Investing with Ved Jannu and the Wharton Investment Competition Team
Wharton’s Investment Competition is one of the world’s most famous competitions for aspiring high schoolers who might want to make a name for themselves in business. This year OHS sent a team of seven students to compete. Ved Jannu, a senior who has been competing in the competition for two years and led it this year, describes the recruitment process as “straight out of a movie” as he had to personally reach out to his best peers who he thought would assist the team the most. He describes: “I had to call them, tell them what I thought about them and convince them like c’mon, you have to join,” regardless if they had experience in the field.
The competition is centered around a client who has hundred thousand dollars to find to make their long term goal a reality. The money has to be spent on maximizing the potential to reach that goal. The person in focus this year was a woman that was interested in making the field of sports more accessible to others. “We had to analyze how to sanction parts of that 100K to fulfill those goals” says Ved. To help the client, Ved described how they “would have to think through the frame of someone that has a deep passion for sports and women’s social issues” From there, they had to think about “how can we fulfill that need by investing her 100 grand in companies that would fulfill it.”
While a business competition is not solely focused on how well the competitors manage the funds to reach the client’s goal, it also deals with the creativity of the teams and their ability to look from different angles when investing. Likewise, the competition is judged by the strength and articulation of their team strategies, not the growth of the client's portfolio.
Largely due to the structure of the competition, the group of seven was forced to work together, and this collaboration ended up being Ved’s favorite part of the competition. However, this teamwork did not come without obstacles. Naturally, the team being entirely online was a huge roadblock as it created barriers to communication and team bonding.
To combat the obstacle, the Ved said he “made it so that our meetings are not completely professional. When we got our work done, I made sure that we just acted like a group of friends which overcame that barrier of being online” A great approach indeed.
The team would definitely recommend the competition if you are specifically passionate about mathematics and finance or if you are new to business and are looking for a great experience. really anything. Ved’s biggest piece of advice is that at OHS we tend to “miss out on these opportunities” without a second thought because we don’t consider the “huge contribution” you might make. At the end of the day Ved says that it’s important to try new things and he hopes this encourages freshman and middle schoolers alike to do just that.