Saturday, March 17, 2012

More time and info on team building

1- First of all, thank you very much for the overwhelming enthusiasm and encouraging feedback. Thousands of people have signed up and are still signing up for the venture-lab. We are working hard to make sure you will have a great experience. But please note that we are running this experiment for the first time and we are learning the process ourselves as we go ahead.

2- There were some students who preferred to just follow the video lectures online. We also had a few students who were interested only in the team project. As a result, the Venture-lab and the video lectures are becoming somewhat independent. You can follow the videos, participate in Venture-lab, or do both.

3- There were several students who tried to login into Venture-lab using their old coursera username and password. Those old usernames and passwords will not work. YOU WILL NEED TO SIGN UP SEPARATELY for Venture-lab.  The first time you go to Venture-lab, click on the link that says sign up and create your account. Please sign up by Friday 3/23 if you like to participate in the team project. We are giving you more time since so many people are still expressing interest and wish to invite friends to join.

4- We also feel the need to reiterate Privacy, Security, and Intellectual Property issues.  The nature of this website promotes the sharing of personal information by users with other users. In particular, your email address, name, and introductory paragraph will be shared with your teammates. You should note that the instructor, the owner of the website, or Stanford University cannot and does not assure that it is safe for you to have direct contact with other users of this website. You will be also participating in many discussions and brainstorming sessions with your teammates for the class project on or off the website. We can not also make any form of commitment to protect your Intellectual Property rights or to resolve IP issues with your teammates.  If you do not wish to work on the class start-up project, login to the website, click on edit profile and check the box that excludes you from the matching process and the start up project.

5- Our goal is to develop Venture-lab and make it a fully functional mechanism for building strong and vibrant teams of entrepreneurs, domain experts, and mentors. We believe that there is an amazing potential in connecting people around the world, teaching them the basics of entrepreneurship and help them collaborate to implement their ideas.  In our vision, the profile of every individual will not be just a CV, but his or her history of collaborations and contributions to his or her own or others' projects. Because of this, we invite you to show a great degree of responsibility and courtesy to your teammates and other members of the website.

This is going to be a great learning experience for everyone. We look forward to working with you.

All the best