Courses

Leveraging a proven cutting-edge startup launch method, the Purpose-Driven Design, students and their subsequent teams are led and supported through a series of ideation, problem discovery, offering validation, refinement and communication activities to build a well vetted impact venture.  The curriculum and pedagogy provide a real-world innovation simulation environment to help participants explore the distinct design/management hurdles and opportunities inherent in creating and growing ventures that intend to deliver measurable financial and social/environmental returns to a diverse set of stakeholders.

Impact Startup Launchpad uses lectures, classroom dialogue, in-class and out-of-class activities, readings, flipped classroom content and guest speakers to deliver instruction.  Throughout the course, teams are asked to present their ongoing findings, insights and refined business design to the class for feedback and coaching.  At the end of the 12-weeks, your team will present and deliver a highly vetted social venture design and action plan to a panel of experts.

This course will cover various aspects of the venture capital industry from the perspectives of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. Guests will be invited to introduce their venture capital firms and share insights from their experiences in the industry. Topics will include the investment process, seed to late stage investment, industry trends, fundraising as an entrepreneur and sector specific discussions (i.e. IT, consumer, web, biotech, etc.). The objective of the course is to provide those interested in venture capital or seeking venture capital funding the opportunity to learn from and engage with prominent figures in the industry.

The objective of the Private Equity Speaker Series, a one-unit seminar class, is to provide students with an overview of private equity investing through weekly interactions with a diverse group of accomplished industry professionals from institutions such as buyout funds, mezzanine capital funds, equity fund limited partners, and third-party service providers. In addition to reviewing the roles of each party involved, the course will also focus on various steps in the deal process, demonstrate the varying investment strategies of select industry players, highlight current market trends, and provide both financial and strategic insight into this dynamic asset class. The course aims to provide an introduction to multiple facets of a private equity investing for all students, ranging from those preparing for a career in private equity to those simply interested in learning about the industry.

This course focuses on how to identify attractive opportunities and to design and build new ventures. The pedagogy in the course includes case studies, vigorous classroom debate, video, and in-class visits from case protagonists. In addition to conveying frameworks for opportunity identification, business model development, raising financing, building founding teams, and growing nascent ventures, one of the major objectives of this course is to model the work life of a variety of entrepreneurs so that you will have the chance to personally reflect on your desire to pursue this type of career. Throughout the course, the cases and our discussions will have as their focal point the entrepreneur who, in the face of great uncertainty, must make decisions and take action.

Venture capital is core to our Silicon Valley high-tech economy and our country’s strong growth over the past two decades. UC Berkeley is located in the “mother lode” of this very special and unique investment category. This course provides an advanced offering for those who intend to seek, or manage, venture capital funding. It is appropriate for students who aspire to become CEOs of entrepreneurial ventures or general partners of venture capital firms.

This course is intended to provide the core skills needed for identifying opportunities that can lead to successful, entrepreneurial high technology ventures, regardless of the individual’s “home” skill set, whether technical or managerial. It takes an in-depth look at the approaches most likely to succeed for entrepreneurial companies as a function of markets and technologies. Emphasis is placed on the special requirements for creating and executing strategy in a setting of rapid technological change and limited resources. This course is particularly suited for those who anticipate founding or operating technology companies.

This is a course for current/future entrepreneurs on how to finance and fund a startup or high-growth business. The course centers on a model that includes strategic planning, financial analysis, business model creation, cash management, funding alternatives, investor pitching, alternative financing, and exit strategies. We examine the various options that a company has for financing at all stages of its life-cycle – from seed stage to later stage – using a blend of lectures, cases, readings and speakers (venture capitalists, CEO/founders, industry experts and service providers) to address the full range of financing options including angel, venture capital, debt financing, corporate/strategic investment and public markets. A unique feature of the EWMBA version of this class is the “real-time” company – throughout the course, a CEO from a company that is currently grappling with the new venture finance process will join us for class. Members of the class will have the opportunity to apply what they learn to this company throughout the semester, including assisting the company in setting its internal financial plan, external fundraising process and culminating with a live pitch to investors.

This course is not about how to write a business plan but provides hands-on learning on what it’s like to start a high-tech company. The goal is to create an entrepreneurial experience with all of the pressures and demands in an actual early-stage startup. You will work in teams to talk to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup works, and learn how to turn a great idea into a great company. You will use a business model to brainstorm each part of a company and customer development to get out of the classroom to see whether anyone would want/use your product. Finally, based on the customer and market feedback gathered, you will use agile development to rapidly iterate your product to build something customers would want to use or buy.

Lean Startup methodology applies the scientific method to business problems.  Prework for the class involves generating problems to be solved…not products you wish to create.  During the first hour of the class, teams will form around the problems they find most interesting to explore further. You will then learn tools to discover “who cares/why do they care/how much do they care?”, as we use the process of hypothesis testing and iteration, aka the scientific method.

The Lean Transfer course provides hands-on learning for building deep technology startups. Based on Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad courses taught at Haas, participants will form teams around existing UC Berkeley IP from top inventors.  These inventors are typically Bakar Fellows and represent the top tier of UC Berkeley’s world class technologies.  Other technologies available for selection will include non-classified patents from our educational partnership with Berkeley Labs (formerly LBNL), NASA, NSA and other Federal agencies/labs.

The Sales for Startups is a fundamental course of how sales works, from the early stages to mature sales teams. The course will focus almost exclusively on business-to-business sales (B2B). Every student of business should understand the basics of how revenue is generated and responsibly grown. During the semester, we’ll cover core topics such as sales as a learning function, getting your first sale, building an initial sales team, creating commission structures, employing sales techniques, and enabling sales team to succeed.

This class will explore the structure and framework of entrepreneurial endeavors – both inside and outside the business world. The course will answer questions such as: What is entrepreneurship? What is opportunity recognition and selection? How can you create and define competitive advantage? This course is designed for freshmen and sophomores who want to learn about entrepreneurship, its importance to our society, and its role in bringing new ideas to market. Students will understand the entrepreneurial business process and how they might become involved in those processes in their future careers – in whatever direction those careers might lead.

This course explores the idea and practice of social entrepreneurship, an emerging field where business models are increasingly being used to address important unmet social and environmental needs. The course exposes students to the growing breadth and depth of activity in the global social enterprise movement, where innovators are developing a new frontier of hybrid organizations that combine nonprofit motives and business methods. Course content examines the context and foundation for social entrepreneurship and explores the opportunity for social enterprise solutions in a number of areas, including healthcare, finance, education, technology, international development, and workforce development. Course design integrates instructor lecture, articles/cases/other reading materials, class discussion, guest speakers, and group projects where students develop a social enterprise business plan.

Do you have an idea for a new business, but want to learn how to more fully develop this idea? Would you like to receive funding for your business idea, but lack a framework to ask for capital? This course takes students through the new venture process using a business plan as the main deliverable. A well-written business plan sets key milestones and indicates the resources needed to achieve them, in an increasingly complex business environment. Through the planning process that tightly links market and financial planning a business plan creates a set of standards to which investors and teammates can evaluate actual performance, laying the foundation for an “operating plan” once the business is launched.

In this course, the goal is to have students identify their entrepreneurial interests through a combination of exploration, readings, and close interaction with successful entrepreneurs. Key projects include taking students through a systematic search to identify how their past achievements can best align with their career pursuits. Students will also take ownership of their entrepreneurial ideas through a trend analysis and elevator pitch. Students will receive coaching as they seek a summer internship or job. Whether students plan to join a startup upon graduation, or seek positions in more established firms, there is a role for entrepreneurship.

This campus-wide undergraduate course, developed with The Blum Center for Developing Economies, offers students insights into whether and how entrepreneurial ventures can make a difference in tackling one of the world’s most urgent and daunting challenges: persistent and pervasive poverty. It integrates guest lectures by distinguished faculty in other departments with expertise in issues such as water, housing, transportation and energy with case studies and conversations with a variety of social entrepreneurs around the world.

This course will introduce students to venture capital, private equity, and hedge fund industries. In the course, students will learn about venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds, and they types of investments they make and how they generate superior investment returns. The course will also address what professionals do in these firms, how they are organized, structured and managed, career paths available, and the risks and rewards these firms experience.