David Politis

Early this morning, University Venture Fund announced that it has tapped 10 MBA students from the Wharton School to assist the UVF in running its $18 million private equity fund.

Founded in 2001 at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business as an entrepreneurial tool for UofU students, the UVF went on to raise $18MM from limited partners, making it both the first and largest student-run private equity firm in the United States.

Following today’s announcement, the Wharton connection brings to the self-sustaining UVF team 10 Wharton students and four faculty advisors, including a Fulbright scholar, the ex-CTO of NASA, a student with an M.D. from John Hopkins, as well as students with work experience from Microsoft, Google and Goldman Sachs. 

Among the first 10 companies UVF invested in, at least one — Omniture (NASDAQ: OMTR) – has experienced a financial exit, specifically through an initial public offering.

Salt Lake City-based Lipocine just landed a big time hitter in the financial marketplace: Robert Merrell.

As I understand it, Bob has just returned to Utah after serving a three-year stint as a mission president for the LDS Church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

Professionally, Bob was the financial leader at NPS Pharmaceuticals, formerly Natural Product Sciences, who lead the company’s monetary charge through multiple private and public financiangs, incuding the NPS Initial Public Offering (NASDAQ: NPSP) and three subsequent follow-on public offerings. All told, Bob helped NPS raise more than $300 million.

Between his stint at NPS and his LDS mission, Bob also served as a Vice President with Myriad Genetics Laboratories.

Bob was great to work with as a client while he was at NPS, and I wish him and the entire Lipocine team “Buena Suerte.”

P.S. Lipocine is a pretty interesting drug delivery company that is looking to lipids — organic compounds that do not dissolve in water but that are soluble in solvents — as vehicles for delivering complex molecular compounds as once-a-day, orally delivered pharmaceuticals.