Fessing Up: I Bootlegged an Entrepreneurship Class from Stanford Five Years Ago
And I’m About to Do It Again…
I was going to be the protagonist in a classic startup fairytale.
Once upon a time, I was a project manager in multinational company. I spent five years in corporate tech, and the time was ripe to take the leap.
At the same moment, a friend running a university offered me a position in the school — to be the lieutenant to the head of the office that raised funds for scholarships.
With the fire of youth, I decided to take the job. At the same time, I would start my business.
It did not take long for reality to punch me in the face.
Perhaps there was no other way but to climb the steep uphill learning curve of a new profession, in a new environment. The culture of the academe and the work of asking for donations were both new to me.
My approach to startup entrepreneurship though was totally misguided. That false start could have been avoided had I known the right way.
The accepted wisdom at that time was this: the first step in starting a business is to write a business plan.
So I did. And I started to implement it. This when that punch from reality happened.
Lesson # 1
Just like there is not one kind of sport, there is not one kind of entrepreneurship. Each sport has its own universe of mindsets, strategies and skills; so has each kind of entrepreneurship.
For the purpose of choosing the right kind of general approach, it turns out there are two broad categories of entrepreneurship:
- Classical entrepreneurship — when you start a company that solves a known problem with a known solution. For instance, buying a McDonalds franchise, opening the store, and running it. The variables are mostly known, and you have the trove of experience from past implementations. A business plan is helpful for classical entrepreneurs.
- Startup entrepreneurship — when you start a company whose problem and solution are either or both unknown. This is more common now with the rapid changes in society due to the advance in technology. Think of your favorite startup. Its founders unboutedly had no past data to base their playbooks on. A business plan is a work of creative fiction for startup entrepreneurs.
I wrote a business plan for what turned out to be a startup rather than a classical business. I hit a wall, and the lesson finally got through my thick skull.
But how does one do startup entrepreneurship?
I rarely curse, much less when I’m alone. But when I read Chapter 3 of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, I was repeatedly saying out loud those glorious words, “this is so f**king true!”
That book gave birth to the Lean Startup movement. This post won’t be about Lean Startup, as countless entrepreneurs have shared their experience with it (you can read my company’s experience in this Q&A with Entrepreneur Magazine).
Instead, I’ll share how I trained myself in the craft of startup entrepreneurship — I bootlegged an entrepreneurship course from Stanford University.
The Lean LaunchPad
Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. The book was his teaching notes for an entrepreneurship class in Stanford and UC Berkley.
In 2011, he started blogging about his class as it happened — he posted his syllabus, lessons learned and the progress of each team in the class (see the oldest posts in the “lean launchpad” category of his blog.)
As you could imagine, I wanted nothing more than to be part of that class. I was a failed entrepreneur from half-way around the world, and that seemed to be an impossible dream.
By then, however, I already gained the trust of a couple of departments in the university I was at.
I had trained two batches of students for the Google Online Marketing Challenge, the annual global student competition hosted by Google and participated by more than 12,000 students worldwide. In our first year, one team was a regional finalist. In our second try, another team was the regional champion.
I experimented with two pedagogical approaches in the training: the Flipped Classroom and Experiential Learning. I eventually trained 4 batches for GOMC. For the pedagogy nerds, here are some lessons learned:
- How to win the Google Online Marketing Challenge — Secret Sauce Revealed!
- Using Experiential Learning and The Flipped Classroom for GOMC Training
- How my students got a top spot in the 2011 Google Online Marketing Challenge
It turned out that Steve Blank used the same approaches — the Flipped Classroom and Experiential Learning — for the Lean LaunchPad. So I proposed to teach the class as an elective for a batch of Masters of Science in Management students — and the department agreed.
Steve Blank is a serial entrepreneur, so I thought he’d understand (or not care) if I just went ahead and essentially bootlegged his class — saying sorry if needed, instead of asking permission. I called the class “Business Model Design and Validation” instead of Lean Launchpad, because I did not ask permission… and, you know, bootleggers also have qualms of conscience.
Those concerns were unfounded. A few months after, Steve Blank opensourced the Lean LaunchPad. There is now a published teacher’s guide and a free online version of the course. It is reported that more than 200 universities have adopted the Lean LaunchPad. There’s even software to run the class. Lean LaunchPad, like Harvard’s case method, is becoming a universal approach to teaching, instead of a proprietary formula.
Better than Going to Stanford
First time teachers have a dirty secret — we’re just a chapter ahead of the students we teach. In my case, my students were sometimes even ahead in the customer development tasks of the course.
I’m thankful that in the end, the students got what they signed-up for — hands-on experience of the work of a startup entrepreneur. And I got what I needed — the first and right steps to startup entrepreneurship. Teaching the Lean LaunchPad was probably better than attending it in Stanford. Definitely it was much cheaper.
It has been 5 years since, and starting a company has been the hardest work I have done. If you’re interested in that adventure, I have been blogging about it, and I have a podcast with by buddies called 3rd World Startup.
Back to Teaching
After years heads down in entrepreneurship, the business finally reached a level of maturity that allows me spend time teaching again. I feel that I have matured as a strategist as well, sensing that I should let things take their course, before attacking the next stage of the business.
I feel I have 12–18 months before things go insane again, and the stars have aligned once more. The recent educational reforms have added 2 years in high schools. There is a need for new courses for senior high students, and I simply could not resist. If there’s one thing I would have wanted to learn early on, it is entrepreneurship, and I proposed to run it for a high school.
I’ll be working with a professional high school teacher to run the Lean LaunchPad for the first time to 60 seniors and establish it in the high school.
This might turn out to be harder than my startup journey.
P.S. — to the teachers reading
Here are my notes from my experience of running the Lean LaunchPad 5 years ago:
Here are some posts as I prepare to bring the Lean LaunchPad to high school students:
P.S. — to college students in Cebu City
I’ll be getting 2 Teaching Assistants to help run this class. If you’re interested in learning startup entrepreneurship (possibly better than attending a class in Stanford), or experimenting with teaching approaches outside the lecture-driven model, send me an email: sugbu+ta.medium@corazo.org
