Source Credits: http://www.bidnessetc.com/23829-google-barnes-noble-join-hands-to-tackle-amazon/
Agenda for 1.21.15 Call (10am ET)
- Walk through syllabus and reading list
- Solidify the cases for the course: feasibility, relevancy, good mix of financing, negotiations and technical (what I call “dummy proofing” the students)
- Talk through different blog options and blog evaluation criteria (loads of food for thought (spicy and savory) on platform; take a look at the link below)
- Plan white boarding session date (January 28th before or after EF1 class?); let’s start the crafting stage for the slides for the first 4 sessions of the class
Synopsis: I spent 12 more hours at Barnes & Noble and an assortment of NYC and DC coffee shops going through the syllabus and fine-tuning some of the sections. At this point, the flow of the class makes sense and the emphasis on Steve Blank (Lean Start Up methodology, Business Model Canvas and Hypothesis testing and retesting) is good. We should think through whether we want to include Getting to Giving in the required coursepack or stick with Venture Deals and The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide as our main driver’s manuals for the class. Students can always check out Getting to Giving on their own at the library or bookstore.
I scoured through the HBSP cases and the following 4 got my nominations for potential EF Golden Globes:
1. Waze (product evolution and fundraising amidst industry gorillas)
2. Ockham Technologies’ Founding Agreement (slicing and dicing the pie along with the whip cream)
3. Andreesen Horowitz (VC point of view + Chris Dixon chat later + page 24 is a pretty good slice of the mega VC landscape)
4. Nantucket Nectars: The Exit (Exits, strategic sales, auction process)
Root Capital + Instiglio we can talk through but my core four are: Waze, Ockham, a16z, and Nantucket.
When going through the course content, I divided the class into two 3 week bites and reflected upon where the incremental and lumpy growth for students was happening. Was it the blog, the hypothesis testings vis a vis student surveys and blog reflections, the simulation exercises or potentially the term sheet dissections that moved the needle?
In the first three weeks, we have an assortment of:
Bite 1 (Sessions 1-6: 3.23-4.8): Aligning Concepts and Plans (necessary for you to start the class in your usual Schumpeter/disruptive fashion and lay the bricks for the class), Lean Startup I (let’s discuss what you are thinking for this), Financing I, Hypothesis Testing (different pathways for this, see pgs 190-220 of Value Proposition Design), Financing II , Simulation I (Attracting Capital)
Bite 2 (Sessions 7-11: 4.13-4.27): let’s discuss Bite 2 based on discussion of Bite 1 and what we want to accomplish with the blogs and surveying
Final Showcase: 4.29 “knitting the final threads”
The Venture Deals reading as you lay it out is pretty solid and I would not tweak anything with that. We can talk through tweaking some of the other readings and see which chapters in The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide are good to include and reference. Let’s talk through final exam + final paper project...
Let’s talk through what service to use to make it easy and streamlined for all 60+ students; I played around with Blogger and a handful of other sites to see what works and what does not work as well.
Here is a link comparing various sites: http://www.dearblogger.org/blogger-or-wordpress-better
Here is a little survey I conducted with my FB amigos/amigas:
Guys and gals: what's the best Blogging service out there (free, convenient and user friendly)?
- Rachel Henderson Searcey I like blogspot.
- Jamaal Glenn Wordpress if you want the most customization and perhaps the most work. The blogging platform of the moment is Medium. It's crazy easy to use, has a beautiful UI but offers no customization. Tumblr is somewhere in between. What's your objective?
- Satya Tammareddy Wordpress
- Rachel Henderson Searcey Blogspot is now blogger apparently. I don't recommend Tumblr unless you're doing image heavy stuff. Their mobile app is terrible and goofs up HTML all the time.
- Isaac Lara I use Wordpress because it's user-friendly. But I agree with Jamaal Glenn -- definitely depends on what you're trying to do. I get the sense though that Wordpress is used among a lot of people for long-form pieces, whereas sites like Tumblr are image-heavy.
- Ajay Bangale Thanks Rachel, Jamaal, Satya and Isaac.. Jamaal: I am helping design the second leg of a Harvard Entrepreneurial Finance class with a Professor that will involve Blogging....we need the Freshest, Least Clunkiest and Most User Friendly platform to check weekly updates
- Albert Lin Tumblr. For obvious reasons thanks
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