CAS 4EN3: Software Entrepreneurship - Fall 2014
Outline
Announcements: New for this year, we will start the semester with a one-week competition, for which you are encouraged to prepare over the summer. I will be setting an education-themed topic area, and you will have a week to formulate a precise problem, a business strategy and to develop software on top of an iOS platform we will provide to you. We will be available over the weekend to help you with all aspects of the project, and you will make a short presentation and demo in the second class. We are doing this for a couple of reasons:
If you have time over the summer, I recommend that you learn Objective-C and read some tutorials about iOS, and the book Game Frame listed below or other books about Gamification or Big Data, since these are the ideas behind much software entrepreneurship today. Big Data is harder to applyThis is a full-year course, but we will not use the full year. You should be able to finish the project in a semester, but because it can be hard to coordinate work during midterm season, you will have the holiday period to finish development before final presentations and the Software Entrepreneurship Competition (sponsored by Indellient Inc.) in January.
This will be a chance to discover unknown skills, and develop new ones to impress your classmates into joining a startup.
If your team needs these skills you will have to identify a member responsible for this aspect of your project who will meet with their counterparts in other groups.
Calendar Description
Issues in starting up a new software enterprise, with the focus on independent start-ups. This course will cover the technical, financial, legal and operational issues encountered by software startups. Small groups of students will take an idea and turn it into a prototype, a business plan, and a sales pitch. Lectures will cover issues from team formation to appropriate software development processes to patent protection to venture capital.
Anti-Objective
This is not a course on entrepreneurship for a general audience. We will gloss over or omit issues which are not germane to software entrepreneurship, although they are very important to entrepreneurship in general. We will assume basic knowledge and experience with software technologies and software development methodologies.
Course Objective
In this course you will learn how to turn an idea into a new software business. You will learn about all aspects of starting a new software venture, and be evaluated according to your ability to relate this knowledge to a business idea chosen by your team. You will get to talk to experienced software entrepreneurs who will serve as both guest speakers, and as judges. We will adjust the order of presentation to take advantage of available guest speakers.
(1) Problem Identification
(a) Idea Generation - Where do good ideas come from?
(b) Market Validation/Monetization - Will anyone pay for a solution to this problem? Is it a general solution?
(c) Can I solve this problem with software? in what time? with how many people?
(d) Novelty - Is this solution or the presentation new? Can we solve it better than other people?
(2) Disruptive Technologies - Your foot in the door.
(3) Team Formation
(a) Identifying Required Skills
(b) Ownership
(4) Mentorship
(a) Finding mentors and advisors
(b) Processing advice
(c) Giving peers advice
(4) Marketing and Sales
(a) Elevator Pitch
(b) Demo
(c) Company Website
(d) Social Networks
(e) Advertising
(f) Local communities/organizations (e.g. IF, Communitech)
(g) Trade Shows, Events
(5) Monetization - How do we make money?
(a) Software as a product.
(i) Bespoke software.
(ii) Shrinkwrap software.
(iii) Agency model (e.g., iTunes).
(iv) Platform model (e.g., Facebook).
(b) Software as a service.
(c) Software as a vehicle for advertising.
(d) Service enhanced by software.
(6) Financing - How can we afford to get started?
(a) Self-financing / Bootstrapping -
(b) Angel Financing -
(c) Venture Capital -
(d) Bank Loan -
(e) Government loans/programs.
(7) Intellectual Property
(a) Patents
(i) ours - Can we keep others from copying our idea?
(ii) theirs - Can others prevent us from running our business, or make us pay royalties?
(b) Trade Secrets - Can we protect our idea by not telling anyone?
(c) Trade Dress.
(d)Ownership of IP (corporate vs. personal, i.e. who has the rights to it if someone leaves the company/team?)
(8) Teamwork
(a) What expertise do you need and how do you get it?
(b) Do you share - a vision, - a strategy, and
(9) Privacy
(a) Legal requirements.
(b) Handling financial data.
(10) Closed / Open Source
(a) Can you charge people for services related to software you open source?
(b) Licenses: Does using Open Source software force you to work for free?
(i) GPL*
(ii) BSD*
(iii) Limited Licenses.
(iv)Dual or multiple license scenarios (e.g. game companies sometimes open source the engine, but retain IP to assets for a particulargame. Redhat has some closed-source code, and maintains open and closed source Linux distributions for example.)
(11) Software Development Practices in a Startup Environment
(i) Software Product Families
(ii) The Waterfall
(iii) Agile Software Development
(iv) Live Testing
(12) Network Effects
(13) Platform Effects
(14) Partnerships.
(a) When should you share an idea and when should you keep it secret?
(b) Is half a revenue stream better than no revenue stream?
(15) Other legal issues.
(a) Incorporation/partnership.
(b) Liability.
Recommended Reading
References to articles.
Instructor
Christopher Anand. anandc (circled a) (name of university) (country).
Office hours: 6pm-7pm Wednesdays in the Atrium, or by appointment, including via Skype.
TA
(circled a) (name of university) (country).
Office hours: TBA.
Special Helpers
This year we are lucky to have two helpers.
Evaluation
Schedule
MDCL/1116, Wednesdays 7pm-10pm.
Sept - Competition
Sept - Elevator Pitch
Sept - Identify team and project
Oct - Business Plan
Oct - First Prototype
Nov - Design
Nov - Screencast
Jan - VC Pitch
Jan - Software Entrepreneurship Competition
Links useful in preparting pitch: how to do presentations.
Different projects will interpret Prototype in different ways. Some groups may be able to develop a working prototype, other groups will only have a UI shell capable enough to do some usability testing.
Although entrepreneurs may be invited to act as judges, course evaluation is the responsibility of the instructor, who will answer questions about how each deliverable will be evaluated in advance, and who will ensure that marking is consistent across the course.
If in doubt, ask the instructor how this applies to your work.