Sunday, April 22, 2012

Outline


Technology Entrepreneurship, 2012
Charles Eesley, Assistant Professor, Stanford University

For help in finding a team go to http://venture-lab.org

The course is divided up into 2 main sections and each section has a team project in the form of a writeup and presentation. The first section is the Opportunity Analysis Project, here you will test whether the startup idea you have is worth pursuing and customers agree with the problem you are solving. The second section is the Opportunity Execution Project, here you test the rest of the aspects of the business model. Each session corresponds to one week. Each session gives you a different aspect of the business model that you should test for that week. Your team should update a blog each week with the hypothesis you tested, what experiment(s) you ran, and what the outcome was.

Due dates:
  • 4/16 - assignment 1 (brainstorm best/worst ideas - discuss in teams, submit individually)
  • 4/23 - assignment 2 (commercial - team submission)
  • May 12th for Identifying the market opportunity and testing your value proposition.
  • 5/20 - Opportunity analysis project (team submission) - Your team will brainstorm an idea to work on for a startup project and test that idea with customers and market analysis. You will work on that idea (or you can switch to a new one throughout the remainder of the time.
  • 6/19 - Opportunity execution project (final team submission) - same teams and 2nd phase of the OAP, here you will be testing your solution and the rest of the business model
  • 6/23 - Personal business plan

Segment 1

Session 1

Course Overview: Silicon Valley and Key Frameworks

Session 2

Creativity and Improvisation

Segment 2

Session 3

From Idea to Opportunity:

Session 4

Customer Development and Lean Startups

Segment 3

Session 5

Entrepreneurial Sales and Marketing

Session 6

OAP Presentations

  • Upload to YouTube with "technology entrepreneurship venture lab 2012" as a tag and/or http://venture-lab.org by 5/19

Opportunity Execution Project (OEP)

Segment 4

Session 7

Partnerships and Negotiations

Session 8

Intro to venture finance

Segment 5

Session 9

Session 10

  • Videos
    • Guest lecture by Fergus Hurley - Founder, Focal Labs
    • Guest lecture by Eric Case - Co-founder, Domainr
  • Assignment
    • Work on OEP
    • Specifically, test the revenue model
    • Update blog
  • Recommended Reading

Segment 6

Session 11

Financings and Teams

  • Videos
    • Venture Finance Video 2
    • Venture Finance Video 3 
  • Assignment
    • Work on OEP
    • Update blog
  • Recommended Reading

Session 12

Segment 7

Session 13

  • OEP Team Presentations
  • Upload to YouTube "technology entrepreneurship venture lab 2012" and/or venture-lab by 6/19 

Session 14