OVERVIEW
The goal of this program is to inspire visionaries, and entrepreneurs to follow their gut, and intuition.
The driving force behind startup ventures are entrepreneurs . We would like to attract individuals who have the courage, insight, knowledge, intensity and luck to attempt to achieve great business results with limited resources and lack of mentorship. We will focus on developing a business plan, and creating mentorship program.
The Entrepreneur will learn to manage a growing and necessarily complex set of dynamics by providing milestones and indicating the resources that will be necessary to achieve them. Finally, the program will provide a set of standards against which actual performance can be compared. But as reality entails a great plan by itself is no guarantee of success.
A successful startup requires relentless execution against the plan and flexibility in reevaluating and changing the plan. The ultimate validations are customers orders and a scalable, repeatable and profitable business model.
THE SYLLABUS
1) Identifying and Evaluating Disruptive Opportunities
Objective: Think about how to screen entrepreneurial ideas and begin to create your own opportunity screen. What’s the difference between an idea and an opportunity? How do you recognize opportunities and create new solutions
2) Market Research- Analyzing the Industry
Objective: To understand how to apply and adapt classic market research techniques and tools to entrepreneurial business ventures. Understanding the DNA of your industry. How to find the data you need. Identifying Your Customer-market segmentation
3) Business Models & Revenue Models
Objective: To understand various startup business models, the key lessons in business models, how business models have evolved with the internet and the importance of scalability.
4) Business Plan
Objective: Why a business plan? What are the critical elements of a business plan? What does it take to write a strong business plan?
5) Legal Considerations
Objective: To understand the legal issues new ventures must address such as intellectual property, rights, structure, founders/partnership agreements, etc.
6) Sales Strategy & Customer Value Proposition
Objective: What to consider while setting up sales for your startups. What challenges are you likely to face and how you decide on pricing, channel issues, positioning versus the customer perception.
7) Financial Models, Projections & Valuations
Objective: Learn how to prepare and create financial projections and understand key financial assumptions, how to compute valuation & dilution.
8) Product Launch & Go‐2‐Market Strategies
Objective: How to reach your Target Market – think about creating a brand, manage channels and decide how to bring a product to market (pricing, positioning, launching a product). Developing strategies to create market differentiation including packaging, advertising, and distribution.
9) Team dynamics & soft skills
Objective: Understand Startup dynamics within the founding team and how they influence the growth of the business, and the key dos and don’ts of personnel issues in the early phase of a startup. Human resources management. Organizational structure. Attracting talent. Building a board of director, and advisory board.
10) Presentation Skills & Handling VC
Objective: understand how VCs view entrepreneurs & how the process of seeking investment works. We will also discuss presentation skills and provide feedback on individual styles of presentation.
11) Operations & Partnerships
Objective: To understand the importance of planning for operational success, especially in the areas of manufacturing, supply chain and distribution. How to forge key partnerships for an entrepreneurial venture.
12) Getting Financing for Your Venture
Objective: Determining how much funding you’ll need. Securing loans. Identifying alternative financing strategies. Applying for grants. Participate in startup competition. Apply to join an incubator.
13) Getting Financing for Your Venture/ Equity
Objective: Understand a basic venture capital structure and term sheet, and think about how to align the objectives and agendas of the founders and investors. How to think like an investor. What are the different types of equity investors? How to identify potential investors?
