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.

Not only is it hard to imagine that 2006 has come and gone, but it’s also mind-bending to realize that CES starts this coming Monday.

With the death of COMDEX (the COMputer Dealer EXposition) a few years back, the annual Consumer Electronics Show has now become the largest technology tradeshow in the United States, if not the world.

Slated this year for January 8-11 in Las Vegas, CES will attract a truly worldwide audience of manufacturers, distributors, engineers, marketers, retailers, gawkers and more to the annual geek fest in glitter gulch. Oh yes, and journalists galore — probably 5,000+ this year coming from places as widespread and diverse as Salt Lake City and Singapore.

Based upon last year’s attendance figures, I will not be surprised to see total attendance surpass 200,000 unique visitors to CES this year.

As for me, I’m headed down to slot-machine city on Sunday with several members of the Politis Communications crew and major media events slated for both Sunday and Monday nights.

Look for more on CES between now and mid-January.

So I’m digging through Omniture’s S-1 the other day and what do I see? Shawn Lindquist’s name listed as Omniture’s Chief Legal Officer, Senior Vice President and Secretary.

I’ve known Lindquist for close to seven years and he’s a sharp securities attorney, so I was not totally surprised to find that he had landed at Omniture. As it is, the company’s had a sharp executive team already.

[DISCLOSURE: Omniture was a client years ago back when the company was known as MyComputer.com. Additionally, I have been offered the ability to purchase “friends & family” shares as part of the IPO, an offer that I have not yet decided if I will act upon or not. If so, I will disclose this too. dlp.]