Winter Interim 2019

what this course is

This is an entirely online winter interim course for University of Alabama students. The course is structured to provide content on different aspects of new venture development along with an experiential component in which students start and develop their own new ventures. (See this to keep developing)

This site is early beta; last revision 11/6/18 (I voted). Major revisions 12/2/18, 12/7/18, 12/10/12, 12/12/18.

extra credit opportunities - Earn 10 additional points

All extra credit activities must be completed by 11:59 pm, Tuesday, January 15, for consideration.

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

Deliverables for this course

Come up with an idea for a new venture: solve a problem or unmet need for a customer group (5 points). You will use this idea throughout the course.
Create a customer persona for your idea (5 points)
Create a video pitch for your idea (5 points)
Write an opportunity register for your idea (5 points)
Complete a market analysis (5 points)
Engage in customer development (5 points)
Create a prototype (10 points)
Create a crowdfunding campaign (10 points)
View-read-do 10 modules and submit 10 quizzes (50 points); students registered for MGT 482/582 will receive all quizzes by email. Since each quiz is open book and I have enabled auto-grade, you'll immediately get your score emailed to you; that means you get one chance to submit each quiz.

When is everything due?

Work at your own pace with a bias toward sooner than later. The final day for turning assignments in is a "hard" deadline of January 8, 2019.

a word about content in slide decks

The slide decks I've linked to here are constant works-in-progress as I find new relevant materials and find less use for older slides in the deck. So these decks represent my best efforts at introducing and explaining terms, people, numbers, frameworks, methods, and phenomena. And some decks have video with links to mini-assignments. Those assignments are supposed to be conducted in lecture sessions; you guys don't need to turn those in.

Module 1: The Four constructs of entrepreneurship

In this module you will view slides, complete some brief readings, ~~view a video~~, and take a quiz.

Module 1: Who is the entrepreneur? What are the major constructs of entrepreneurship and why do they matter? How do entrepreneurs identify and evaluate opportunities? View <these slides/> and complete Quiz 1

Quiz 1: Four constructs of entrepreneurship (5 points)

Module 2: Technological Revolutions

Module 2: Technological revolutions. There are two phases to every technological revolution: the installation phase and the deployment phase. The "turning point" between the two phases is almost always marked by a financial crisis and recovery.

...“nothing great has ever been accomplished without irrational exuberance”. And the Carlota Perez corollary to that is “nothing important happens without crashes”.

Installation and Deployment in Technological Diffusion

In this module you will complete reading assignments, view videos, and take a quiz.

Read

Excerpt from C. Perez, "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital" Chapters 1 - 3 and Chapter 5
The Carlota Perez Framework described by highly respected venture capital investor Fred Wilson

Carlota Perez - 2020 Shaping Ideas

Watch

By 2020, our world could be in the middle of a sustainable golden age, but it depends on how we handle the current recession. Carlota Perez, professor of technology and socio-economic development at the Technological University of Tallinn, explains how the global economy depends on technological advances.

Watch

This conversation between Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Carlota Perez.

Carlota Perez. British-Venezuelan researcher, lecturer and international consultant, specialized in the social and economic impact of technical change and on how it changes opportunities for growth, development and competitiveness. In her acclaimed book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages she presented a theory of the role of finance in the creative destruction process brought about by technical change that has helped understand the boom and bust episodes of the last two decades.

Bonus material

a16z Podcast: Technological Trends, Capital, and Internet 'Disruption'

There's all sorts of interesting tech trends happening right now, including AI, VR/AR, self-driving cars and drones (as well as interesting stuff happening in verticals like healthcare and finance) -- and there's a lot also happening in seemingly more "mature" tech revolutions, such as mobile and cloud. But where are we now, really, with these shifts... and how does that inform how we think about the next couple decades?

And yet

Carlota Perez pins our current cycle's origins on the creation of the semiconductor by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in the early 1970s, yet Doug Engelbart demonstrated the world's first mouse, hypertext, and a window-based GUI in 1968 after at least eight years of research at the Stanford Research Institute. See Doug Engelbart in the Mother of All Demos.

Relatedly, here is Doug Engelbart's deliverable to the Director of Information Sciences of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 1959. To Engelbart, his work was never about the technology itself, but about helping people work together to solve the world's biggest problems.

Quiz 2: Technological Revolutions (5 points)

Module 3: Pitch your idea for an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Post your pitch video to YouTube as "unlisted," NOT "PRIVATE!" Send me the link. Become famous. Or wealthy. (and get 5 points)

In this module you will view slides on how to pitch, create a one-minute pitch and post it to YouTube, write an opportunity register, and take a quiz.

How to pitch

View these slides

and complete Quiz 3 (5 points)

Write an opportunity register for your idea

Read these instructions on how to write an opportunity register and submit it to nvdbama@gmail.com (5 points)

Module 4: How do entrepreneurs build value into their startups very early in the process? What if you are a non-technical founder?

Build value into your pitch by building value into your early stage startup. How to get traction. Show me your ugly baby.

In this module you will view Dan Sullivan's excellent presentation on how to build value into your startup as a non-technical founder and take a quiz.

How do entrepreneurs build value into their startups very early in the process? Value proposition canvas, business model canvas, design thinking, lean startup. Create a persona of one of your earliest customers. Identify key customer pains and possible gains and map them onto idea features and benefits for a unique value proposition. Work toward a minimum viable product.

Dan Sullivan of Crowdly: Fake it Till You Make it (Harvard iLab)

View this video and complete the quiz located below (5 points)

"Non-technical entrepreneurs, stop talking big and start building small. Bemoaning your inability to attract a technical co-founder to "just build it" is failure's waiting room. Hiring out an agency to build your grand vision now is a great way to lose quickly.

"I will focus on the very short term nuts and bolts. We'll talk through what exactly can you do in the next four weeks to substantially move your idea forward. In our conversation, I'll answer questions, share my ideology and process, tips, tools, and talk plainly about the ups and downs of my own experience.

How to scope your prototype, what to measure, what it is, and importantly, what it isn't (hint: a first version of your eventual product)
How I hack process to get real milestones really quickly that can gut check your assumptions, or make it more attractive to potential technical talent, partners, or investors.
Removing false positives from your prototypes, and determine true intention. (Don't ask people to say nice things about you and then take it as evidence).
Cheat sheet on the free or cheap tools that will be your best friend. Startup frenemies. How to get good help from good people, and what offers you should refuse.
Non-technical Founders can build great companies. So many fail by overestimating the first step. Think small, and start building something great. "

Quiz 4: Fake It Till You Make It (5 points)

module 5: Customer Development

In this module you will view Michael Sippy's excellent presentation on customer development, read some articles, and view slides on the same topic. You will then take a quiz.

"Get in the Van" and other tips for getting meaningful customer feedback

"If you can't get 30 meetings you don't have a product." So start smiling and dialing.

The customer development meeting on one slide

What problem are we solving?

Who are we solving it for?

How will we measure success?

Customer Development

Read:

Quiz 5: Customer Development (5 points)

Module 6: how to get started; doing things that don't scale

In this module you will view the presentation on how to get started and to do things that don't scale. Then you will take a quiz (Imagine this sentence spoken in the voice of Ron Swanson).

The transcript for this lecture is here.

Quiz 6: Doing things that don't scale (5 points)

Hint: the questions on this quiz come solely from Stanley Tang's Doordash presentation

module 7: using lean startup techniques and design thinking to build value into your early stage venture

In this module you will view slides on the lean startup practice, submit a form identifying your key assumptions about your new venture idea, and take a quiz.

Lean Startup: Philosophy, Overview, and Techniques (Armstrong slides)

Lean Startup (Eric Ries slides from 2012), though I object with his characterization of Frederick Winslow Taylor as "who to blame." Taylor worked against the concept of "the great man" who was needed to make any enterprise operate effectively. Even in recent times many people hold the idea that entrepreneurship can only be conducted by a "great man." Ries is in fact a 21st century version of Taylor.

Identify your key assumptions assignment (5 points)

Any idea for a product or service should be accompanied by dozens of assumptions. These assumptions are things that need to be true in order for someone to become a customer of your product or service. To understand your prospective customers, you need to know what needs to be true about how they think and act, what they are capable of, and how they make decisions. And there are things that need to be true about how you will produce your product or service, which resources, partners, and activities are crucial to your production process, and how you will make potential customers to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase your product or service.

If you are starting with just an idea, many of your assumptions will seem like wild guesses. That’s OK. The main point is that you must explicitly identify your assumptions in order to be able to evaluate and validate them with rigor. Another important point to remember is that customers are already doing X, Y, or Z to solve their problem, however inefficiently or expensively those solutions might be. Your job is to laser in on the attributes of what they are currently doing/using to build desired features and benefits (and therefore a full set of assumptions to test) that will cause them to switch to your offering.

Use this form below to identify your key assumptions at this very early stage of your venture.

Lean Startup - Identifying your key assumptions assignment (5 points)