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Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

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Re: Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

#21

Post by caw »

nl wrote: post #16

Is there any information about how the class will work? The non-virtual version of this class is heavily team based, and people are expected to go and find customers and actually talk to them(!). The workload is also quite heavy - I believe around 20 hours per week. How will the team part work for the online class? Edit: also, on the off chance anyone is thinking about teams already, I'd be interested in talking.

I signed up to see what it'll be like.

I took an entrepreneurial class that sounds like this at Georgia Tech, run by Merrick Furst (who has now started up the an incubator of sorts => http://flashpoint.gatech.edu). The course was team based, go out and iterate. Every time to class you found out what you did wrong over the past week so you'd go and redo part of it.

I suspect this course is going to be rather similar, but different perspectives are always good.

Re: Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

#22

Post by ma2rten »

seanos wrote: post #18
ma2rten wrote: post #15

I am no quite sure if I should take this class - or the Entrepreneurship one for that matter. I am busy start a startup. This classes will probably take quite some time and I can't really imagine, what I could possibly learn form them, that I haven't picked up from various resources linked here over time. What do you think?

So there is nothing Steve Blank could teach you that you don't already know? Besides, these classes involve getting into teams and trying out the concepts from class (and might have read about on HN) in the real world. I think you might learn a lot.

Of cause I am not saying that he could not teach me anything. I just can't imaging that it will be worth the time-investment. I didn't realize that the online student will also work in teams, that actually makes me even less inclined to take part. Working on another project, will be a even bigger distraction from my own startup.

Re: Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

#23

Post by sblank »

nl wrote: post #16

Is there any information about how the class will work? The non-virtual version of this class is heavily team based, and people are expected to go and find customers and actually talk to them(!). The workload is also quite heavy - I believe around 20 hours per week. How will the team part work for the online class? Edit: also, on the off chance anyone is thinking about teams already, I'd be interested in talking.

Not sure if I'm smart enough to figure out how to make teams work virtually for 1,000's of thousands of students at a time. (Can't figure out how to grade progress on this scale.)

I'm leaning to have the class teach individual entrepreneurs the basics of how to build a startup using the business model canvas, customer development and agile engineering.

Think of it as a step-by-step guide to building a startup. An advanced version of the Four Steps to the Epiphany updated for web/mobile/cloud, etc.

Thoughts?

Re: Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

#25

Post by andreyf »

ma2rten wrote: post #22
seanos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is nothing Steve Blank could teach you that you don't already know? Besides, these classes involve getting into teams and trying out the concepts from class (and might have read about on HN) in the real world. I think you might learn a lot.

Of cause I am not saying that he could not teach me anything. I just can't imaging that it will be worth the time-investment. I didn't realize that the online student will also work in teams, that actually makes me even less inclined to take part. Working on another project, will be a even bigger distraction from my own startup.

Learning about startups while starting your own is a balance everyone has to consider for themselves. Depending on how much you already know about startups, a class could either be an eye-opening epiphany which will save you years of work wasted because of silly mistakes, or a waste of time repeating what you already know.

Beware of the Dunning-Kruger effect when deciding which you'll be. I've met one too many founders with an attitude of "I'm too busy working hard to stop and think" that could really have benefited from stopping, stepping back, and reconsidering some of their major assumptions.

Re: Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

#26

Post by bravura »

sblank wrote: post #23
nl wrote: post #16

Is there any information about how the class will work? The non-virtual version of this class is heavily team based, and people are expected to go and find customers and actually talk to them(!). The workload is also quite heavy - I believe around 20 hours per week. How will the team part work for the online class? Edit: also, on the off chance anyone is thinking about teams already, I'd be interested in talking.

Not sure if I'm smart enough to figure out how to make teams work virtually for 1,000's of thousands of students at a time. (Can't figure out how to grade progress on this scale.) I'm leaning to have the class teach individual entrepreneurs the basics of how to build a startup using the business model canvas, customer development and agile engineering. Think of it as a step-by-step guide to building a startup. An adv…

You could have other students do collaborative "grading" for certain assignments, much like students vote on which questions get asked.

For example, the assignment is to pick a method for reaching customers. I describe my business and propose five methods for reaching clients. To get feedback, I then have to vote on five other student's ideas about how they would reach clients.

Whichever method the students choose is the best for me, I have to do.

Students can also note which ideas for reaching clients seem particularly good or particularly poor. You can cull the top of these annotations to discuss the ones of broadest use for the class to understand.

I think the principles of your approach are simple enough (and that's a good thing) that for basic grading you could crowdsource it. It's not as good as being able to pick your brain, but it's still pretty good. You could then use the voting method to find the biggest wins and the most useful fail-cases to discuss in class.

Re: Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

#27

Post by nl »

sblank wrote: post #23
nl wrote: post #16

Is there any information about how the class will work? The non-virtual version of this class is heavily team based, and people are expected to go and find customers and actually talk to them(!). The workload is also quite heavy - I believe around 20 hours per week. How will the team part work for the online class? Edit: also, on the off chance anyone is thinking about teams already, I'd be interested in talking.

Not sure if I'm smart enough to figure out how to make teams work virtually for 1,000's of thousands of students at a time. (Can't figure out how to grade progress on this scale.) I'm leaning to have the class teach individual entrepreneurs the basics of how to build a startup using the business model canvas, customer development and agile engineering. Think of it as a step-by-step guide to building a startup. An adv…

"he only way I can think of to grade like that is to quote "The Social Network": I need the algorithm they use to rank chess players

Get the teams to rank each other, then apply the ELO algorithm?

Re: Free Stanford Class with Steve Blank

#28

Post by combiclickwise »

What a great opportunity! For someone like me who lives in India, this is a fantastic opportunity to learn from Steve Blank himself.

His book has changed the way I work but I feel there is a whole world of difference in actually learning from him in a class room format, doing exercises and taking it step by step.

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