4 - Online Resources
Today there are more amazing free resources for entrepreneurship faculty and their students than ever before. Some of the ones I use and refer to the most are included here. If you have recommendations, please let me know at jerome.katz@slu.edu.
LEARN ABOUT ST. LOUIS ENTREPRENEURSHIP RESOURCES
Entrepreneur Quarterly - St. Louis’ free entrepreneurship magazine and the best "Ecosystem Guides".
Arch Grants' hotlinked list of STL resources: https://archgrants.org/st-louis-ecosystem/local-resources/
Emily Muhoberac (one of my co-teachers) has developed the following list of "Tools of the Trade"
www.startupdigest.com emailed newsletter of entrepreneurship activities
SLU’s entrepreneurship map: https://www.slu.edu/innovation/innovation-ecosystem.pdf
https://vencafstl.org/ - weekly gatherings, subscribe to their newsletter
- Ecosystem Maps
SLU Campus and Community Entrepreneurial Ecosystem - A bit out of date, but gives an overview of the landscape.
ITEN Interactive St. Louis Tech Ecosystem Map - This comprehensive map shows of a variety of resources and support organizations that play a role in the St. Louis tech ecosystem. For changes or additions to the map, contact webmaster@itenstl.org.
St. Louis Tech Startup Ecosystem - From the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership. A one-pages that lists the major sources of funding and supports in the St. Louis area.
SLU Resources (See links to Centers on the eWeb Home Page)
SLU Libraries Business Library Guide Listing - Here is a complete list of Library Guides in business related areas. Key ones are listed separately. Some of the other ones that might be of interest include: Sustainabilty, Biotech, Business Law, Business Valuation, Citing Company & Industry Information, Company Research, e-Commerce, Green Business, Innovation, Locavorism, and Marketing.
Entrepreneurship Library Guide from SLU Libraries - This is the key guide to resources held by SLU Libraries for researching entrepreneurship.
Private Company Research Library Guide from SLU LIbraries - How to find that really-hard-to-find info on privately held companies (who aren't required to publish their financials the way publicly traded companies do).
Nonprofit Organization Library Guide from SLU Libraries - Shows SLU Library resources for studying nonprofits (including many social ventures).
Industry Research Library Guide from SLU Libraries - How to find industry data (needed for industry analyses in business plans and strategic plans).
SLU Libraries Journals Access - Did you know with your SLU.EDU login you can read (and assign to your students to ready) HBR, WSJ, Fortune, Forbes, and THOUSANDS of periodicals for free? Here is your point of access. Try out Bizminer and RMA e-statement studies (both give small business financials), Privco (financial details on thousands of privately held companies), IBISworld (industry studies) and MINTEL (market studies).
Entrepreneurship Career Guide -Beyond the Lemonade Stand.pdf - A workbook on checking out entrepreneurship as a career. From SLU's Career Center.
Business In A Box - An all-in-one resource for legal and business forms. Checked by lawyers, these forms can be customized in the program or downloaded in DOC or RTF formats and tweaked on your computer. Available for all students in the CSB 4th Floor Computer Lab and the Chaifetz Entrepreneurship Center.
Jerry's Social Bookmark List - When I find something good online, I bookmark it using Raindrop.io. Here is the complete list. Everything is tagged using chapters from my textbook, or my class numbers (or both). Feel free to subscribe to the feed so see what I'm finding.
EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES AND QUESTIONNAIRES
Sridhar Condoor's Innovation Challenge Series: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/innovation-challenges-volume-1/id565647737
Doan Winkel and Justin Wilcox's Teaching Entrepreneurship blog and website: https://www.teachingentrepreneurship.org/
NACCE's Entrepreneurship Education Resources: https://www.nacce.com/news/resources-for-teaching-entrepreneurship-and-coursework-online
KEEN's Unleashing Entrepreneurship Cards - Entrepreneurship in engineering (you need to register to access the cards which have all sorts of exercises.
Social Entrepreneurship Education Resources: https://www.socialchangeinnovators.com/
Scales in Management - This is a collection of survey items and stand-alone scales (i.e. test, indexes) in management which you can use in teaching and research.
Scales in operations management - This is a collection of survey items and stand-alone scales (i.e. test, indexes) in operations management (i.e. how to organize and run organizations) which you can use in teaching and research.
Handbook of Management Scales - This is a collection of survey items and stand-alone scales (i.e. test, indexes) in management which you can use in teaching and research.
Entrepreneurial Mindset Scale - This is a stand-alone scales (i.e. test, indexes) which you can use in teaching and research to measure the entrepreneurial mindset.
CUSTOMER INTERVIEWING
Giff Constable's free ebook: Talking to humans (its companion is Testing With Humans)
Justin Wilcox's https://customerdevlabs.com - check out "How to do customer interviews"
FINANCIAL ISSUES
A resource for templates (many free) for financial templates for specific industries (e.g. restaurants, B2B companies, etc.): https://www.eloquens.com/
A platform for assessing the valuation of companies in hundreds of industries: https://valuations.com/
Valuations.com - A site that can give you an idea what a business is worth. For a startup (pre-money) plug in the projected sales from the 1st year financials.
PITCHING
Visme's A Non-Designer’s Guide to Creating Memorable Visual Presentations:
https://www.visme.co/presentation-design/?vc=hello-bar-CTA
Beautiful.ai: Professionally done free online pitch deck templates.
Canva.com: Another great choice for pitch decks.
Pitch.com: Yet another great choice for pitch decks
Design a Better Business: Different kinds of canvases for storytelling, persona, cusotmer journeys, prototypes, riskiest assumption and other canvases.
Miscellaneous Cool Freebies
Ash Muraya's Runnning Lean book (1st edition) - The Business Model used at SLU - This is a PDF of his first edition book on the Lean Canvas (the second edition is out now). Gives the basics of the approach. The Lean Canvas fits more readily with the elements of a business plan than does the other competing business model, Osterwalder and Pigneur's Business Model Canvas.
Butler - An Introduction to Entrepreneurship (ebook) - Covers entrepreneurship from an economic perspective, easily accessible to all. Full citation is https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3850660&dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_entrepreneurship:economics:ejournal_abstractlink
Entrepreneurship Syllabi & Exercise Exchange - Sponsored by USASBE.org, this free site (sign-up required) can get you access to syllabi from all over on entrepreneurship and related courses.
Trailblazing in Entrepreneurship - This is an open access book from the editor of the top research journal in entrepreneurship talking about topical areas where more work needs to be done in entrepreneurship, including the intersection of health and entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial failure, sustainability and a host of other areas.