Pejman Mar Ventures funds new startup competition at University of California Berkeley with $250,000 top prize.
Entrepreneurial students at University of California Berkeley have a new funding avenue open to them thanks to a new $250,000 competition.
The competition is backed by Pejman Mar Ventures, a seed stage venture capitalist with $50m backing. Students have until the start of October to apply, with the firm announcing a winner by the end of the month. The winner will receive $250,000 in return for a 10% stake for Pejman Mar, which will provide 10% of its stake or 1% of the startup back to Berkeley.
Pejman Nozad, co-founder at Pejman Mar, said that the competition is also open to graduates who have left Berkeley in the past five years, adding: “We don’t have any set rules. We think entrepreneurs know the future, not us. Even with our fund, we take it day by day, though typically, we look for people who are solving a problem in a big market, who have chemistry and whose motivations for starting the company we understand.”
