Launch Your Startup
(Description For Bidding Purposes)
Course number and title: B8519 sec.
2: Launch Your Startup
Schedule: Thursday R - Full Term, 2:15:00 PM to 5:30:00 PM
By taking this course, students will gain the tools and knowledge to develop a comprehensive new venture that is scalable, repeatable and capital efficient. The focus of the course is on a student’s ideas and making an idea into a company. The course will help students formulate new business ideas through a process of ideation and testing.
Students will test the viability of their ideas in the marketplace and will think through the key areas of new venture. The first part of the course will help students brainstorm about new ideas and test the basic viability of those ideas through of process of design and real world tests.
After an idea is developed students will work towards finding a scalable, repeatable business model. We will cover customer discovery, market sizing, pricing, competition, distribution, funding, developing a minimal viable product and many other facets of creating a new venture. The course will end with students having developed a company blueprint and final investor pitch. Course requirements include imagination, flexibility, courage, getting out of the building, and passion.
This course requires intensive team projects, weekly assignments, fieldwork and weekly readings. There will be regular in-class presentations, reading discussions and cases.
There is a pre-assignment due during the first class.
Date Session Assigment Due
28-Jan Introduction, Case Study
Team formation
Pre-Class Assignment
2 min Pitch, Pre-class reading Levinson
4-Feb
11-Feb
What Makes a Great Idea Reading Thiel
Ideation
Business Model Canvas Reading Thiel, Aulet, Constable
Customer Discovery Customer Interviews
Use Cases
Market Size
Market Size (TAM)
User Profile
Value Proposition
Customer Validation
Customer Interviews
Mini Case
18-Feb Competitive Landscape
Mini Case
Reading McNish, Aulet
Customer Interviews

25-Feb Competition
DMU
Role of CEO
Mini Case
Reading Mcnish, Aulet
Real Persona
Full Product Lifecycle
High Level Product Spec
Quantified Value Proposition
3-Mar More Markets
Paying Customers
Reading Aulet, Reis
Next 10 Customers
Your Core Value
Competitive Position
DMU
24-Mar Pricing and Business Model Reading Aulet, Reis
Mini Case Acquire a Paying Customer
Follow on Markets
Reading Aulet
Business Model
Pricing
31-Mar Market and Sales
Mini Case
7-Apr Life Time Value
Cost of Customer
Acquisition
Raising Money Part I
Mini Case
14-Apr Raising Money Part II
Reading Aulet
Reading Aulet
Coca
21-Apr MVP, Beta, Launch
Mini Case
Key Assumptions
LTV
Sales Process
Reading Aulet
Test Key Assumptions
MVP
Market Proof
Product Plan/Blueprint
28-Apr Demo Day Pitch Deck
Reading:

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create
Radically Successful Businesses... by Ries, Eric (Oct 6, 2011)
Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy
Answers Hardcover – by Ben Horowitz March 4, 2014
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future Hardcover –by Peter Thiel,
Blake Masters September 16, 2014
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World
Economy Bigger by Levinson, Marc (Jan 27, 2008)
Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry Hardcover – by Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff May 26, 2015
Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform
Industries by Evans, David S. (Oct 1, 2006)
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld,
Jason Mendelson and Dick Costolo (Dec 26, 2012)
Rework by Fried, Jason and Hansson, David Heinemeier (Mar 18, 2010)
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Livingston, Jessica (Sep 19, 2008)
The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting
Anything by Kawasaki, Guy (Sep 9, 2004)
The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding
Entrepreneurs by Kidder, David and Hoffman, Reid (Jan 2, 2013)
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and
Challengers by Osterwalder, Alexander and Pigneur, Yves (Feb 1, 2013)