Launch Your Own Startup

Syllabus

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Class Syllabus Launch Your Own Startup

Description of the Course

In this 4 week course, students learn how to make their entrepreneurial dreams into a reality by designing a go-to-market strategy and plan for their own start-up idea. Students begin by identifying the problem they are interested in solving, research the current market, and identify their unique value proposition before designing ideal user personas, and initial channels for distribution/revenue models.

By the end of the course, students have a well-developed go-to-market strategy and a pitch deck appropriate for speaking to investors, potential co-founders, and potential partner organizations.

Course Structure

Students learn how to create a go-to-market strategy for a business idea with support from successful serial founders. They also participate in three live online classes with personal support from industry mentors, gaining real-world skills in entrepreneurship, customer and competitive research, business strategy, distribution, and monetization . At the end of the course, students present their go-to-market plan in a live session so they can showcase their start-up idea.

Course Objectives

In this course, students will:

• Develop a business idea into a go-to-market strategy by learning the fundamentals of entrepreneurship

• Learn how to identify a problem that students are interested in solving, solves an important problem or improves a current system, and has a core audience

• Identify how to make their start-up idea a reality by learning about monetization strategies, and distribution channels

• Design a pitch deck for their business idea to present to potential investors, partners, and/or co-founders

Course Outline

Week 1: Identify the Problem

• Video Introduction: Starting Your Own Business

• Preparation: Best Practices for Building a Start-up

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• Activity: Do You Really Want to Launch a Start-up?

• Live Session: Identifying the Problem

• Weekly Office Hours

• Discussion Board #1

• Assignment #1: Problem, Audience, and Competition

Week 2: Crafting a Solution

• Video Lecture: Identifying a Unique Value Proposition

• Preparation: How to Evaluate a Start-up Idea

• Activity: Crafting User Personas

• Live Session: Crafting a Solution

• Weekly Office Hours

• Discussion Board #2

• Analysis Phase: Your Unique Value Proposition and User Personas

Week 3: The Future

• Video Lecture: Crafting a Go-to-Market Strategy

• Preparation: Pitching Best Practices

• Activity: Distribution Channels

• Live Session: The Future

• Weekly Office Hours

• Discussion Board #3

• Final Project: Design A Go-To-Market with Pitch Deck

Week 4: Presentation

• Preparation: Presentation Basics

• Activity: Presentation Prep

• Live Session: Presentations

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Grading Policy

Component Percentage of Grade

Assignment 1 25%

Assignment 2 25%

Discussion Boards 15%

Final Presentation 35%

Please note that you must attend all classes and receive an 80% or greater to receive the certificate of completion for the course

Technology Requirements

Students will need access to the internet and the Canvas Learning Management system.

Course Project Overview

In this course, students design a go-to-market strategy and plan for their own start-up business idea. Students begin by identifying the problem they are interested in solving, research the current market, and identify their unique value proposition before designing ideal user personas, and initial channels for distribution/revenue models. By the end of the course, students have a well-developed go-to-market strategy and a pitch deck appropriate for speaking to investors, potential co-founders, and potential partner organizations.

Part 1: Identifying the Problem

In this project, students identify the problem they are trying to solve before identifying key audiences, researching current solutions and alternatives, and developing a competitive analysis.

Part 2: Designing a Solution

In this project, students take what they have learned in their competitive analysis to design a unique value proposition. They then create two ideal user personas and determine how best to reach those audiences.

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Final Project: Go-to Market Strategy and Presentation

In their final project, students synthesize all they have learned to create a go-to-market strategy and plan that also includes a discussion of competitive barriers and a plan to overcome them, monetization strategy, and distribution channels. Students then present their findings in a pitch deck designed for either an investor, potential partner, or possible co-founder.

Academic Integrity

Honesty is an essential aspect of academic integrity. Individual students are responsible for doing their own work and submitting original assignments as per the course directions. Plagiarism and cheating of any kind will not be tolerated.

Plagiarize: “To steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own without crediting the source; presenting as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1973, 870).

This includes using information from the Internet without citing the website. Avoid plagiarism by appropriately acknowledging the source of the author’s words and ideas. Cheating: Submitting or presenting an assignment as your own when it was written or created by someone else is not permissible in this class.