For nearly forty years, IAP has provided members of the MIT community (students, faculty, staff, and alums) with a unique opportunity to organize, sponsor and participate in a wide variety of activities. Entrepreneurship has been a part of that tradition for a significant portion of that history. This year we highlight a few courses of interest to our entrepreneurial communty, including several new offerings. We hope you’ll join us in these activities!
15.S21 Special Seminar in Management - The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans
with Joseph G. Hadzima, Jr., Joost Bonson
Tues-Thurs, Jan 22-24, 29-31, 6pm-9pm, 34-101
The nuts and bolts of preparing a Business Plan will be explored in this 22nd annual course offering. The course is open to members of the M.I.T. Community and to others interested in entrepreneurship. Recommended for persons who are interested in starting or are involved in a new business. Persons planning to enter the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition should find the course particularly useful. In the past approximately 50% of the class has been from Sloan and 50% from the Science, Engineering and Architecture Schools. This "cross-school" course has resulted in the formation of $100K Competition Teams and a number of successful startups.
15.S24 Special Seminar in Management - From MIT to CEO: Technologists Leading Startup Ventures
with Noubar Afeyan
Tues Jan 15 - Thurs Jan 17, 3pm-6pm, E62-223
Startup ventures form a special class of enterprise that translates innovations into commercial offerings often disrupting large markets.This course will focus on the characteristics, requirements and role of a technologist-CEO in a startup. We will analyze the role from many points of view including as chief strategist, fundraiser, recruiter, motivator, promoter, market developer, sales person, visionary, communicator and paranoid optimist.
15.S25 Special Seminars in Management - Social Entrepreneurship: The Story of One Laptop Per Child
with Charles Kane
Mon Jan 14 - Thurs Jan 17, 4pm-6pm, E51-335
This course explores the challenges and successes of the social entrepreneurship adventure ‘One Laptop Per Child’. The project involved many engineering, business, and distribution decisions that one would encounter in any other social entrepreneurship venture. The professors explore and describe the current state and future vision of the project. Students are invited to participate in helping impact the direction of the future of the project. Students should sign up on Websis by December 21st, 2010.
15.S51 Special Seminar in Management: Hacking IAP
with Bill Aulet, Christina Chase
Mon Jan 7 - Fri Jan 11, 10am-06pm, E40-160
Students spend one week hacking entrepreneurial ideas in cross-disciplinary teams. Students will participate in hand on sessions on entrepreneurship, team building, agile product management, sales, and fundraising in this workshop-like course. Actionable steps in business creation, including prototypes, customers, team composition, go-to-market plan/progress, hypotheses that have been tested.
Watch a video with information about this course online here.
To apply for the class, please fill out this application: http://bit.ly/HackIAP by Friday, December 21st .
with R. Colin Kennedy, Will Whitney
Mon Jan 14, Wed Jan 16, Frida Jan 18 10:30am-3pm, 32-124
Startups are hard; oftentimes, the right idea needs the right implementation, or maybe the world just isn't ready for it yet. Know the difference. Learn how to measure and assess whether you're onto the next big thing and should jump in, perhaps really close and need to tweak things, or way off target and need to run away.
Your time is precious, so don't waste it on the wrong things - we'll give you the fundamentals to understand how to make it count. Contact Colin Kennedy (rck@mit.edu) with questions and visit http://j.mp/MIT15S56 to register.
with William Aulet, Ben Israelite, and Dan Fehder
Wed Jan 23, Thurs Jan 24, 10:30am-4pm, E40-160
Experienced accelerator applicants/participants, VCs, and other key individuals in the local entrepreneurship community will take students through the what, why, and how of accelerators and incubators for entrepreneurs. Contact Ben Israelite (bji@mit.edu) with questions and visit http://bit.ly/IAPGuide2Accelerators to register.
15.S58 Entrepreneurship on the Big Screen: What Can We Learn About Entrepreneurship from Movies
with Bill Aulet
Tues Jan 22, Wed Jan 23 and Thu Jan 24, 6pm-10pm, E40-160
Students will screen four movies and discuss what lessons can be learned from them for the entrepreneur. The topics will range from entrepreneurial leadership, fundraising strategies and implementation, legal issues, and decision making frameworks. Listeners allowed with permission of instructor.
Build a Prototype Without an Engineer
Ben Israelite, Cort Johnson
Wed Jan 16, 9 am-2pm, E40-160
Learn the 3 step process of building a technical prototype without having to write a line of code. You'll learn:
Putting pen to paper - Getting the idea from one's head and into a format where product owners can begin to discuss the idea coherently with others. A major focus at this stage is scoping the product functionality and asking questions like, "Is this core to the problem that I'm trying to solve?"; Wire framing - With an understanding of the product functionality, product owners should visually model the user flows of their product. This exercise helps product owners get a feel for the complexity of their product and forces them to take the time to intimately understand how a user will navigate their product.; Project management - With the first iteration of the product understood, the product owner should know how to write user stories and how to manage a project with an engineering team. We run through how to use tools like Pivotal Tracker, Trello, Assembla and others. Contact Ben Israelite (bji@mit.edu) with questions and visit http://iap.eventbrite.com/ to register.