ENGR 245: The Lean LaunchPad
Overview
This course provides real world, hands-on learning on what it’s like to actually start a high-tech company. This class is not about how to write a business plan. It’s not an exercise on how smart you are in a classroom, or how well you use the research library. The end result is not a PowerPoint slide deck for a VC presentation. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. You’ll work in teams learning how to turn a great idea into a great company. You’ll learn how to use a business model to brainstorm each part of a company and customer development to get out of the classroom to see whether anyone other than you would want/use your product. Finally, you’ll see how agile development can help you rapidly iterate your product to build something customers will use and buy. Each week will be a new adventure as you test each part of your business model and then share the hard earned knowledge with the rest of the class. Working with your team you will encounter issues on how to build and work with a team and we will help you understand how to build and manage the startup team.
This class is primarily team-based. Working and studying will be done in teams. Team projects can be software, physical product, or service of any kind. Projects are treated as real start-ups, so the work load will be intense.
See what National Public Radio said about this class (or download the audio file here).
When
Tuesday, 4:15pm – 7:05pm, January 7 – March 15, 2012
Where
Y2E2 111 (tentative)
Who
Steve Blank, Ann Miura-Ko and Jon Feiber
For more information, please contact the TA, Rick Barber (barber5@stanford.edu) or attend one of our information sessions
And keep an eye on this page for more information.
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