About the course
- What is entrepreneurship anyway?
- I sometimes describe it as:
- “What a computer scientist needs to know to be a Chief Technology Officer”
- “The biggest pitfall among computer scientists, hackers, and software engineers, is to start building a product before they have a clue if anyone actually wants it.”
Get to know each other – ask your neighbor
- I will start
- What is your name?
- What is the story of your name?
- What is something about your home town that only people who live there know?
What will it be like?
- We will learn entrepreneurship processes and tools from “The Lean Startup”
- We will hear from guest speakers
- Working in teams we will invent a product and validate in many ways
- We will analyze the business opportunity and produce and present a business plan
- Tell us about yourselves
- Do this Simple Questionnaire
- How will teams get formed and how will they work?
Logistics
- Let’s look at this web site itself
- Let’s look at Moodle
- Let’s look at the skills
- Let’s look at the “textbook”
Your responsibilities
- Bookmark this site. You will use it more than moodle!
- Review the next class to see what the required readings are
- I will not re-state the contents in the book
- Attend in person and participate
Business plan and strategy
Noteyou will not be implementing the product or business!! You will be writing a business plan and strategy
- You will answer questions like:
- What users want this product and are willing to pay for it?
- How will you reach them and convince them to buy?
- How will the business grow?
- How much capital do you need?
The kinds of ideas that we are looking for
- Ideas that are worth funding
- Which means that they will make money, not a little, but a lot
- Or another kind of impact, not a little but a lot
- Products which take away a major pain, expense, risk, delay
- We are looking for “an aspirin” not “a vitamin”
- We need to be able to identify (“find”) the customers
- They need to be willing to pay for it
What we are not looking for
- Ideas which are cute, funny, clever
- Products that you yourself would not be willing to pay for
How to be successful in this class
- It’s all about working as a team!
- We will talk a lot more about this
- Next is to learn and understand the processes and tools from the Lean Startup
- Attending class i smandatory and participation is expected
- Homework will be due the night before class, by midnight.
Thank you. Questions?
(random Image from picsum.photos)