This class is for everybody who wants to get a flavor of what it means and takes to start a new venture. While this class is a "traditional" university course, it can - and hopefully will - be much more. It is supposed to be the starting point of your own entrepreneurial endeavor. In the past, many real-life start-up projects have been initiated within this course.

During the course "Business Project - Starting Up", participants will run through a three months "bootcamp" for aspiring entrepreneurs. The main goal of this class is to help you identify a promising idea, evaluate it, and turn it into a persuasive business proposal. As this class is built on the logic of the lean start-up method, you are expected to immediately put theory to practice (interview potential customers, build prototypes, develop financial plans, build a pitch deck etc.) to really experience what it means to be founder.

In this class, you will learn and apply techniques, methods, and tools that every entrepreneur needs to master in order to get a new venture started. You'll be teaming up with other students and work on self-selected business ideas. During this process, you'll get step-by-step guidance by the lecturer as well as external experts on the following key areas: 1.) Ideation; 2.) Customer discovery; 3.) Customer validation; 4.) Market analysis; 5.) Business modeling; 6.) Go-2-market strategies; 7.) Financial planning; 8.) Pitching.

At the end of the term, you and your team will have the opportunity to present your business proposal in front of potential investors, start-up experts, as well as a wider public audience on multiple occasions, e.g., during the course DemoDay, the Entrepreneurship Avenue Conference, as well as at the E&I Touchdown.

IMPORTANT:

1.) There is no additional application process to this class. However, if you decide to enroll to this business project, make sure to block enough time for it. It's going to be tough, you'll have to get "from zero to one" within just 3 months. Workload will be very high and pay off particularly for those who actually want to use this class to prepare their own founding endeavor.

2.) This semester, the course is aligned with the Entrepreneurship Avenue. This means that all students are asked to participate in the Entrepreneurship Avenue event series (EA events are already included in the timeline of the syllabus, no additional dates to be expected).

After completing this course students will know how to:

• search, recognize and assess business opportunities
• enrich business ideas by applying appropriate methods and tools
• identify customers and their needs
• analyze and evaluate the ecosystem around the business idea
• develop profitable and sustainable business models
• apply creativity techniques throughout the whole process of business development.

Furthermore, students will acquire relevant complementary skills:

Project Management:

• manage several different stakeholders at once
• structure an innovative, fuzzy project and deal with uncertainty 
• manage different ways to arrive at a decision
• summarizing the most important outcomes in a pitch-book 

Team Work:  

• work efficiently in interdisciplinary teams through recognizing and incorporating individual strengths of each team member
• cope with different work styles, opinions and perspectives
• complementing the team by actively searching for external support to outweigh weaknesses within the core team

Communication:

• engage in lively discussions and interactive workshops
• structure complex data (project outcomes)
• present project outcomes in different environments and for different target groups (e.g., experts, team members)

In order to successfully pass this course, your absence is limited to 20% of our appointments. Furthermore, full-time presence at the kick-off day and the final pitch is obligatory! 

The course is built around several coaching sessions and workshops, which are structured to be interactive and combine several teaching methods, eg. teamwork, open discussions, individual team coaching, and coaching by external mentors.

During the kick-off session, the basic principles of entrepreneurship, business model design, opportunity recognition and tools to be employed during the semester will be presented and discussed.  

The students will be supported in the further development of their ideas by lecturers and external mentors. Regular presentations of results are scheduled. The results of the start-up planning process will be summarized in a pitch book.

The final grade of the course will depend on

• Pitch deck large (30%)
• Demo Day pitch deck (20%)
• Documentation (30%)
• Participation and executive summary (20%)

In order to pass the class, all of these performance indicators have to be positive!

The following grading scale applies:

Students are also requested to rate their peers at the same day when submitting the final deliverable (large pitch deck). Whereas the peer review is not part of the official deliverables and grading scheme, it can influence the final grade if the student is in between two grades. In the peer rating, you each divide 100 points among the team members (including yourself). Please let the share of point reflect the contribution and work of your team peers during the semester. This peer rating is confidential, no one except us will see it. Example: 100 points: Student A (30 points), Student B (30 points), Student C (20 points), Student D (20 points).

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Peter Keinz: peter.keinz@wu.ac.at