MEF UNIVERSITY - ENTR 400 Business Skills & Entrepreneurship

MEF UNIVERSITY
ENTR 400 Business Skills and Entrepreneurship

Class Time and Location

Tuesday 16:00 - 18:50

Introduction
This entrepreneurship course is designed to make students experience the founding
process of a startup. The course is addressing the question of ‘How can I start a
startup?’ We are following hypothesis driven approach in our course which naturally
has failure through the process. Failing with your hypothesis does not mean a
downgrade in your points, rather we embrace it as a learning. While I will guide you
through to process you are going to learn most of the stuff related with your startup
from your customers (yes you are going to talk to real customers). You are going to
design and produce a brochure and a prototype of your product, in other words you
are also going to be a maker in this course.

You are going to think that this course blurry, fuzzy, unclear. This course is pretty
much different from the other courses in engineering faculty. Most of the courses
are based on mathematical proven models and you are required to apply some
formulas or develop an algorithm to a given well defined problem. There are 3 main
steps in the course 1) Problem Validation 2) Solution Validation 3) Investor Pitch.
While definition of the problem is also key in startup world but unlike most other
courses problem is neither given nor defined by me/course resources, they exists
outside of the campus/building/library. What is even worse is your customers also
bad at conveying their problems, you have to make them speak&react and learn
from them. Lastly you are going to design solution from scratch with very little
directions.

Your textbook and companion workbook are great resources, you are expected to
read and learn from them individually. I am going to use most lectures as
workshops for your team hence you will be able to do most of your homework/
teamwork in the class with all team members. The remaining homework, most of
the time requires, you get out of the building and talk to real customers.

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MEF UNIVERSITY - ENTR 400 Business Skills & Entrepreneurship

Instructor

T. Murat Tortopoglu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tortopoglu/

GSM: 531 212 1114 (SMS, no WhatsApp, do not call after 20:00)

murat@yaraticiyikim.com

Office Hours

Office hours will be online upon reservation. Send me 5 minute calendar invites.

Required Materials

Pen, pencil, sharpies, paper, postit for all lectures.

I am planning to collect your individual work (can be a business model map,

drawing of a customer archetype ) on paper as an attendance&participation.

Course Book(s)
Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup (Wiley) Bill
Aulet,
ISBN: 978-1-118-69228-8 (cloth); 978-1-118-72081-3 (ebk); 978-1-118-72088-2
(ebook)

Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook. (Wiley) Bill Aulet,

ISBN : 978-1-119-36579-2 (paperback), 978-1-119-36577-8 (ePDF),
978-1-119-36578-5 (ePUB)

—— ———————————————————————————————————
—
Books for Project and midterm:
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and
Challengers, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
You can read&download from here: h2ps://issuu.com/
business.model.innova:on/docs/business_model_genera:on_book_preview_embed

Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers

Want, Alan Smith, Alexander Osterwalder, Gregory Bernarda, Trish Papadakos,
and Yves Pigneur

h2ps://issuu.com/business.model.innova:on/docs/vpd_sneakpeek

Financial Statements

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MEF UNIVERSITY - ENTR 400 Business Skills & Entrepreneurship

h2ps://web.stanford.edu/class/msande271/onlinetools/HowToReadFinancial.pdf

I am not going to cover all the materials in the class, instead introduce some other
concepts frameworks regarding that weeks’ subject. Most of the workshops will
cover workbook.

Suggested Readings

Startup and Venture Capital World:

Do subscribe, yet listen from the first episode of these podcasts:

• http://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/ (Harry Stebbings 20 year old university drop

out https://www.wired.co.uk/article/harry-stebbings-vc-podcast )

• https://mastersofscale.com/ (Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman)

Tools for entrepreneurs:

• https://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/

Alternative guide book to startup :

The Start-up Owner’s Manual: Steve Blank and Bob Dorf (2012). K&S Ranch, Inc.
Publishers.

Business Newsletters & Websites:

• Strategy : https://stratechery.com/ Ben Thompson. I can use one of the blog
posts as a midterm question

• Venture Capital, Startups and Innovation Strategy : https://www.cbinsights.com/

newsletter

• On Startups : https://www.launchticker.com/

• Venture Capital, Startups and technology. www.techcrunch.com I can use one of

the news/posts as a midterm question

This course is strange

You are accustomed to learn a rule/theory/logic apply it to given problems. There

are sample questions and exercise questions in your book to master your skills. At
the exam you are given a problem and all you need to do a pick a rule and just
apply.

But in this course I am not either defining the problem nor giving the solution. I am
just providing you some basic tools and a process to follow, it is your job to define
problem and the solution.

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MEF UNIVERSITY - ENTR 400 Business Skills & Entrepreneurship

Lectures

You are expected to read the course book and skim through the workbook before
you came to the class.

I will act like an facilitator, coach, mentor in the class while you are finishing the
worksheets from the workbook.

Grading

The combined assessments are worth 100% (100 points), with the following
distribution:

• Quizes: 10 (individual) (mostly before class on BB. qustions from course book
and reading)

• Participation: 10 (individual) (by delivering in class exercise or team work.

asking&answering from the reading material )

• Mid Term: 30 (Individual)

• Individual Prototype: 15 (individual) As part of your project each team member will
create seperate and unique prototypee for their startup idea.

• Project: 35 (functionality, design, validation) (Team)

• Problem Validation Presentation: 10

• Solution Validation Presentation: 10

• Startup Pitch Presentation (Final): 10

• Executive summary (Just one A4 size business plan) (Final): 5

Project Teams

Team Size : Team of 1 - 4. DONOT ASK FOR 5. If you are doing your graduation
project alone, you can also be a solo entreprenur in the class.

What to expect from a co-founder :

- http://paulgraham.com/founders.html

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxGfVVNOYo0

Project (Startup Idea)

You have to select an idea to work on during the class.

Forbidden Ideas:

- Any kind of idea related with selling food on campus

- Any kind of idea whose primary customer is University, NGO, Government,

Municipalicty, Disabled people

Mandatory Idea for senior students:

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 MEF UNIVERSITY - ENTR 400 Business Skills & Entrepreneurship

- You are required to work on your graduation project. (it is easy for you to develop
a prototype)

Exception :

- Exceptions are allowed. Lets talk them in class.

How to find a Startup Idea: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

- Do not try to find problems, search for problems, inefficiencies arround you. In
your family, in hour home, in your building, in your transportation vehicle, in your
relationships. Try to find problem which you have already observed, where you can
actually name the first potential customers.

Readings

This course requires a lot of reading prior to the class.

I suggest you to finish Business Model Generation and Value Proposition book
previews at first week.

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MEF UNIVERSITY - ENTR 400 Business Skills & Entrepreneurship

Schedule

Detailed course plan can be viewed here :

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-
CgWALLu9LDp2ydDnhe0HL7ME8lcjmAXlKvM0JKkuBM/edit#gid=681637525

Lectur
Name Key Concept1 Key Concept1 Key Concept3
e#
Introduction to
1 Business Model and Designing Business Model Lean Startup Approach Course overview
Lean Startup
W - Ideation / Flirting w
C - Business model canvas mapping L - Business model
2 Ideation classmates for team
based on the homework examples
formation
Business Model W - HW Article : Business model W - Business model W - Business model
3
Generation mapping generation, Ideation innovation, Ideation
L - Testing Business models
L - Strategy Formulation
4 Lean Startup L - Market Segmentation L - Income Statement
W - Ideation
L - Beachead Market Selection
Midterm Answers
5 Midterm Midterm Midterm W - How to find
customers to talk?
Primary Market W - Market Segmentation W - Full Cyle Use Case W - PMR
6
Research W - Beachead Market Selection (Before) (TalkingToHumans)
Primary Market W - End User Profile
7 W - Market Size W - PMR
Research W - Persona
Problem Validation P - Problem Validation W - Full Cycle Usecase
8 P - Problem Validation Presentation
Presentation Presentation (After)
W - Competitive
Value Proposition Positioning W - Experiment Design
9 W - Benefit - Feature Fit
Design W - Quantify the Value L - Prototyping Tools
Proposition
Prototype Individual Prototype Demo / Individual Prototype W - Prototype
10
Presentations Presentations Demo / Presentations W - Experiment Design

11 Revenue Model W - Customer Acquisition W - Customer Acquisition W - Customer Acquisition

Solution Validation P - Solution Validation W - Proforma Income

12 P - Solution Validation Presentation
Presentation Presentation Statement
W - Update &
W - Revenue Models
13 Customer Acquisition L - Financial Ratios Benchmark Proforma
W - Pricing
Income Statement
L - Sources of funds W - Picth Deck
14 Fundraising L - Startup Pitch Deck
L - Fundraising Process W - Executive Summary

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