The Startup Mindset: New Venture Creation

Building on the Business Fundamentals morning course, this course immerses students to the startup ecosystem and the entrepreneurial process from the founder’s perspective. It emphasizes how entrepreneurs identify, design, launch, and scale new ventures, and how major participants in the startup ecosystem—founders, angels, accelerators, venture capital firms, and growth equity investors— support venture development.

Students will develop practical tools and an entrepreneurial mindset to evaluate business opportunities, including customer need assessment, opportunity screening, business model logic, competitive positioning, market sizing, and the basics of go-to-market strategy. The course also introduces how early-stage investors assess new ventures, such as traction, market opportunity and business model credibility, so that founders can better communicate with capital providers and make financing-ready decisions. The course is entrepreneur-centred focusing on opportunity creation, experimentation, and venture-building skills. The capstone takes the form of a startup pitch and venture brief (drawing on the logic of an investment memo) so that students learn how to articulate value, demonstrate readiness for growth, and position their ventures to attract the right partners and resources.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Understand the key traits of successful entrepreneurs
• Explain the structure of the startup ecosystem and the roles of founders, angels, accelerators, venture capital, and growth equity
• Describe the venture life cycle from idea formation through early growth and scale
• Use simple entrepreneurial tools to evaluate business opportunities, including customer need analysis, business model logic, and competitive positioning
• Conduct basic market sizing using TAM, SAM, and SOM
• Explain the fundamentals of go-to-market strategy, including target customer, value proposition, channels, and early commercialization choices
• Understand the basic investor lens on early-stage through to late-stage ventures, including traction, risk, financing readiness and investability
• Apply simple venture financing concepts such as pre-money valuation, post-money valuation, ownership, and dilution
• Create a concise venture brief and deliver a clear, persuasive startup investment pitch

Topics Covered

• The entrepreneurial mindset and opportunity recognition
• The startup ecosystem: founders, angels, accelerators, venture capital, and growth equity
• The venture life cycle: idea (identifying a problem), discovery and validation (identifying customer needs, developing a prototype and testing market demand), scaling (growing and financing) and maturing (expansion or exit pathways)
• Customer need, opportunity evaluation, and business model logic
• Competitive positioning and market attractiveness
• Market sizing using TAM, SAM, and SOM
• Basics of go-to-market strategy
• Venture financing fundamentals and stage-based capital
• How investors evaluate early-stage startups
• Writing a venture brief and delivering an investor pitch

Capstone Project

The capstone project will be a venture brief (drawing on the logic of an investment memo) and pitch presentation based on a student-led startup guided by the instructor and student interests. Working in small ‘co-founder’ teams, students will conceive of a startup, engage in the venture life cycle and prepare a venture brief and pitch for perspective investors. The project is designed to immerse students in understanding how founders design ventures that solve business problems and meet investor expectations.

Hands-on Activities

• Startup ecosystem and venture life cycle mapping exercise
• Opportunity recognition fieldtrip
• Customer discovery and validation workshop
• Market sizing lab
• Go-to-market design exercise
• Funding escalator workshop
• Venture brief and pitch development workshop

*Information is subject to change as instructors finalize course syllabi