Entrepreneurship is one of the highest leverage ways you can make an impact in the world.

This course is intended to help students gain a better understanding of the overall startup and venture capital funding landscape, acquire a better working vocabulary of the terms within the industry, and learn how professionals think about building and scaling their startups. There will be a technical component of this course where students learn how to build a landing page for a startup and learn to break down the different technical considerations when it comes to building a software product. We will then conclude with how students can take the next steps in their entrepreneurship education by working at a startup.

This is a tentative schedule; it may change as we go.

Student-run courses are graded on a Pass/Fail basis.

If students do not fulfill these requirements they will not receive credit.

For full participation credit, students will be expected to:

In Week 2, we presented several frameworks for how to generate startup ideas. Utilizing any one of the frameworks, brainstorm a potential startup idea and explain how it fits into one of the frameworks. Describe the target customer, the problem the startup solves, and how the startup presents a solution. Address all of these components in a one-page response along with evidence that supports your claims.

Construct a plan for acquiring users for your startup. List at least three different potential channels and metrics you will use to measure the success of your plan. Some elements to consider putting in your plan include:

We covered the important first step many founders take in creating a simple landing page for their startup. Building on what you learned this week about web development and the early startup landscape, construct a simple landing page for your startup. Your landing page must include the name of your startup, a description of the problem your startup is aiming to solve, and a form for collecting names and emails. Feel free to include information you feel a future customer would find useful.

Write a technical spec on your startup’s product, describing what problem you are solving, the goals or requirements for your product, and how you plan to achieve this. Utilize one concept from a previous computer science course and elaborate on how you would implement this in your startup, pros, and cons, and why you chose this specific method.

Create a final slide presentation using the information you’ve collected from the previous assignments as well as the venture capital pitch guidelines we’ve provided you. Be prepared to present your slides to the class on our final day. Below are the following components that should be present in your slide deck:

Grades will be weighted as follows:

If you believe you need accommodations for a disability or a chronic medical condition, please contact Student Disability Services (via email at studentdisabilityservices@swarthmore.edu) to arrange an appointment to discuss your needs. As appropriate, the office will issue students with documented disabilities or medical conditions a formal Accommodations Letter. Since accommodations require early planning and are not retroactive, please contact Student Disability Services as soon as possible.

For details about the accommodations process, visit the Student Disability Services website.

You are also welcome to privately contact the sponsoring professor(s) or the student facilitators to discuss your academic needs. However, please note that all disability-related accommodations must be arranged, in advance, through Student Disability Services. To receive an accommodation for a course activity you must have an official Accommodations Letter and you need to meet a member of the course staff to work out the details of your accommodation at least two weeks prior to any activity requiring accommodations.

Academic honesty is required in all your work. Under no circumstances may you hand in work done with (or by) someone else under your own name. Your code should never be shared with anyone; you may not examine or use code belonging to someone else, nor may you let anyone else look at or make a copy of your code. This includes, but is not limited to, obtaining solutions from students who previously took the course or code that can be found online. You may not share solutions after the due date of the assignment or make them publicly available anywhere (e.g. public GitHub repository).

Discussing ideas and approaches to problems with others on a general level is fine (in fact, we encourage you to discuss general strategies with each other), but you should never read anyone else’s code or let anyone else read your code. All code you submit must be your own with the following permissible exceptions: code distributed in class, code found in the course text book, and code worked on with an assigned partner. In these cases, you should always include detailed comments that indicates on which parts of the assignment you received help, and what your sources were.

Failure to abide by these rules constitutes academic dishonesty and will lead to a hearing of the College Judiciary Committee. According to the Faculty Handbook:

The spirit of this policy applies to all course work, including code, homework solutions (e.g., proofs, analysis, written reports), and exams. Please contact me if you have any questions about what is permissible in this course.