One of the ways I learn is to teach. My students ask questions I can’t answer and challenge me to solve problems I never considered. At times I’ll do what I consider an extension of teaching; a two-day Customer Discovery/Validation intensive session with a large corporation serious about Customer Development at my ranch on the [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development, Teaching | 8 Comments »
“I never have let my schooling interfere with my education.” – Mark Twain Every time I see my graduate students try to teach for the first time, it’s usually so painful I bite my lip. Then I remember the first day I stood up in front of a classroom. You Hired My first job in [...]
Filed under: ESL, Teaching | 17 Comments »
If you’ve had a great career what happens to all your knowledge and experience when you retire? Great Suit My wife and I had dinner last night with a friend of hers from high school. Tom, her husband whom I had never met before joined us as well. I took one look at his suit [...]
Filed under: Teaching | 31 Comments »
Last week one of the schools I teach at invited me to judge a business plan contest. I suggested that they first might want to read my post on why business plans are a poor planning and execution tool for startups. They called back laughing and the invitation disappeared. At best I think business plan competitions [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development Manifesto, Teaching | 44 Comments »
I usually hear the “Should I get my MBA?” question at least once a month. If you’re an entrepreneur, the glib answer is “no.” It’s also the wrong answer. Should I Get My MBA? Last week I was having coffee with an ex engineering student of mine now on his second startup (and for a [...]
Filed under: Family/Career, Teaching | 25 Comments »
I’ve been teaching Customer Development at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas Business School since the fall of 2004 and in a joint MBA with Columbia since 2005. This Tuesday I finished the lectures for this semester and my students are now working hard on their final project. A lot has happened since I first authored and taught [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Teaching | 15 Comments »
The Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship course at Stanford taught undergraduates how to take a technical idea and turn it into a profitable and scalable company. By getting out of the building on a team project, the class helped students viscerally understand that a startup is a search for a profitable business model. Students formed teams, [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development Manifesto, Teaching | 2 Comments »
Back from a family humanitarian trip/vacation to one of the last bastions of Communism where “marketing” isn’t even a profession and entrepreneurship is a crime. The irony is that the “Revolutionary Square” in all these Communist countries will be the the first place the McDonald’s go when the system collapses. ——————- In my last post I described my [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development Manifesto, Teaching | 10 Comments »
One of the classes I teach in the engineering school at Stanford is E145: the Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship, an introduction to building a scalable startup. While the class is open to everyone at the University, we want to teach science and engineering undergraduates how they can take a technical idea and turn it into [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development Manifesto, Teaching | 26 Comments »
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