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Stanford's new course on building a startup

startup.stanford.edu

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Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#21

Post by abromberg »

trg2 wrote: post #7

Just enrolled. It looks like this is the second time the class has been offered. Has anyone on HN already taken the course? What did you think?

I also took the class in the winter at Stanford and had an awesome experience. We focused on the things that mattered and a bunch of really cool startups came out of the class. I can also imagine that it'll be excellent online -- Balaji put together great writeups of the content we covered that I'm still referencing now and I believe the (amazing) guest lecturers were filmed.

Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#22

Post by balajis »

michaelrbock wrote: post #10

Seems to me like they added course material for the first 2 weeks and then stopped...I wonder why. Anyone at Stanford with any insight?

The full Stanford course materials for the Jan-Mar timeframe are at stanford.coursera.org/cme184-001. The startup.stanford.edu URL tracked the first few weeks, but this was redundant for Stanford students and another page to keep up to date. So the material there is more of a teaser for people interested in the Coursera MOOC class.

That said, it will be more useful for the Coursera students to have a site that is accessible when logged out, so look for startup.stanford.edu to track the MOOC course material beginning tomorrow evening or so.

Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#23

Post by hasenj »

Sounds more like a "how to build a web app" course. [0]

Building a startup involves a lot of "soft skills" that not all developers are familiar with: marketing, talking to customers, overcoming all sorts of psychological blockers/fears about putting yourself, your ideas, and your product "out there" for all people to judge.

When I saw the title, I hoped that it would focus on those aspects of building a startup, sort of like the 30x500 course by Amy Hoy. http://unicornfree.com/30x500

[0] There's nothing wrong with doing a course for how to build web applications. I just don't think it's the same thing as building a startup.

EDIT:

It seems the official name of the course is "Startup Engineering", which makes a lot more sense than the submission title: "How to build a startup".

Please fix the title of the submission so that this comment might be deprecated.

Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#24

Post by abromberg »

biot wrote: post #9
xtqctz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand this critique? I'm a recent grad with the prerequisite knowledge they ask for (barely) and aspirations to build cool stuff. Is my time better spent elsewhere? If so, where?

If the cool stuff you want to build includes things like alternative energy sources (solar, wind, wave, and so on) then 90% of the course will be of little benefit to you. However, if your definition of cool stuff can be boiled down to "software on the internet" then this course will likely be helpful.

I actually disagree a bit here -- Balaji and Vijay (the instructors) have both built incredibly successful companies based on many of the principles that they teach in the course. Sure, the online course won't teach you to do genomics or protein folding or build solar panels, but what it will do is allow you to create many of the components that support businesses like those. Thinking in a broader sense about what APIs for various business functions can do and how they can help you can be a tremendous help and this class can teach you how to build those APIs.

Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#25

Post by csomar »

Building a startup is different than building a web app. It's sad to see that the instructors are not aware of the massive difference between the two.

Building a startup course should have no technical details. I'd recommend Udacity "How to build a startup" course any time and even for small businesses.

Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#26

Post by rbres »

I took this course with Balaji at Stanford - definitely the best course I've taken. It was open-ended enough to let me pursue my own entrepreneurial/tech interests but provided enough support to help me avoid mistakes and learn relevant material. Can't wait to see how this course goes on a global level.

Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#28

Post by abromberg »

hasenj wrote: post #23

Sounds more like a "how to build a web app" course. [0] Building a startup involves a lot of "soft skills" that not all developers are familiar with: marketing, talking to customers, overcoming all sorts of psychological blockers/fears about putting yourself, your ideas, and your product "out there" for all people to judge. When I saw the title, I hoped that it would focus on those aspects of building a startup, sort…

I've mentioned this in a couple comments below, but I think that this class teaches you a lot more than that. I took the class when it was offered at Stanford and one of the most valuable things I took out of the class was how to build APIs for different business functions. Being able to automate huge parts of your business, regardless of what industry you're in, is a huge advantage. Think about an energy company building APIs to monitor consumption and efficiency at client sites and adjusting their work accordingly -- that's huge. This class does a lot more than teach you how to build webapps; it teaches you to think in an automation mindset and happens to teach you a lot of useful skills along the way.

Re: Stanford's new course on building a startup

#29

Post by Fomite »

balajis wrote: post #13
Fomite wrote: post #8

The title and description are somewhat at odds. "Startup Engineering", the title, makes sense - the kind of things a certain breed of startup are looking for in software engineers. On the other hand, "Stanford's new course on building a startup from the ground up" offers only one week for "Promotion, CAC/LTV/Funnel, Regulation and Accounting" - things that are a little bit important for building a business. And by "s…

Hey Formite - this is the instructor here. I actually did start a reasonably successful biotech/genomics company named Counsyl[1] (~200 employees, testing 3% of US births, $65M in funding) and I do think the ambit of the course is broad enough to assist with that. It's a good strategy these days to build one's business on top of a software core, with APIs for all major business functions and physical interface layers…

balajis - Thank you very much for your reply, and I'd like to say that I'm happy to be corrected. I've signed up for the class despite my concerns that it's...tangental at best to my interests...but if you succeed, I be quite content in being wrong.
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