Curriculum

Spring 2010 San Diego / Orange County

The Founder Institute offers a weekly curriculum of company-building sessions designed to help entrepreneurs think through every aspect of their business, from the core idea to the revenue model. Each weekly session is lead by three startup CEO Mentors, who share their unique and often differing opinions on the topic, and provide our founders with expert feedback and advice. Participating Founders are given assignments to build key aspects of their companies between the sessions that are completed in Working Groups with their peers.

Program Sessions

Founder Institute Orientation

April 06, 2010, at 06:00 PM:

The orientation will provide an overview of the next four months of the Founder Institute, answer questions and provide a networking time for all new founders to meet each other

Your Vision and Idea Types

April 07, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Develop ideas for your business.

What are you passionate about? What is your vision? How do you translate passion and vision into a business idea? How do you brainstorm ideas? What are tools for evaluating your ideas? What are the makings of a good idea versus a bad idea? Should you pursue multiple ideas at once, and when should you focus on one?

Basic Research

April 14, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Validate your idea and target market.

What market are you pursuing? Is it big enough? Is it growing or shrinking? What are the other characteristics of your market, and why do you care? How do you find data on your market? How do you define your competitors? What are inexpensive tactics to do custom market research? How can you determine if you can win in your target market, and when do you decide to walk away?

Naming and Branding

April 21, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Name and brand your business.

What is a brand? Is it you? Is it your vision? How do you determine what you stand for, and then how do you come up with a good company name? What are the characteristics of a good company name? What do you need to do to protect your name?

Founder Institute Working Session

April 28, 2010, at 06:00 PM:

Bring it all together - Idea, Research & Naming & Branding

Company Roadmap

May 05, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Develop a plan to build your idea.

How do you get from an idea to an offering? How do you build an offering? What tactics should you use to ensure success? What is the plan to develop your offering? What are tips and tricks to make that plan accurate? What are common mistakes that every founder makes? What are the best practices? How do you navigate competition, and how do you win?

Founder Institute Working Session

May 10, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Improve offering

Each working group will meet with mentor and receive individual feedback on your offering.

Earning Revenue

May 12, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Determine your business model.

How does your business make and spend money? What is the best mix of revenues, or is one revenue stream the right approach? How do you build a realistic financial model? How do you create realistic assumptions for your model? What are ways to check that your assumptions are right? How do you know if your business model is viable?

Hiring and Firing

May 19, 2010, at 06:00 PM: How to find the best people.

What are the right mix of skills that you need to launch a world-class technology company? Should you be looking for cofounders, team members, freelancers or interns? When should you plan to bring on people to help? How do you recruit and interview to find the best resources? What are the compensation guidelines in the beginning for cofounders and other various roles? How do you set expectations, measure results and remove or fire under performing resources?

Founder Institute Working Session

May 26, 2010, at 06:00 PM:

Intellectual Property

June 09, 2010, at 06:00 PM: File your provisional patents.

What is the intellectual property of your business? What types of protections are available, and what are the costs? How do you manage your intellectual property using confidentiality, copyrights, and patents? What can and what should you do on your own, and what do you need a lawyer for? What are common intellectual property problems, and how do you deal with them cost effectively?

Startup Legal and Incorporation

June 16, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Build a legal strategy and incorporate.

Why incorporate? What are the basic legal concepts that you need to know to run a successful company? What are the key legal terms that you need to care about in contracts, with your team, and with your Board? What are common legal mistakes in startups? What are the key legal documents that a startup needs to operate? When do you need to use a lawyer, and when can you handle things on your own? How do you manage a law firm efficiently to get the best work?

Outsourcing and Partnerships

June 23, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Select key vendors. Make big deals.

What should you outsource, and what do you need to do in-house? What is the core competency of your team, and what should it to be? What vendors do you need? How do you select the best vendors for your business on the best terms? How do you evaluate the economics? What are some horror stories to avoid? How can a small startup partner with large organizations in order to grow faster, build revenues, and gain market share? What are some lessons for partnering with large companies, and what are some secret tactics for getting these critical deals done?

Founder Institute Working Session

June 30, 2010, at 06:00 PM:

Pitch Night Review

Marketing and Sales

July 07, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Create a message that resonates.

Who are your customers? What audience are you trying to reach? How do you tell the story of your company? How do you create the right messages? What are the best tactics for your outreach: publicity, guerrilla marketing, advertising? How much should you spend on outreach? How do you measure success?

Presentation and Publicity

July 14, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Get the world to take notice.

How do you get the world to take notice of your company? What tools and materials do you need to start doing outreach? How do you identify media to write about your company? What are newsworthy stories? How do you craft a story? What are effective tactics to get social media, blog and press coverage? What tactics should be avoided?

Fundraising

July 21, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Plan to raise your first round.

What is the right amount of money to raise from investors? How do you raise capital for a brand new company? How do you identify angels and other seed-stage investors? What do investors expect from the company? What are typical investment structures and deal terms for seed-stage financings? How do you negotiate terms?

Graduation

July 28, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Time to celebrate!

The Graduation is the beginning of an exciting period for Founders, where the seed of an idea becomes reality. Graduating Founders are invited to bring one guest of their choosing to the session and to the after party. The Institute will continue to provide office hours, add special service provider deals, assist with fundraising, and give guidance on publicity and launch strategies for Graduated Founders.

Launching - Post Founder Institute

August 16, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Launch Date

Founders will set a launch date with actionalble steps to launch.

Post Founder Institute - Product & Customer Development

September 15, 2010, at 06:00 PM: Using Metrics to manage

•Hiring team members - •Product iteration - feedback loop, what feedback you are getting, how is that impacting your development roadmap, etc. •Measurement....tracking success / failure - this is very very very very important - getting into the analytics of what is working / what isn’t •Customer acquisition - how are you acquiring customers, what does funnel look like, conversion?