shift changes the skill being tested. A founder has to persuade. An investor has to decide what a company is worth, what could go wrong, and what terms would make a deal acceptable. UW’s course is built around that second job.
What the course teaches
The UW Foster course description says students learn through team exercises, Q&A sessions, and role play. The subject list covers:
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →#1 Best Overall
- Business planning, so students can read a plan the way an investor would
- Valuation, meaning how a company’s price is reasoned out
- Term sheets, the document that sets the main terms of an investment
- The investment life cycle, from first look to later stages
- Negotiations over those terms
The course is taught by James Newell, managing director at Voyager Capital, who is identified in GeekWire’s reporting as the instructor.
From the classroom to the global finals
Class teams compete for the chance to represent UW at VCIC’s regional and international finals. GeekWire describes the course as 10 weeks long and says it includes an internal competition in which students hear startup pitches and make an investment decision within 36 hours. That 36-hour window belongs to UW’s internal competition as reported; it is not described as a rule applying to every VCIC stage.
The path to the finals runs in this order:
- Class teams form. Students work in teams through the course’s exercises and role-play sessions.
- Internal competition. Teams hear pitches and make an investment decision within the 36-hour window described by GeekWire.
- Representing UW. The team chosen to represent UW advances to regional competition, where teams that progress are qualified for the international stage.
- Global finals. UW Foster’s general program description places the global finals in Chapel Hill each April. Teams defend their investment decisions before judges at this stage.
The 2025 result
The UW team placed third at the 2025 global finals. GeekWire’s April 21, 2025 article called it the team’s best performance since 2015. The 2025 date matters: this is a result from the 2025 competition, not a current-year outcome. Institutional pages that list earlier UW results cover different competitions and should not be read as part of this finish.
The reported team members were Ankit Anand, Nick Bedbury, Ilya Veil, Jaisav Bajoria, and Fargol Araghi. GeekWire describes their backgrounds as spanning engineering, startup business development, product leadership, and biotech or biochemistry lab work. Those descriptions come from the article; they have not been independently checked.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
What the participants and instructor said
Fargol Araghi, identified in the article as a biotech PhD student, described what she took from the course: “What made this experience really special was getting to work on real-world problems, step into the VC mindset, and collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds.” She added: “I learned how to look at a startup from different angles, team, traction, risks, market size, and make decisions under pressure.”
Araghi’s list is a practical framework. Team, traction, risks, and market size are the four angles she named, and the reporting ties them to decisions made under time pressure.
Newell offered an instructor’s view of the group’s progress: “None of them had prior VC experience, but they dug in quickly and developed fluency in the language of the VC industry, and how to apply the frameworks they learned.”
Anand, one of the team members, described venture investing as involving people as well as business metrics, calling it “a sales job in disguise.” That is his perspective on the profession, not a standard definition of it.
Best Value
What this means for a personal-finance reader
- The course is a working vocabulary for startup investing: valuation, term sheets, and negotiation are the terms that define a deal.
- Araghi’s four angles give a non-specialist a checklist for questioning any early-stage company’s pitch: who runs it, whether customers are arriving, what could sink it, and how large the market is.
- The students in this program evaluate companies as an exercise. The sources describe a classroom and competition format, not an investment product or a route for personal investing.
What is not established here
The reporting and UW’s course description do not confirm current enrollment, prospective-student eligibility, or whether the course format has changed since 2025. Check those details directly with UW Foster before relying on them.
UW Foster’s general description of the Global VCIC program cites more than 70 business schools, 13 countries, and three continents. Those are program-wide figures. They are not the number of schools, countries, or teams in the 2025 competition.
The 36-hour figure and the 10-week length come from GeekWire’s 2025 reporting on the course. They describe that course and its internal competition, and they may not match later iterations.
Quick Recap
“
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
