By Kara Sherrer
Earlier this year, Owen Graduate School of Management helped launch the Vanderbilt Startups Practicum in partnership with the Department of Health Policy and the Nashville Entrepreneur Center (EC). The Vanderbilt Startups Practicum offers a unique opportunity; students who enroll in the Startups Practicum course (MGT 6505) not only receive course credit but also get the opportunity to work hands-on with a local healthcare startup in the early stages of development.
Abby Schwing (MBA’25)
“The Vanderbilt Startups Practicum is a chance to get outside of the academic walls of Owen and immerse yourself in the experience,” said Abby Schwing (MBA’25), one of the students who participated in the course.
Classmates and lectures
While the practicum course (MGT 6505) is geared toward Vanderbilt Health Policy students and Vanderbilt MBA students, graduate students across the university are eligible to enroll in the course, making it so that the student teams are interdisciplinary. Schwing said that she really enjoyed collaborating not just with second-year MBAs, but also with Vanderbilt graduate students from other programs. “It was really interesting and impactful in the sense of getting to work with so many different kinds of expertise, and I think it really made me push past my comfort zone,” she said.
The Vanderbilt Startups Practicum course was jointly led by Ranga Ramanujam, Richard M. and Betty Ruth Miller Chair, Professor of Management and Faculty Director of Health Care Programs at Vanderbilt Business, and Professor of Health Policy, and John Graves, Vanderbilt Professor of Health Policy, Medicine, and Management. Professor Ramanujam and Professor Graves also brought in investors and many different healthcare entrepreneurs and business owners to share their perspectives on various topics, including the healthcare regulatory landscape, market research and positions, and financial valuation models with the class.
The Vanderbilt Startups Practicum is a unique opportunity for students to immerse themselves in innovation within the healthcare industry,” said Graves. “By engaging with investors, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders, students come face-to-face with the multifaceted challenges of innovating in a tightly regulated industry.”
Startups and student teams
Reid Chauvin (MBA’25)
While the students did attend lectures and receive course credit, the real focus of the Vanderbilt Startups Practicum was on getting hands-on experience working with their assignment startup and the respective executives. Students were divided into teams and assigned to one of four healthcare startups: Nashville Collaborative Counseling Center (NCCC), Sage Surfer, Care Sherpa, and PopCheck Technologies. To learn more about each startup, see the announcement for the practicum’s launch. “We basically functioned as a team of consultants with the objective of helping the startups understand, at the end of the day, what do we think their company is worth right now?” said Reid Chauvin (MBA’25). “We asked how should they better position themselves to investors so that they can raise capital, what is the amount they should be asking for, and why should they be asking for that amount?”
Final presentations
Instead of taking a final exam, Vanderbilt Startups Practicum students gave presentations that made up the majority of their course grades. First, they gave a practice presentation to their class, receiving feedback from Professor Ramanujam and Professor Graves, as well as their classmates. After incorporating those suggestions, the students gave another presentation to the startups’ founders and executive teams. The startup leaders gave feedback that was taken into account for final grades.
Schwing’s team gave their presentation to Mamaya Health, a maternal mental health care organization that is a subsidiary of NCCC, over a meal at a local Nashville restaurant, Luogo. “We were at dinner for three and a half hours, and,” she recalled. “It’s something I’ll remember forever, and it was probably the coolest experience I’ve had since starting my MBA. Because, when else can you go to class the next day and say, ‘I pitched our findings to an actual company and their executive team who makes decisions.’”
Takeaways and reflections
John Graves (left) and Ranga Ramanujam (right) at the launch of the Vanderbilt Startups Practicum in February 2024
Reflecting back on the practicum, Chauvin says that he highly recommends the course to students who are interested in launching their own startup or working for one. “If you have any inkling of interest in starting a business yourself or working for a startup-size company—even if you’re not necessarily sold on healthcare specifically as an industry—I think this is probably the best opportunity right now at Owen to get to partner with someone who has started a company,” he said.
Chauvin also praised the Nashville startup and entrepreneurship community, in particular, for the many opportunities and resources it offers. “One of the biggest takeaways is a deeper appreciation for how robust the startup community and the supporting entities are here in Nashville,” he said. “There’s such a robust pool of founders looking for help but also willing to provide mentoring and support to each other. That’s pretty huge and encouraging.”
Meanwhile, Schwing says that the class provided an excellent outlet to apply the knowledge she’s learned in her MBA classes so far. “It’s such a unique opportunity that I think encompasses all of the things that you learn while getting an MBA, but then there’s a difference between learning and then actually the application of it. So to have that opportunity is something I was so honored to have been a part of,” she said.
“Combining a force of young people who are looking to make a difference in the professional world with the already existing healthcare ecosystem in Nashville is just such a cool opportunity,” she added. “I know they’re offering the course again, and I’m so excited because I feel like each year, it’s just going to get better and become more evolved.”