This document provides an overview of an advanced entrepreneurship course focused on experiential learning of starting a high-tech company. Students will work in teams to turn ideas into real companies over the course of the semester. The course uses lean startup methodology, requiring students to get outside the classroom to test hypotheses through customer interviews and iterative product development. Grading is based on team progress, deliverables including weekly blogs and presentations, and a final report on lessons learned. The course aims to simulate the pressures of starting a real startup through an intensive workload and direct feedback from instructors.

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6. The comments and critiques provided by the teaching team is probably the kindest feedback you will ever hear in a startup or a boardroom. In our world this is considered constructive input. We want to provide you with an environment that feels safe to learn in.

7. Understand that the teaching team is your biggest fan and cheering for your success. However, startups communicate much differently than inside a large company. We hope you can recognize that these comments aren’t personal, but part of the process.

9. Comments and suggestions from other teams, and teaching teams on the lessons learned.

10. A lecture on one of the 9 building blocks of a business model (see diagram below, taken from Business Model Generation).

11. Each team will capture their progression in learning by keeping an on-line journal/blog/wiki.

13. Four Steps to the Epiphany Chapters 1-2

16. Steve Blank, “What’s a Startup? First Principles,” http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/

17. Steve Blank, “Make No Little Plans – Defining the Scalable Startup,” http://steveblank.com/2010/01/04/make-no-little-plans-–-defining-the-scalable-startup/

19. Come up with ways to test:

20. is a business worth pursuing (market size)

21. each of the hypotheses

22. Come up with what constitutes a pass/fail signal for the test (e.g. at what point would you say that your hypotheses wasn’t even close to correct)?

23. Find a name for your team.

26. Get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers face-to-face

27. Follow-up with Survey Monkey (or similar service) to get more data

28. What were your value proposition hypotheses?

29. What did you discover from customers?

30. What were your hypotheses about who your users and customers were? Did you learn anything different?

31. Submit interview notes, present results in class.

32. Update your blog/wiki/journal with progress customers and value prop

33. For web teams:

36. Here’s What we Thought

37. So Here’s What we Did

38. So Here’s What we Found

41. Present and explain your marketing campaign. What worked best and why?

42. For web teams:

43. Actually engage in “search engine marketing” (SEM) spend $20 as a team to test customer acquisition cost

44. Ask your users to take action, such as signing up for a newsletter

45. use Google Analytics to measure the success of your campaign

46. change messaging on site during the block to get costs lower, team that gets lowest delta costs wins.

47. Track where your visitors are coming from (marketing campaign, search engine, etc) and how their behavior differs. What were your hypotheses about your web site results?

48. If you’re assuming virality of your product, you will need to show viral propagation of your product and the improvement of your viral coefficient over several experiments.

49. Submit web data or customer interview notes, present results in class.

50. Did anything change about Value Proposition or Customers/Users?

51. What is your assumed customer lifetime value? Are there any proxy companies that would suggest that this is a reasonable number?

52. For non-web teams:

53. Get Bill of Materials Costed, Get prototype demo working

54. build demand creation budget and forecast.

55. Interview 10-15 people in your channel (salesmen, OEM’s, etc.).

56. Did anything change about Value Proposition or Customers/Users?

57. What is your customer lifetime value? Channel incentives – does your product or proposition extend or replace existing revenue for the channel?

58. What is the “cost” of your channel, and it’s efficiency vs. your selling price.

59. Everyone: Update your blog/wiki/journal.

60. What kind of initial feedback did you receive from your users?

61. What are the entry barriers?

63. Here’s What we Thought

64. So Here’s What we Did

65. So Here’s What we Found

67. How will you price the offerings?

68. What are the key financials metrics for your business model?

69. Test pricing in front of 100 customers on the web, 10-15 customers non-web.

70. What are the risks involved?

72. Draw the diagram of payment flows

73. Did anything change about Value Proposition or Customers/Users, Channel, Demand Creation, Revenue Model?

74. Assemble a resources assumptions spreadsheet. Include people, hardware, software, prototypes, financing, etc.

75. Access to resources. What is the best place for your business?

76. Where is your cash flow break-even point?

77. Submit interview notes, present results in class.

79. Here’s What we Thought

80. So Here’s What we Did

81. So Here’s What we Found

84. Read:

85. Final presentation format document (on class web site.

86. Steve Blank, “Lessons Learned – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch”, http://steveblank.com/2009/11/12/“lessons-learned”-–-a-new-type-of-vc-pitch/

87. Steve Blank, “Raising Money Using Customer Development”, http://steveblank.com/2009/11/05/raising-money-with-customer-development/

89. whether you think this a viable business,

92. 25%team final report (see Dec 1st class for format)

94. Student ID Number

95. Email Address

97. Current Work Experience

98. Prior Work Experience?

101. If so, who are the members, and what’s the idea?

102. List two business ideas you’d like to work on during this class. Be as specific as you can. (First Idea)