Foundations of Entrepreneurship

Catalog description

Are you interested in founding or joining a startup, or acting entrepreneurially within an organization? This class is designed to increase the chances of success by helping aspiring founders or employees identify and thus avoid a range of dilemmas all startups face. (By extension, aspiring investors and policy makers can also benefit from this class by learning what factors predict startup success.) To do so this class provides a broad introduction and overview of entrepreneurship based on a range of teaching methods including: academic research, cases, empirical data, videos, and guest speakers. Emphasis is devoted to “founder’s dilemmas”—that is, the consequential early decisions founders must make with minimal information. These include: deciding whether to found now or later; whether and how to form a founding team; splitting equity; tradeoffs associated with external investors; and weighing exit options. Note that this class is not an “incubator” (although you will receive substantial feedback on your business ideas). And while several components of this class are devoted to venture capital and the funding of startups, the treatment thereof is done primarily from the perspective of the entrepreneur. Primacy in this class is accorded the human and social capital aspects of entrepreneurship as opposed to those concerning financing. Students will thus leave this course with an understanding of the: · Likelihood various types of individuals will pursue and succeed in entrepreneurship; · Process of identifying and evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities; · Human, social and financial resources required at different stages of founding a business, as well as the benefits and costs of accessing them; and · Challenging dilemmas entrepreneurs face as they make decisions with limited resources under conditions of risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty.