• Acquire an in-depth understanding of the entrepreneurial process and its constituents
• Account for how various steps of the entrepreneurial process interact
• Discuss how entrepreneurship is defined
• Discuss entrepreneurs’ traits and biases, and explain how such characteristics impact decision-making process throughout the lifecycle of the startup
• Identify pros and cons of involving cofounders, employees, angel investors and venture capital firms in the startup
• Understand and discuss the different financial resources and their implications on firm success.
• Discuss entrepreneurs’ possible responses to their venture' failure

This course introduces students to important challenges entrepreneurs face over the different stages of entrepreneurial firms life cycle. More specifically, this course addresses issues related to entrepreneurs’ cognitive biases (i.e., overconfidence, optimism, risk aversion), venture founding conditions (i.e., business opportunities assessment, when to found, building the founding team), corporate governance (i.e., ownership, control, board of directors, compensation), funding of entrepreneurial firms (private equity, venture capitals, debt, IPOs) and coping with venture failure.

This course aims to make students aware about those challenges, develop alternatives and strategic decisions for their resolution and anticipate short-term and long-term consequences of the different ways to deal with them.

This course is intended for students involved in start-ups as founders, co-founders,

employees, investors or consultants

The course is divided into three parts:

Part 1 defines entrepreneurship, explores different entrepreneurial process frameworks, and examines entrepreneurs’ cognitive biases.

Part 2 focuses on several challenges entrepreneurs face at the early stage of their business. For instance, is it better to be a solo founder or to involve co-founders? How to define roles and split equity among co-founders and early hires?

In Part 3 we will examine important strategic decisions post-startup. For example, how to finance growth? What types of investors should entrepreneurs attract at different phases of venture growth? What are the mechanisms entrepreneurs can use to secure control over their firm? How to deal with venture failure?