NYC Entrepreneurship Lab

Catalog description

The NYC Entrepreneurship Experience is your chance to learn entrepreneurship by working directly with the founders of early stage startups. In the classroom you will learn the leading approaches to navigating uncertainty—grounded in entrepreneurship theory. Outside of the classroom you will apply these practices by working directly with your classmates on supporting your startup on a strategically important project. As part of a student team, you will first identify and scope a meaningful project or set of projects that you can contribute to the startup. After agreeing on a project with startup founders, you will immerse yourself in projects which can range from supporting the launch of a new product line, to providing strategic analysis of the competitive landscape, to providing an in depth understanding of the customer. This class is not structured like a typical lecture based course and thus will require you to spend more time outside of class, conducting research, analysis, and work effectively within a team. To support you along the way, you will receive mentorship from a network of successful entrepreneurs at critical points in your engagement and be required to provide interim individual and group progress reports. The course concludes with you presenting your work back to the startup founders and hearing directly from them how your work may impact their work going forward. A core aspect of this experience is gaining from analysis, action, and reflection cycle, where you will use reflections throughout the course to support long-term generalized knowledge and insights you can apply your own future ventures or other entrepreneurial environments.