About this course: Starting a new business begins with an idea that needs to evolve through experimentation, iteration and interactions with people. This course is for existing and potential entrepreneurs who are looking for guidance and support to make their ‘great idea’ a reality. In addition to reviewing the basic principles of entrepreneurship, this course guides you through the process of actively validating your idea in the market. We encourage you to identify and communicate good opportunities and to create and capture value from these opportunities. By working through the course and completing the activities you’ll learn how to get feedback that systematically tests different parts of your business idea. You will learn how to do this through interacting with potential customers, suppliers, partners and investors outside the course. Along the way, you will also become more confident in pitching your idea. By the end of the course you should have a validated business idea that you can start right away.
Taught by: Allya Koesoema, Lecturer
UNSW Business School
Taught by: Martin Bliemel, Senior Lecturer
UNSW Business School
| Commitment | 6 weeks of study, 2-4 hours/week |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
- Reading: About this course
- LTI Item: (OPTIONAL activity): How do you learn?
- Video: Video: Introduction to the Course and Entrepreneurship (3 min)
- LTI Item: Activity: Are you ready to be an entrepreneur?
- Reading: Reading: Introduction to Entrepreneurship
- Video: Video: How will your business idea evolve? The Lean Startup Method
- Reading: Activity: The Lean Startup Method and Business Model Canvas
- Peer Review: (Optional activity) Your first Business Model Canvas - Show it off to your peers!
- Reading: Reading: Mentors, who needs them?
- LTI Item: Offline Activity: Finding a mentor to validate your idea
- LTI Item: Activity: Lessons learned from your mentor
- LTI Item: (OPTIONAL activity): Ouch! Feedback can hurt. How sensitive are you?
- Video: Video: How is your idea valuable?
- Reading: Strategy Canvas: Mapping how you are different
- Reading: Creating your first Persona and Customer Journey Map
- Reading: Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Reading: Measuring and Learning from your MVP
- LTI Item: Offline Activity: Finding a potential customer to validate your value proposition
- LTI Item: Activity: Lessons learned from your customer
- Video: Video: How will you reach more customers?
- Reading: Growing your business: Segmenting and targeting your niches
- Reading: Partners and resources
- LTI Item: Offline Activity: Finding a potential partner to validate the scalability of your idea
- LTI Item: Activity: Lessons learned from your partner
- Video: Video: How profitable is your idea?
- Reading: Income Statements
- Reading: Forecasts and models
- Reading: Metrics
- LTI Item: Offline Activity: Finding a potential supplier
- LTI Item: Activity: Lessons learned from your supplier
- Video: Video: Is investment capital right for you?
- Reading: How will you finance your startup's growth?
- Reading: Valuations
- LTI Item: Offline Activity: Finding a potential investor
- LTI Item: Activity: Lessons learned from a potential investor
- Video: Video: How will you pitch your idea?
- Reading: Pitch structure: What key ingredients do you need?
- Reading: Activity: Example pitch decks - Learning from the greats (& not so greats)
- Reading: Contextualising and delivering your pitch
- Reading: Activity: Example pitches - Learning from the greats (& not so greats)
- Video: Watch UNSW students pitch 'crumplemap'
- Reading: Activity: Developing your pitch
- LTI Item: Exit survey
Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.
Connect with thousands of other learners and debate ideas, discuss course material, and get help mastering concepts.
Earn official recognition for your work, and share your success with friends, colleagues, and employers.
This course is structured in an intuitive and easy to manage way. The lectures, who are clearly highly intelligent, package their knowledge in understandable and easy-to-grasp ways that are in no way alienating - which is what I initially expected the course would be.
Really helpful for understanding requirements and mindset of a startup
This is a great course! It definitely helped me in framing my startup idea. I would personally suggest starting even *before* building an MVP to gauge initial interest: Time is your most valuable resource - don’t spend any more than necessary on something that you don’t even know is actually viable. Another point I would make is to not mistake your friends & family for your target audience - sometimes there may of course be overlaps, but a “yeah, that sounds cool” from your friends & family doesn’t cut it. There's something called “Interviewer bias”, which means that your friends will rate your ideas more favorably than the general public. I've personally used http://www.ideacheck.io to get an initial sense of whether my ideas might actually be valuable. They take care of generating a questionnaire from the idea and put it to a panel of users from your target group. So far, the response to my ideas was mostly negative, but I've gained valuable feedback through this process.
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MC
Helps you a lot if you do not know anything about canvas or how to startup your idea.