This past week, the inaugural Ivy Investment Competition, hosted by Brown Investment Group, held two competitive pitching days at Brown for investment teams from each Ivy League.
The Cornell team’s pitch to invest in Unity Software won, taking home the $15,000 prize for first place. Yale’s team placed second and won $10,000 and Penn’s Wharton School took third, bringing home $5,000.
“Through the competition itself, we’re getting very good questions that really force our critical thinking,” said Cornell sophomore Victor Blanchard, who was part of the winning team. “It’s an amazing experience. Brown Investment (Group) has welcomed us very nicely.”
The goal of the competition is to encourage creativity in investing, according to founder and executive director Faizaan Qureshi ’27.
According to Qureshi, the idea for the competition stemmed from a desire to expand Brown’s relevance in the investment industry, as Brown isn’t a “traditional business school.” After serving as co-president of BIG, he felt that engagement in stock pitch competitions was one way to get Brown’s name on that field’s map.
The conference founders wanted “to show that Brown can be a powerhouse for investing,” Qureshi said. Qureshi also pointed to BIG’s past experiences working with the University, particularly in managing money from part of the endowment, which he believes made Brown a good candidate for launching and hosting the IIC.
At the event, one representative team from every Ivy pitched a stock to invest in based on their research findings, following a traditional format for investment competitions. Competitors had to find a company to invest in that is based in the United States with a minimum market value of $1 billion.
Leading up to the in-person rounds on campus, the first round required the 16 teams from across the Ivies to each submit a “full equity research report, financial model and valuation” of the stock they pitched, according to the IIC website. The second round, which began on the first day of the competition, heard preliminary pitches from the top groups from each of the eight Ivy League schools.
Many of the judges, sponsors and speakers for the competition also came from the pre-existing BIG network and alum connections, with industry firms like Coatue Management and Silver Beech LP on the sponsor list.
One of these alum connections was Joanna Albright ’04, co-chief operating officer of Coatue, who spoke in a fireside chat during the conference. Coatue is an investment management firm with a focus on technology and a portfolio that features companies like Anthropic, Uber and OpenAI.
At the talk, Albright hoped to provide insight on “the skills that make a great investor and the character that makes someone a trusted colleague and leader,” she wrote in a message to The Herald.
She spoke on a range of topics, including her own personal background as a gender and sexuality studies concentrator and athlete on the equestrian team at Brown.
Joshua Kennedy ’97, Brown’s current deputy chief investment officer who will be assuming the role of chief investment officer in January, has also helped support the creation of the IIC.
“The students did everything,” Kennedy wrote in a message to The Herald. “When I heard their plans my primary response was to caution them on how much work they seemed to be undertaking. An event like this is almost like planning a wedding. But they were undeterred.”
Khanya Mhlongo, a junior who is part of Harvard’s student-run hedge fund Black Diamond Capital Investors, said he enjoyed the event. “It’s pretty much all you can ask for,” he said. His team pitched Meta for the competition.
Qureshi told The Herald that he hopes the IIC was a platform for networking, recruiting and dialogue between student groups, adding that he hopes it can become a tradition.
“You can view it from the lens of, you get exposure, you get recruiting access,” Qureshi said. “But I think also, it’s just a really, really, really cool opportunity to meet a lot of great people.”
Lucia Santiago is a senior staff writer covering undergraduate student life.
Jeremiah Farr is a senior staff writer covering university hall and higher education.
