Building the New Venture & Quantitative Portfolio Management

Course Description
This course is designed for undergraduate students with a curiosity about business and particularly entrepreneurship and small business or not-for profit organizations. It is not necessary that students be planning to start a venture in the near or even distant future. Each week will feature a specific entrepreneurial skill. For those who may be interested in starting or running a business or non-profit, this class will provide an essential foundation for the process, skills and resources required as well as the opportunities available. While students will not write a formal business plan in this class, the team YourCo. assignments will give those students interested in pursuing their projects much of the information necessary to complete a business plan. Instructor and TA assistance will be available for those who wish to continue with a formal business plan in order to launch a business or compete in the College New Venture Challenge. This is an experiential class. Strong participation is required, with a significant amount of work in a team format. Each team will have access to a Faculty Coach to advise them on their assignments.

Academic Prerequisites
Applicants from any academic major are welcome!

Building the New Venture (BUSN 20330 91)

• Synchronous class meets Wednesdays, 5:00pm - 8:30pm Central, June 12- August 11.
• This class will be delivered via remote instruction for Summer 2023. 

Our instructional approach emphasizes the strong connections between theoretical learning and practical, hands-on experience.  Guest speakers and workshop leaders drawn from Chicago Booth faculty, staff, and alumni will bring their real-world experiences into the classroom, providing a broader context for how course content applies to modern business. 

Primary instructor CJ Pryzbyl is an entrepreneur and business leader with experience in all company stages, from founding/early startups to late-stage growth companies and steady-state corporations. He co-founded Snapsheet after leading the pivot of BodyShopBids from a consumer brand into a B2B innovator at the forefront of the Insurtech revolution, raising over $100M and scaling the business to over 400 employees with over 100 insurance customers. He conceived the Snapsheet app, the first photo-based mobile app for claims, an innovation that has become industry standard.

CJ then led the stealth development and launch of Snapsheet Cloud, a SaaS platform which enables fully automated claims from FNOL to digital payment, in partnership with multiple corporates, including Zurich Insurance, Key Bank, and JPMorgan Chase.  CJ architected and led Snapsheet’s expansion beyond the US, into Canada and multiple countries in Europe.

CJ is an avid angel investor and advisor, focusing on unique GTM methodologies, corporate strategic partnerships, business development and fundraising advice. He is passionate about using technology to enable more automation for humans. In addition to his day-to-day activities at Snapsheet, CJ is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an advisor at the Creative Destruction Lab in Wisconsin and Duality (the nations first quantum startup accelerator), an advisor to the OCA Ventures EDGE fund, and he currently serves on the board of directors of the department of physics and optical engineering at Rose-Hulman.

CJ holds a bachelor’s degree in optical engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Course Description
This course teaches quantitative finance and algorithmic trading with an approach that emphasizes computation and application. The first half of the course focuses on designing, coding, and testing automated trading strategies in Python, with particular consideration to market models, infrastructure, and order execution. The second half of the course builds on this by covering case studies in quantitative investment that illustrate key issues in allocation, attribution, and risk management. Students will have the chance to learn classic models as well as more modern, computational approaches, all illustrated with application.

Academic Prerequisites
Applicants from any academic major are welcome! We are particularly interested in students with no previous background in finance who are interested in exploring Quantitative Finance as a career option.

Statistics, math, finance and Python programming will be featured. Familiarity in some of these areas is helpful, but there are not strict prerequisites. Some experience in regression and programming is highly recommended, but the course is accessible to motivated students still new to some of these areas.

Additional Information
Students who later enroll in the Master of Financial Mathematics program will be able to count this course toward 50 units of program requirements.

Quantitative Portfolio Management and Algorithmic Trading (FINM 25000 91)

• Synchronous class meets Mondays, 6:00pm - 9:00pm Central, June 12- August 11.
• This class will be delivered via remote instruction for Summer 2023. 
• The synchronous sessions for June 19 will be held of Tuesday, June 20 due to the observance of Juneteenth on June 19.

Mark Hendricks
Mark Hendricks is the Associate Director of the Master in Financial Mathematics where he helps manage all aspects of the program. His industry experience includes quantitative research for a hedge fund, Racon Capital. He has also done consulting work in finance, (asset management, corporate, real estate,) and data analysis (retail and pharmaceuticals.)

Mark has taught courses, reviews, and workshops at the graduate level for Financial Math, the Booth School of Business, and the Department of Economics. Among other things, he has significant experience teaching portfolio management, dynamic asset pricing, corporate valuation, and statistical estimation. Mark’s courses emphasize active learning with application and data.

As a Ph.D. candidate for Financial Economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School and Department of Economics, Mark won awards including a Stevanovich Fellowship and Lee Prize. Mark holds an M.A. in economics and a B.S. in Mathematics.

Sebastien Donadio
Sebastien Donadio is currently Chief Technology Officer at Tradair. There he is in charge of leading the technology team. He has a wide variety of professional experience, including being the  head of software engineering at HC Technologies, quantitative trading strategy software developer at Sun Trading, partner at AienTech, high-frequency trading hedge fund, working as technological leader in creating operating system for the Department of Defense. He also has research experience with Bull, and an IT Credit Risk Manager with Société Générale while in France.

Sebastien has taught various computer science courses for the past fifteen years. This time was spent between the University of Versailles, Columbia University, University of Chicago, NYU. Courses included: Computer Architecture, Parallel Architecture, Operating System, Machine Learning, Advanced Programming, Real-time Smart Systems, Advanced Financial Computing.

Current UChicago Students
Current UChicago students must request term activation prior to self-registration.  Self-registration for Summer Quarter occurs through My UChicago and opens on February 14. See the Current UChicago Students page for more information on Summer Quarter registration.

Visiting Undergraduate and Graduate Students
The application for Summer 2023 programs is now open. See the Visiting Students page for more information or go here to continue your application.

The cost of each course is $4,500. For details on costs, refunds, or withdrawal deadlines, see the Summer Quarter page.

Summer Business Scholars Merit Scholarship
The Mercer Scholarship was established to provide partial financial support for worthy and deserving students enrolled in Chicago Booth programs, including the Summer Business Scholars Program. No one defining feature of the application will be the sole basis for the scholarship; all applications will be viewed holistically.

The Mercer Scholarship was created to enhance the diversity -- broadly defined -- of students participating in Summer Business Scholars- Building the New Venture (BUSN 20330 91.)  Students will be asked to share how their participation will reflect this mission, how it will impact their academic path, and how they will pay it forward.

Students who are awarded a Mercer Scholarship may have their answers included in the stewardship report to the donor and will be asked to provide additional feedback about the impact of the program and scholarship to share with the donor.

How to Apply: Mercer Scholarship
Current UChicago students must self-register in the course and Visiting Students from other institutions must submit a completed application to Summer Session and list BUSN 20300 91 as their first course choice.  After that, they should complete the Mercer Scholarship Application; no scholarship applications will be considered unless registration or a complete application is on file.

Timeline

Admitted visiting students should review the Visiting Undergraduate Summer Students page for information on essential steps to connect to your course, including setting up your CNET ID (email/system login), UChicago Zoom, UChicago VPN, Canvas, library access, and more.