Fall 2018

Syllabus and assignments

Syllabus (general, google doc)

Assignments, points, and deadlines <google doc in progress/>

• Instructions for "Take an Entrepreneur to Dinner" Assignment (update: this assignment is due before Thanksgiving break; see me if you will not be able to meet this deadline)

extra credit opportunities

<posted November 29, 2018/> All extra credit activities must be completed by 11:59 pm, Sunday, December 9, for consideration.

• Autoshop business plan analysis (5 points)
• Proof Eyewear Opportunity Analysis (5 points)

Schedule and activities

Week 1: August 23

Whereupon the instructor rambles on about topics such as

Week 4: Sep 11-13

September 11

Topic: Multiplicity of Opportunities

Before lecture: The Airhook

Slides: Multiplicity of opportunities

September 13

Multiplicity of opportunities in-class assignment

This is a graded in-class assignment. If you could not be in class today, then complete this assignment out of class and submit it as an email attachment or share it with nvdbama@gmail.com.

Read outside of class:

• Notes on multiplicity of opportunities
• Single and multiple entrepreneurial opportunities: Initiating a dialogue (Gruber & Hill)
• Gruber, M., MacMillan, I.C., & Thompson, J.D. 2008. Look before you leap: Market opportunity identification in emerging technology firms. Management Science, 54(9): 1652-1665.
• Gruber, M., MacMillan, I.C., & Thompson, J.D. 2013. Escaping the prior knowledge corridor: What shapes the number and variety of market opportunities of technology startups? Organization Science, 24(1): 280-300.
• Notes on multiplicity of creativity workshop, Academy of Development professional development workshop, Vancouver, BC, 2015 (my notes from participating in a creativity workshop)

Complete Quiz 3 by 11:59 pm, Friday, Sep 14.

Week 6: Sep 25-27

Sep 25:

Understanding customer needs (saved for Oct 2)

Products are conversations (Newco.co, 9/19/18)

How to get startup ideas (slides)

How to pitch (slides)

Supplemental files for in class:

• Idea worksheet
• Pitching worksheet

Sep 27: You will pitch your idea for a new venture in class (5 points of grade), then form into teams to develop ideas

What: a one-minute pitch covering

1. a big pain
2. your brilliant solution
3. how your idea is different from what people are currently using
4. "why you"
5. call to action (just say "join my team" and you'll be fine)

• Dress code is you must dress
• Individual pitches unless you get my permission beforehand
• No slides; be your own Papyrus font!
• Pitch is worth 5% of your overall grade.
• Can't be in class? Film your pitch with your smart device and post it as "unlisted" on YouTube or send the file to me directly. If you post on YouTube send me the video URL.
• I will ask you to enter a brief summary of your idea in a google form that I'll send out later today. Please complete it before class starts at 2 pm tomorrow, even if you won't be in class. We'll use that google form to vote on teams.

Complete Quiz 5 by 11:59 pm, Friday, Sep 28.

Week 8: Oct 9-11

Oct 9 & 11 Topic: Analyzing markets (main slides & supplemental slides & tertiary slides) and planning for marketing (slides)

Oct 9: Complete Market Analysis Worksheet in teams in class

Oct 11: Market and product, research and experiments. What type of lean startup method should I run? (slides).

Smoke tests. Work in teams to build upon market analysis from Tuesday; develop customer discovery interview questions, contextual inquiry / ethnography, data mining in class. Here is your worksheet for developing customer discovery interviews. You'll develop in class learning goals and open-ended questions that you agree upon as a team, then conduct the interviews between 10/11 and 10/16. (4 points)

Read before class:

• Preparing Customer Discovery Interviews (grasshopperherder.com)

and supplemental for those interested...

• How to Verify Your Assumptions At Small Sample Sizes (medium.com)
• Triangulating the User Experience (medium.com)
• Concierge versus Wizard of Oz test (Medium.com)
• Startup marketing: 10 things to watch out for (Yourstory.com, Oct 2016)
• Are we having fun yet? Enjoyability, the missing -ility in many business models (Alberto Savoia, Founder @ Pretotype Labs, LLC, on LinkedIn) and browse Alberto's book "Pretotype it: Make sure you are building the right it before you build it right."

Complete Quiz 7 by 11:59 pm, Friday, Oct 11

Week 10: Oct 23-25

October 23: Instructor's Choice: Crowdfunding (maybe a Design Sprint!). There will NOT be a graded in-class assignment on 10/23.

October 25: Fall Break

NO QUIZ

Week 12: Nov 6-8

• Nov 6: Pro forma financial statements - normalizing growth with financial statements
• Slides for this topic
• Plus see this piece on additional ways to valuate early-stage startups on medium.com and then view this site on angellist.com of startup valuations data. Do it now.
• And...How Angel investors value pre-revenue startups (Hackernoon.com)
• How Angel Investors Value Pre-Revenue Startups (Part II)
• “Pre-revenue, I do not trust projections, even discounted projections.” — Dave Berkus
• Nov 8: Search funds

Complete Quiz 10 by 11:59 pm, Friday, Nov 9

Week 15: Nov 27-29

Startup strategy and Exit

How much runway should you target between financing rounds? Medium.com, 10/26/17

Paul Graham: Default alive or default dead?

Dissecting startup failure rates by stage. Towardsdatascience.com

What Happens When You Sell Your Startup?, News.Crunchbase.com, 10/17/17

Cool Tool: This tool from Trevor Blackwell calculates how much funding your startup needs. Assuming expenses are constant and revenues are growing, it shows you when you'll reach profitability (in fractions of years) and how much capital you'll need to burn through before you get there.

In class

11-27: Review solution sketches and dot voting (4 points)

Directions

• Hang everyone’s sketches up on a wall in the same way art is presented in a gallery or museum
• Each person has three minutes to present their solution
• The team can ask questions or discuss details in the sketch
• The team leader reviews the business problem, goals, and success metrics so everyone knows what the voting criteria are and reminds the team this is a deciding vote.
• Give each team member five votes - whatever you decide on is what you will build and what materials you will need to bring to class on Thursday
• Based on what you decide, refine your hypotheses and metrics

Deliverable: Email me a digital image of your dot voting outcomes and refined hypotheses and metrics

Here's an example of building a hypothesis and metrics

1. What do you want to put in front of your first customers?
2. What do you want the outcome to be?
3. What is the metric of success or failure? (e.g., I want at least 100 people to try my MVP and at least 10 to pre-pay to be the first to use it)
4. How long will you run the test?

Your end hypothesis: "If I (#1 above), I expect that #2 will happen and will know I am successful if I achieve (#3) over a period of the next (#4).

11-29: Prototype (a verb) - Build your MVP (4 points)

Stanford d school note: Prototype to test

Digital Prototyping Tools

• Keynote / Google slides
• Sketch
• Invision
• Pixate
• Marvel

Voice Interaction Prototyping Tools

• Wizard of Oz

Prototyping Tips

Take shortcuts and prepare assets in advance for your team that might be needed to make quick mocks. For example, create a Sketch sticker sheet to collect logos, imagery, and screenshots of your existing product. If you’re prototyping a physical product, hold your Design Sprint in a makerspace or workshop and collect the necessary physical materials you need to make fast prototypes. You do not want to spend prototyping time searching the internet for images or running to a hardware store.

Deliverable: Send me a link or digital image of your in-progress MVP

Week 16: Dec 4-6

Dec 4: Crushing your new venture team business plan presentation - Finalize Prototypes (4 points)

Dec 6: Each new venture team will present to us - Present your data, learnings, and prototypes (4 points)

for your final presentation focus on these four things:

1. what is the problem you identified, and who has it?
2. what did you do to validate your initial assumptions about the problem? (refer to customer discovery interviews, personas, solution sketches, etc.)
3. given what you learned through validation, how did those learnings influence the prototype you made?
4. Then demonstrate your prototype