How to Teach Technology Entrepreneurship Using the 1Mby1M Methodology and Case Studies: Startup Ideation

Teachers need to inspire their students to ideate, guide them on how to evaluate their ideas and make sure they are viable and scalable. 

Entrepreneurs often come up with 10 different ideas and have to sift through them to decide which one to pursue. How does one prioritize their best startup ideas? What are their most innovative startup ideas? Which of their business ideas may be fundable?

The entrepreneurship universe is littered with startup failures. Startup success often hinges upon the ability to come up with viable startup ideas.

Students will often ask you if there is a strategy that can be followed for the idea stage.

Yes, there is a strategy. Firstly, one has to develop an understanding of the domain in which they want to build a startup. It is important to learn about the hot domains within which a lot of startup activity is happening right now. They need  to understand the dynamics of each, find a gap in the market, and position a startup idea as a solution accordingly. We started this domain-specific knowledge building exercise in the previous quarter / semester.

Secondly, they need to master the ideation process itself. For this, we start the fourth quarter or semester of this series with the Udemy course:

Startup Ideas for the Post Covid World with Sramana Mitra

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed consumer behavior in a major way. As we move through the virus-era, much more will likely change. With this realization, we ran a poll in June 2020 asking which topics readers would like me to cover and discuss. The overwhelming winner was startup ideas. This course covers in detail eight of my startup ideas that you can use as case studies to teach your students the ideation process.

1. K-12 Education – In the post-Covid world, a new learning paradigm needs to emerge. Here I detail a Unicorn idea that can attract venture capital.

2. Meaningful Friendships Through Literature and Film – My own literary group, like many others, has had to go virtual and operate through a video conferencing platform in the wake of the Covid menace. The startup idea outlined here is born out of this experience with an eye on the isolation that humanity is facing in the post Covid world.

3. Distributing the Workforce – One of the unambiguous trends of the Covid era is the success of work-from-home for certain industry sectors such as Tech, Finance, Legal, Consulting, etc. The Unicorn startup idea outlined here involves managing this transition and its associated nuances.

4. Facilitating Travel Experiences – There are two major trends that the world will need to take in stride in the Covid era: air travel will become expensive and people will be working remotely. The startup idea addressing these trends as explained here would be a $5-$10 Billion market cap company, a Unicorn.

5. Artists and Collectors Shift Online – As you may know, I have a special interest in Art, and have observed its dynamics for many years. I have concluded that the time has come for Artists and Collectors to move online and interact in a fluid marketplace. The idea that I discuss here is a Unicorn idea with the potential to become a highly valued company that would achieve a billion dollar plus valuation.

6. Home-Based Healthcare – Certain sectors of industry are facing extraordinary levels of job loss in the post-Covid era. While some of these jobs may come back, it is widely believed that some trends are permanent. The retail sector faces one of the greatest shifts: the move to online shopping seems irreversible. The startup idea detailed here facilitates the retraining of service sector employees as healthcare professionals.

7. Restaurants Delivering Prepared Food as a Subscription – In the Covid era, people have been forced to cook a lot more than they were used to. Some have embraced home-cooking. Others have found it to be a burden. On the other hand, restaurants are facing an existential moment, gasping for survival. I believe for a certain segment of the population, a subscription service to a set of restaurants would work really well, and share my vision for this startup here.

8. Managing Philanthropy – In a world economy devastated by Covid, threatened by climate change, ravaged by simultaneous natural disasters, the need for philanthropy has never been higher. The startup idea shared here is a philanthropy management software solution (SaaS) that would be sold to banks with wealth management practices.

And finally, whenever I evaluate a tech startup idea, I always do VC-style due diligence on it. This course goes over the specifics of my analysis process that should be used to analyze a startup idea before writing a single line of code.

VC Due Diligence Questions For Startups With Sramana Mitra

Assessment

This is more of a practical, hands-on course where the students bring together the previous three quarters / semesters of learning, and work on a startup idea of their own. They can do so in teams.

The teacher should have enough knowledge of the 1Mby1M case studies to be able to point students to comparables and blue prints that they can draw lessons from.

In parallel, the class should attend my free 1Mby1M pitch roundtables that is held every week on Thursdays.

The class should be structured around and graded based on four rounds of pitch sessions:

1. Concept pitches and instructor + peer feedback
2. Bootstrapping Strategy pitches and instructor + peer feedback
3. Go-to-Market Strategy pitches and instructor + peer feedback
4. Financing Strategy pitches and instructor + peer feedback

Assess their understanding of the ideation, bootstrapping, fundraising, and got-to-market processes by asking them to replicate a pitching session where they will pitch an idea and also evaluate their peers’ ideas. 

Estimated Timeline

Your course should be split into two parts: methodology and practice.

Roughly speaking, students should dedicate 20 hours to methodology and 100 hours to developing the project. This includes studying the online lectures and texts, in-class discussions, project work, papers, and presentations.

Outcome

At the end of your course, students should have a sense of how to come up with a new business idea, develop strategy for it, and how to pitch it.

Photo Credit: Mark Bridgeman from Pixabay

This segment is a part in the series : How to Teach Technology Entrepreneurship Using the 1Mby1M Methodology and Case Studies