PR Training the next generation of investors and entrepreneurs, Bauer College’s new Cougar Venture Fund will depend on student expertise By Wendell Brock O O B eginning this fall, students in the Bauer College now have an opportunity to function as venture capitalists. They won’t just be reading from textbooks, either. They will be evaluating “real deals with real money.” That’s how Kala Marathi describes the Cougar Venture Fund, a newly established program designed to train the next generation of investors and entrepreneurs at the University of Houston. “Bauer College and the University of Houston are proud to join the ranks of a handful of elite institutions such as Cornell University and the 68 The Department of Marketing & Entrepreneurship course will be taught by Keith Rassin, an adjunct professor and a successful Houston entrepreneur and investor. Though the course was originally intended for graduate students, the inaugural class will include qualified students from the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship, as well as the University of Houston Law Center. Marathi served as managing director of the Houston Angel Network for nine years before coming to Bauer. At the Cougar Venture Fund, she will cultivate relationships with Texas’ angel-investor and venture-capital communities, identifying and vetting the companies the students will study. She wants to provide students with a diversity of business types representing the interests and strengths of the UH community. Target industries include software, energy, life science, and service-oriented companies. The Cougar Venture Fund was created from a $1 million gift from the Jerome Robinson Family Fund for Graduate Entrepreneurship. Its primary goal is to educate. But as a working investment fund, it also exists to make a profit and has the potential to become a self-sustaining pool of capital that can train Houston’s next generation of entrepreneurs and investors. F As the Bauer College’s new Executive Director of Innovation, Marathi has been charged with launching the fund. Working in conjunction with a board of advisors consisting of experienced entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists, the fund will invest in attractive Texas startups with significant growth potential, based on recommendations from students enrolled in the college’s new venture fund course. University of Michigan in offering this type of opportunity,” said Marathi, who will act as the Cougar Venture Fund’s managing director. Rassin conceived the course and said he is “thrilled” to be part of the Cougar Venture Fund’s development. “It is an amazing opportunity for us to offer students a chance to participate in the rigorous process of raising money to fuel a startup business,” he said. “Bauer College and the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship continue to impress me with the support they provide for innovative programs like this. It is very clear why Bauer is one of the best entrepreneurship programs in the country.” “You never know,” said Rassin. “Thanks to the Robinson Family and our students, UH might one day be a stakeholder in the next Apple, Google, or Microsoft.” INSIDE BAUER