Assessing a new Venture Lab class at SJSU

Anu BasuJoe Giglierano

VLab started in Fall 2013

• Purpose: To provide students with real-world experience in the early development of a new venture.

• Two sessions so far - Fall, ‘13, Fall, ’14• Limited to 15 UG students w/ideas they are

seriously evaluating– Students apply to join course– Originally intended for student teams– But mostly individuals with projects

Nature of the course• Experiential • Students work on developing and testing a new venture idea

– Blank’s Customer Development is Core– Business Model Canvas– Many interviews with potential customers, partners– Students required to create/test MVP

• Teaching team – marketing, finance, communication, CS advisor • Mentors - industry experts, some coding help• Guest Speakers + Flipped classroom• In class discussions + student presentations• Demo Day• Preparation for Next Steps, Action plan

Desired Outcomes• Familiarity and practice with applying core concepts• Evaluating the viability of new venture ideas• Broad exposure to practical problems and how to address them• Practice presenting • Expert perspectives and experiences• Real start on Real Projects• Understanding the key development processes in the overall startup

process:– Product development– Customer development– Business model development– Financing development– Administrative and org structure design& development

• Learning to fail or pivot

Students’ Observations -- Positive • Students positive about all aspects, especially

– Customer development; interviewing– Practice presentations & feedback– One-on-one meetings with instructor– Mentors’ input– Guest speakers– Field trips to incubator(s), startups, Angels/VCs– Collaboration with students from other disciplines– Interactions with students in class

• Entrepreneurship seen as more do-able or attractive; more confidence in being able to do it– “VLAB gave me the tools, resources, and inspiration to further my

entrepreneurial career”

Student’s Critiques

• Some wanted a little more structure –– milestones; speakers’ topics more relevant to projects

• Wanted different shaped space, not tiered classroom

• More one-on-one time with instructor • Specific improvements (better ways of

accomplishing learning objectives):– Weekly, 3-minute updates presented in class– Limit on number of teams

Outcomes

• Everyone got the idea of getting feedback and making pivots.• Ideas were stronger to start with in second go-around.• Demo day, with MVPs required, gets super results. • Having a practice session for demo day one week before boosts

the quality noticeably.• One-third to one-half of final projects could continue

development toward launch; some students have chosen to put projects on hold to finish degrees more easily.

• Seven projects from second VLab currently continue. • Six ideas from the first VLab were continue-able; two of these

are actively continuing, two are on pause, and two are unknown.

Conclusions

• Students acquired more effectual approach, more understanding of failing/learning process

• Maybe devote more class time to work on projects • Maybe have more exercises to help with projects • Maybe establish online forum for students to record

observation & advice for their classmates • Very time intensive for both instructors and students

– hands on nature of course makes it difficult to scale beyond 7 or 8 projects (this is even a lot)

Questions on Moving Forward

• How to get teams instead of individuals?• Student mixers before the start of the semester?• How to handle variation in student commitment?• How to handle variation in preparation and

background?• How to get more disciplines involved, particularly

engineering? • Mentor training?