Venture capital is an entrepreneurial strategy for alum turned professor

Patrick Vernon (MBA ’03) notices parallels between his first career as a professional musician based in Los Angeles and the career he pivoted to teaching students about venture capital at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

“Not everybody should move to California and try to be in a band for 10 years and not everybody should be a venture capitalist,” he says. “Those are very specific, big, hits-driven things to try to do.”

Those similarities became obvious when he burned out on being a touring musician in his 20s and came to Chapel Hill to earn his MBA in the Full-Time MBA Program at UNC Kenan-Flagler. He got involved in the Entrepreneurship Club, becoming president in his second year and growing a program that at the time was only four years old, the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC).

Vernon convinced the VCIC founder to hire him on to run the competition for UNC Kenan-Flagler after he graduated, and the rest is history.

VCIC is similar to the ABC reality show “Shark Tank.” Entrepreneurs pitch their startups to teams of student investors, who have a specific amount of pretend capital to invest. The teams choose which startup to invest in and explain their reasons. Professional venture capitalists (VCs), many of them VCIC and UNC Kenan-Flagler alumni, evaluate the student teams’ research and presentation to pick winners. The winners of regional contests go on to compete at the global final.

Vernon found that the VCIC built on his experience in California. In his day job he worked as a trainer teaching office workers how to use their computers. Between that and leading a band, he was comfortable communicating to groups.

VCIC strips away hubris that business school students might have, he says, and places them in the middle of a conversation between entrepreneurs who are promoting an early-stage startup and the professional VCs, who know how to identify a worthwhile business idea.

The hardest part of running VCIC is finding entrepreneurs who are willing to set aside the time to have student investors pick apart their business ideas. For the entrepreneurs, getting access to the professional VCs at the same time makes the event invaluable.

Since Vernon started leading the VCIC in 2003, it has grown to include teams of students from more than 130 business schools, including 72 graduate programs and 60 undergraduate programs. The teams compete in 22 undergraduate and graduate regional competitions in the U.S. and around the world. Winners advance to the global final, which is held every April in Chapel Hill.

Schedule for VCIC 2027

Musical parallels

Vernon, a native of Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, moved across the country after he graduated with a degree in audio technology from American University in 1989. As the frontman of The Zookeepers, he produced four albums and performed in 500 shows, traveling more than 150,000 miles over a decade. Through the course of that experience, he found that he had become a reluctant business owner, responsible for every aspect of keeping the band in business, even while he continued to work a full-time job.

“I did everything: I booked the shows, I hired the musicians, I paid people to go on the road with me. I owned the band and the recording studio, all of which were paid for by my day job,” he says. “On a gig day we would leave Thursday morning, drive to Davis, which was 400 miles, play until 1:30 a.m., pack up until 2:30, get up at 8:30, drive to Eugene, Oregon, and play for three hours.”

California has an outsized influence in which entertainers succeed — and in the same way, the state has an outsized influence on venture capital, he says. Though his band never signed a deal with a big label, he treasures the experience of traveling and performing.

He still performs locally on the weekends as part of the Americana band Taxicab Preacher. Behind band founder Hailey “Doc” Brighton, Vernon sings and plays guitar and harmonica. The group released its debut album, “Solid Ground,” in 2024.

VC in the classroom

Vernon has been teaching full-time at the Business School since 2009 and today he is a clinical professor of strategy and entrepreneurship and director of venture initiatives. He teaches classes on venture capital and entrepreneur consulting to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Vernon’s classes are intended to be relatively small, and he’s surprised how full they get since business graduates don’t typically go directly to venture-capital jobs. Instead, they use what they’ve learned in his classes to think about how new products and technologies come to market.

“Venture capital classes are full, and VCIC is full because venture capital is interesting,” he says. “It’s not just superficially interesting — it really is intellectually stimulating.”

When Vernon started his MBA studies, he did not know what venture capital was, but as he learned about it, he found he had a passion for understanding how investors recognize a winning idea. Now he’s written a book to help his students and others do the same.

In 2018 he published “Venture Capital Strategy: How to Think Like a Venture Capitalist,” which he uses in classes — as do professors at many other universities. He spent the summer of 2026 updating the book, highlighting the ways AI tools can be helpful to experienced VCs and hopes to make the updated edition available in time for spring semester 2027.