Entrepreneurship Course
Building a business from idea to first commercial sales
A 6 week programme to help you understand the building blocks of successful startups and learn from the founders of some of the biggest Danish tech startups
Weekly Sessions
The course runs over a 6 week period with different modules focused on specific building blocks for succesful technology startups.
Practice + Toolbox
Bring your own startup idea, or work together with others and apply your learning. We will support you and provide the tools needed.
Expert Guest Speakers
Highly successful startup founders will share their experience, and how the real-world might end up looking different than planned for.
This short course will go through the first phase of building a successful business - from idea to first commercial sales. It will cover topics related to product, market, team and how to build the first business model and execute the opportunity. Students will learn from visiting Entrepreneurs throughout the course - both people who bootstrapped their business and people who raised several hundred million DKK in investments. Among the visitors will be founder of Vivino Heini Zachariasen as well as co-founder of Zendesk (Nasdaq:ZEN) Morten Primdah who is also an ITU alumni.
The course covers the key elements that need to be addressed in the journey from idea to initial commercial business. Focus will be on applied entrepreneurship providing frameworks that are relevant to use in the process of building a viable startup. Less focus will be on theoretical considerations and scientific research in the area of Entrepreneurship.
The course will be taught over six in class teaching sessions of two hours duration each.
The outline of sessions are as follows:
- Oct 6 - Course introduction: What is a startup? What does it take to succeed? An overview of the startup journey, ideas and how to think about them using the business model canvas.
- Oct 13 - Market and Customer Validation: How to get customer and market information, how to size the opportunity, the customer value proposition, thinking big and starting small - does that make it less ambitious?
- Oct 20 - š Autumn break š
- Oct 27 - Building the first product: How to scope the product, things to consider when defining your Minimal Viable Product (MVP) and Product-Market Fit
- Nov 3 - Getting the first customer: Go-to-market strategies, understanding the customer, the customer decision process, pricing, closing your first sales.
- Nov 10 - Team and Execution: Founders and co-founders, team diversity and energy, what are the skills required to execute the opportunity?, cost effective execution, team dynamics
- Nov 17 - Financials and Financing: Key financial metrics, financing options and things to consider: bootstrap - friends - angels - VCās, course wrap-up and course evaluation.
Guest speakers
We are glad to welcome world-renowed entrepreneurs which have built and scaled some of the most succesful technology companies to date.
From beginner to founder in 6 weeks
This course is relevant for students interested in building new businesses. Both students that out of curiosity want to get a better understanding of what it takes to build a viable business from scratch and students that consider an entrepreneurial pathway.
Sessions will be a combination of in class teaching, exercises and visiting entrepreneurs that will share their early stage stories and present some of their main challenges. Expect one hour preparation per session.
Max participants: 30 studentsExpected course workload: 3 hours per week (incl. 2 hour course)
The course is free of charge and there is no exam (no ECTS credits).
This course is a pilot-initiative aiming to bring a more hands-on approach to entrepreneurship, and decide if a permanent Applied Entrepreneruship course should be provided to ITU students.
MARTIN TVEDE ZACHARIASEN, ITU Vice Chancellor
Taught by
Ulrik Jensen
Over the past 20 years, Ulrik has been working with startups as an executive and as an investor. He is currently the chairman of iMotions, Writereader and ITU Business Development and holds a Master degree in engineering and a business degree from Stanford University.