Entrepreneurship Course Guide

What should an Entrepreneurship course cover?

An Entrepreneurship course should teach students how to move from uncertainty and opportunity to customer evidence, a defensible value proposition, a coherent business model, market and industry analysis, experiments and MVPs, go-to-market choices, venture economics, team and governance decisions, funding, pitching and responsible scaling. The strongest design follows that venture lifecycle so every framework supports a decision rather than becoming a disconnected template.

The same architecture can work for final-year undergraduate, MSc, MBA and executive education cohorts. A standard semester version can use 10-14 teaching sessions, typically around 24-36 contact hours within roughly 150-180 notional learning hours. The core distinctions students need to learn are idea versus evidence-backed opportunity, market size versus reachable market, growth versus viable economics, valuation versus financing terms, and persuasive storytelling versus a venture case that can survive challenge.

Entrepreneurship course overview

81%

teach Entrepreneurship as a named or closely related course

12

sessions as the most common course-design model

83%

taught at undergraduate level

87%

taught at postgraduate level (levels overlap)

38%

offered as core; the rest elective or embedded

88%

include an applied or simulation-based component

Why this course matters

Entrepreneurship connects innovation, marketing, strategy, finance and leadership because founders must integrate all five before committing scarce resources.

Career path fit

How well this course prepares students for six role families, scored out of 10. Indicative, based on how directly the concepts map to each path - not a placement statistic.

Typical course structure

Opportunity and venture foundations 10%
Customer and value proposition 15%
Business model and strategic context 20%
Experimentation and go-to-market 20%
Team, finance and funding 20%
Pitch, scaling and integration 15%

Applied learning opportunities

Each is mapped to the session where students already hold the concepts to make a defensible decision, rather than added as an activity at the end.

Who this guide is for

This guide is for lecturers, professors, module leaders, course coordinators, unit convenors, instructors of record and programme directors designing or refreshing Entrepreneurship, New Venture Creation, Entrepreneurial Management or closely related modules. It is written to travel across course, module and unit terminology and to support course ownership, credit design, intended learning outcomes and assurance-of-learning evidence.

It is particularly useful for final-year undergraduate, MSc, MBA and executive education cohorts where the aim is not simply to inspire students to start companies. The academic task is to teach students to make disciplined venture decisions under uncertainty: what problem is worth solving, what evidence is credible, what business model can capture value, when to commit resources, how to fund the venture and what should change when the evidence disagrees with the original story.

What does an Entrepreneurship course cover?

An Entrepreneurship course covers the full venture-building lifecycle: entrepreneurial action under uncertainty, customer discovery, value proposition design, business models, market sizing and competitive context, experimentation and MVPs, go-to-market strategy, unit economics and financial viability, founder teams and governance, funding and term sheets, pitching and investor judgement, then scaling, pivots and responsible growth. The sequence matters because each stage should create evidence that constrains the next decision.

The applied distinction is between describing entrepreneurship and practising entrepreneurial judgement. Students should be able to reject a weak opportunity despite an attractive narrative, narrow a market after contradictory customer evidence, change a business model when economics do not work, choose a beachhead rather than a vague mass market, defend a funding offer on both ownership and control, and decide whether to scale, stage, pivot or stop when evidence is incomplete.

The course at a glance

A one-screen planning view. If you are drafting a module specification or course-approval form, most of the structural choices are here; the detailed teaching logic follows below.

Planning area	Suggested approach
Best fit	Final-year or senior undergraduates, MSc/MS management or entrepreneurship cohorts, MBA/EMBA and executive education. The same architecture also works for interdisciplinary engineering, design, health or science cohorts with extra scaffolding.
Typical length	10, 12 or 14 teaching sessions, with 12 as the standard model. Roughly 24-36 contact hours plus independent discovery, reading, experimentation and assessment work - about 150-180 notional learning hours for a full semester elective.
Course role	A core or elective entrepreneurship/new-venture module, or an applied integrative course within innovation, management or enterprise programmes. It can produce assurance-of-learning evidence for opportunity analysis, judgement, communication, teamwork and responsible decision-making.
Useful prerequisites	No prior startup experience is required. Introductory management, marketing or finance is helpful. Advanced cohorts benefit from basic spreadsheet fluency and the ability to interpret simple financial statements.
Main student output	An evidence-backed venture recommendation: customer discovery and assumptions log, Business Model Canvas, go-to-market plan, venture economics, funding terms, investor pitch and a board-style scale/pivot/stop decision.
Best assessment fit	One group applied venture output carrying most of the summative weight plus an individual assumptions note, reflection or oral defence that produces attributable evidence. Most courses need two assessment points, not every format listed later in this guide.
Best simulation fit	Startup Creation for the integrated venture-building capstone; Startup Funding after valuation, ownership and control; Go To Market after STP and channel economics; PESTLE Analysis, Porter's Five Forces and SWOT Analysis during market and strategic-context teaching.

Learning outcomes

These intended learning outcomes use constructive alignment: each opens with an assessable verb and can be evidenced through a task in the syllabus or assessment menu. Bloom's taxonomy is useful here as a check on cognitive demand, but the practical test is simpler - can the student produce evidence that a lecturer can grade and defend in course review or moderation?

The outcomes deliberately move from analysis and design into evaluation, negotiation and integrated judgement. “Understand” and “be familiar with” are avoided because they are difficult to observe directly.

Analyse entrepreneurial opportunities under uncertainty using customer, market and resource evidence.
Design a customer-discovery process that tests problem importance, target segment and willingness to commit.
Construct and critique a value proposition and business model that connect customer value to viable value capture.
Evaluate market size, industry structure and external conditions using bottom-up sizing, PESTLE, Five Forces and SWOT where appropriate.
Design hypothesis-driven experiments and MVPs with explicit evidence thresholds and decision rules.
Develop and defend a go-to-market strategy covering segmentation, targeting, positioning, channels, pricing and launch metrics.
Assess venture financial viability using unit economics, cash runway, scenario analysis and milestone-based resource planning.
Evaluate new-venture team, governance, legal and IP choices while identifying issues that require specialist advice.
Negotiate and justify startup funding terms, including valuation, ownership, dilution, board representation and protective provisions.
Integrate venture evidence into an investor-ready pitch and a defensible launch, scaling, pivot or stop recommendation.

Core concepts

The course structure reflects patterns commonly seen in Ivy League and leading global business-school courses on Entrepreneurship and related modules such as new venture creation, entrepreneurial finance and innovation management. That is a course-design pattern rather than a claim that every school teaches the subject in the same way: foundations come first, evidence and analytical concepts follow, and applied venture decisions carry the later part of the course.

There are twelve core concepts in this Entrepreneurship course. They progress from opportunity and customer evidence through business model, market context, experimentation and go-to-market, then into venture economics, team and governance, funding, pitching and responsible growth.

Entrepreneurial mindset, uncertainty and opportunity
Customer discovery and problem-solution fit
Value proposition and venture concept
Business models and value capture
Market sizing, industry and competitive analysis
Experimentation, MVPs and evidence
Go-to-market strategy: segmentation, targeting and positioning
Unit economics, financial viability and resource planning
New-venture teams, leadership, governance and legal foundations
Funding, valuation, ownership and term sheets
Pitching, investor judgement and venture launch
Scaling, pivots, growth, exits and responsible entrepreneurship

Concept Details

Each accordion turns one concept into a teaching question, coverage plan, assessable outcomes, classroom approach, runnable fictional case, typical student difficulty, reading check and an accurate simulation placement where one of the approved simulations genuinely fits.

Central question: How do entrepreneurs act when goals, resources and market outcomes are still uncertain?

Entrepreneurship begins before there is a company. Students need a disciplined way to distinguish a promising opportunity from an attractive-sounding idea, and to see uncertainty as something to work with rather than something a forecast can eliminate. This concept introduces opportunity formation, entrepreneurial agency, effectual and predictive logics, and the role of evidence in moving from possibility to commitment.

What this concept covers

Opportunity recognition, creation and evaluation.
Uncertainty, ambiguity and affordable-loss thinking.
Effectuation and prediction as complementary decision logics.
Entrepreneurial motivation, resource constraints and stakeholder commitments.
Ethical framing of whose problem is being solved and who bears risk.

Learning outcomes

Differentiate an idea, a problem and an entrepreneurial opportunity.
Compare predictive and effectual approaches to early-stage decisions.
Evaluate an opportunity using evidence rather than founder enthusiasm alone.
Identify assumptions that should remain reversible at an early stage.

How to teach it

Begin with three venture ideas and ask what evidence would turn each into an opportunity.
Use a short effectuation exercise in which teams start from who they are, what they know and whom they know.
Ask students to separate controllable actions from forecasts they cannot control.
Require a one-page opportunity thesis with evidence gaps made explicit.

Case-style example

Northlight Repairs is considering a mobile repair service for university students. A survey of 120 students finds that 42% had a device failure in the last year, but only 18% say they would pay more than £35 for same-day repair. The founders have £8,000 and access to two campus societies. Students calculate the implied addressable paying segment, then choose between a campus pilot and a £6,000 app build. Both are defensible. They discover that early entrepreneurial quality lies in sequencing commitments, not predicting a perfect market.

Where students struggle

Students often treat uncertainty as missing information that can be solved by more research. The teaching move is to ask which uncertainty can be reduced cheaply, which must be lived with, and which commitment would make later learning unnecessarily expensive.

Reading and a quick check

Use Sarasvathy (2024) on lean hypotheses and effectual commitments. Quick check: ask students to identify one prediction in their opportunity thesis and one action that remains under their control.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation fits once students can articulate an opportunity and a first customer problem. Its opening analysis stage makes teams turn an idea into a problem, solution and value proposition before they pitch.

Where it leads

The next step is customer discovery: testing whether the problem is sufficiently real, frequent and important to support a venture.

Central question: What evidence shows that a target customer has a problem worth solving?

A venture can be technically clever and still fail because the customer problem is weak, infrequent or already solved well enough. Customer discovery gives students a practical research discipline: define a customer, form hypotheses, collect behavioural evidence and distinguish what people say from what they actually do.

What this concept covers

Customer segments, jobs, pains and gains.
Problem interviews, observation and behavioural evidence.
Early adopter identification and willingness-to-pay signals.
Problem-solution fit and false-positive validation.
Research ethics, consent and responsible handling of interview data.

Learning outcomes

Design a customer-discovery plan around falsifiable assumptions.
Interpret qualitative evidence without overstating representativeness.
Identify a credible early-adopter segment.
Revise a venture problem statement in response to contradictory evidence.

How to teach it

Give students a deliberately broad segment and require them to narrow it before interviewing.
Use interview transcripts that contain both compliments and purchase signals, then ask which evidence matters.
Ban leading questions in the first discovery exercise.
Ask teams to maintain an evidence log showing claim, source, strength and next test.

Case-style example

CareLoop wants to help working adults coordinate care for elderly parents. Ten interviews produce eight positive reactions, but only three interviewees currently spend more than two hours a week coordinating appointments and medicines. Those three each say they would pay £12-£18 per month; the others would not pay. Students code the interviews, estimate an evidence-weighted target segment and decide whether to narrow the proposition or keep the larger market story. They discover that enthusiastic language is not the same as a high-cost problem.

Where students struggle

Students often count positive comments as validation and ask customers to design the product. Redirect them toward observed behaviour, existing workarounds, frequency, consequences and willingness to commit time or money.

Reading and a quick check

Use a contemporary customer-development reading alongside Shepherd and Gruber (2021). Quick check: students rewrite one leading interview question into a neutral prompt and state what evidence would falsify their problem hypothesis.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation fits strongly here. Startup teams define the customer problem, customer segment and value proposition in the analysis stage, making customer logic an input to the later funding market.

Where it leads

Once the problem is credible, students can specify the value proposition and decide what the venture is promising to do differently.

Central question: Why should this customer choose the venture rather than the status quo or another solution?

The value proposition is the bridge between customer evidence and the venture concept. It should specify who the customer is, what change the venture creates, why that change matters and why the proposed solution is meaningfully different. The lecturer should keep the focus on customer value, not slogans.

What this concept covers

Value proposition design and differentiation.
Benefits, features and customer outcomes.
Alternatives, substitutes and the status quo.
Problem-solution fit versus product-market fit.
Early positioning and evidence required to support claims.

Learning outcomes

Construct a concise value proposition linked to customer evidence.
Compare a venture against direct, indirect and do-nothing alternatives.
Distinguish features from customer outcomes.
Identify the riskiest value proposition assumption.

How to teach it

Ask every team to complete the sentence: For [customer], who struggles with [problem], we provide [outcome], unlike [alternative].
Make students list the customer’s current workaround before discussing competitors.
Use a critique round in which another team attacks the weakest claim.
Require a before-and-after measure that could show whether value was created.

Case-style example

ShiftChef proposes meal kits for hospital night-shift workers. Interviews suggest convenience matters, but the cafeteria already offers £5 hot meals until 11pm. ShiftChef would charge £7.50 for a refrigerated meal available all night. A pilot of 80 vouchers produces 29 redemptions, 19 repeat purchases and an average satisfaction score of 4.2/5. Students calculate repeat conversion and debate whether the value is availability, nutrition or convenience. They discover that a strong proposition must beat the customer’s real alternative on a benefit the customer values.

Where students struggle

Students write broad promises such as “faster, cheaper and better” without a comparator or evidence. Require a named customer, a named alternative and one measurable benefit.

Reading and a quick check

Use Snihur (2023) to connect value propositions to evolving business models. Quick check: ask students to remove every feature word from their proposition and rewrite it only in terms of customer outcomes.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation directly reinforces this concept because value proposition design is part of the startup team’s initial analysis and is later tested through investor questioning.

Where it leads

The value proposition must now become an economic system: a business model that explains how value is created, delivered and captured.

Central question: How will the venture create, deliver and capture value as a coherent system?

A business model is not a poster exercise. It is a set of linked choices about customer segments, channels, relationships, activities, resources, partners, revenue and cost. Students should learn to test whether those choices reinforce each other and whether the model can plausibly capture enough value to sustain the venture.

What this concept covers

Business Model Canvas as a hypothesis map.
Revenue models, pricing and willingness to pay.
Channels, key activities, resources and partnerships.
Cost structure, unit economics and scalability.
Business-model fit, coherence and adaptation.

Learning outcomes

Map the core elements of a venture business model.
Evaluate whether revenue and cost logic support the proposed value proposition.
Identify dependencies and contradictions across business-model choices.
Propose a test for the highest-risk business-model assumption.

How to teach it

Have teams build a first canvas, then circle the three boxes containing assumptions rather than facts.
Compare subscription, transaction-fee and marketplace models for the same customer problem.
Ask students to trace one customer from acquisition through delivery, payment and repeat use.
Use a “break the model” workshop where peers identify the single dependency most likely to fail.

Case-style example

TutorGrid matches university tutors with GCSE students. Model A charges parents £25 per lesson and pays tutors £18, while Model B charges tutors a 20% commission on a £25 lesson. Paid social acquisition is estimated at £28 per new family, with an average of six lessons per family. Students calculate gross contribution under each model, then debate whether the platform should optimise for parent trust or tutor supply. They discover that the same value proposition can produce very different economics and incentive problems.

Where students struggle

Students fill every canvas box but do not test coherence. Ask them which one assumption, if wrong, would make two or more other boxes collapse.

Reading and a quick check

Use Zott, Amit and Massa-style business-model framing through a recent business-model article, supplemented by Sanasi (2023). Quick check: students explain how one change in channel would alter at least two other business-model elements.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation is the strongest application. Teams build a Business Model Canvas covering customer segments, channels, key activities, resources, partners, costs and revenue streams before creating the pitch.

Where it leads

With a coherent model, students can test the size and structure of the market and the competitive forces that shape whether the opportunity is attractive.

Central question: Is the market large and attractive enough, and what external forces could make the venture thesis fail?

Entrepreneurship courses often over-reward a large TAM slide. This concept teaches students to connect market sizing to reachable customers, and to use PESTLE, Five Forces and SWOT as decision tools rather than descriptive templates. The goal is a defensible market-entry view, not a long list of factors.

What this concept covers

TAM, SAM and SOM with transparent assumptions.
Competitor, substitute and status-quo analysis.
PESTLE analysis of external change.
Porter’s Five Forces and industry economics.
SWOT as synthesis rather than data collection.

Learning outcomes

Construct a bottom-up market estimate from explicit assumptions.
Assess industry attractiveness and major external dependencies.
Prioritise environmental and competitive factors by materiality.
Convert analysis into a go, test, delay or redesign recommendation.

How to teach it

Require a bottom-up SOM before allowing a top-down market number.
Assign PESTLE factors different evidence strengths and force students to rank them.
Use Five Forces to explain profit pools, not just competitive intensity.
Finish with a SWOT synthesis in which every item must link to a decision.

Case-style example

CycleBox plans secure modular bicycle parking for UK commuter rail stations. There are 2.1 million daily rail journeys in its initial region, but only 14% of passengers live within cycling distance, 9% currently cycle and the venture can initially serve 12 stations. Each 40-bike unit costs £42,000 and the railway requires a 12% revenue share. Students build a bottom-up SOM, identify the two most material PESTLE risks and assess buyer power. They discover that a large transport market can still yield a small reachable opportunity with difficult channel economics.

Where students struggle

Students confuse market size with market attractiveness and often treat frameworks as separate checklists. Require a single recommendation that integrates scale, structure, external change and the venture’s own capability.

Reading and a quick check

Use the GEM 2025/2026 Global Report selectively for ecosystem context, then a short industry-analysis note. Quick check: ask students to delete any PESTLE or SWOT item that would not change a decision.

Where a simulation fits

PESTLE Analysis, Porter's Five Forces and SWOT Analysis all fit here. Use one as the principal structured workshop and the others as optional extensions, depending whether the course emphasis is macro environment, industry economics or strategic synthesis.

Where it leads

Market analysis identifies what must be true; experimentation shows how cheaply and credibly the venture can test those assumptions.

Central question: What is the smallest credible test that can reduce the venture’s most important uncertainty?

Experimentation turns entrepreneurship from plan-writing into disciplined learning. The key is not speed for its own sake. Students should learn to identify a hypothesis, choose an appropriate MVP or experiment, specify a threshold in advance and decide what evidence would trigger continuation, adaptation or a pivot.

What this concept covers

Hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship.
MVP forms, fidelity and learning goals.
Experiment design, thresholds and sequential testing.
Pivots, perseverance and stopping rules.
Bias, vanity metrics and ethical experimentation.

Learning outcomes

Formulate falsifiable venture hypotheses.
Design an MVP or experiment matched to the uncertainty being tested.
Set decision thresholds before results are known.
Interpret mixed evidence and recommend persist, pivot or stop.

How to teach it

Give teams five assumptions and force them to test only one.
Compare landing pages, concierge MVPs, prototypes, pre-orders and manual service tests.
Require a pre-registered decision threshold such as conversion, retention or willingness to pay.
Debrief failed experiments as evidence, not as poor performance.

Case-style example

PetPulse is considering a £29 smart tag for dog owners. A landing-page test reaches 2,400 visitors at £0.42 per click; 144 join a waitlist and 22 place a refundable £5 deposit. The team’s pre-set threshold was a 1% deposit rate, but interviews reveal that 15 of the 22 depositors mainly want location tracking rather than the planned health feature. Students calculate conversion, judge whether the threshold was met and choose persist, pivot or run a second test. They discover that passing a metric can still invalidate the original value proposition.

Where students struggle

Students either build too much before testing or change direction whenever evidence is uncomfortable. Emphasise the link between a specific uncertainty, the test, the threshold and the decision rule.

Reading and a quick check

Assign Stevenson, Burnell and Fisher (2024) on MVP theory and practice. Quick check: students state what their MVP is trying to learn, not what features it contains.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation can follow this concept as a more integrated venture-building application. Its live funding market exposes whether the team’s assumptions and evidence survive investor questions.

Where it leads

Once a venture has credible evidence, it needs a route to acquire customers and position itself in the market.

Central question: Which customer should the venture win first, through which channel, with what position and launch economics?

A go-to-market plan translates customer insight into commercial choices. Students should move beyond “social media and partnerships” to decide which segment to prioritise, where to launch, how to reach it, how to position the offer, what to charge and which metrics will show whether acquisition can scale.

What this concept covers

Segmentation, targeting and positioning.
Beachhead markets and launch sequencing.
Acquisition channels and channel economics.
Pricing, promotion and positioning.
Activation, conversion, retention and early growth metrics.

Learning outcomes

Select and justify a target segment using evidence.
Design a coherent positioning and channel strategy.
Evaluate customer-acquisition trade-offs across channels.
Define launch metrics and decision thresholds.

How to teach it

Force teams to choose one beachhead segment rather than listing several.
Give them two channels with different CAC, reach and trust characteristics.
Require a positioning statement that excludes at least one plausible customer.
Use a launch dashboard with acquisition, conversion, repeat use and contribution metrics.

Case-style example

PulseFuel sells premium protein bars. Students can target gym regulars or time-poor office workers. Gym sampling costs £1.10 per qualified lead and converts 16%; commuter digital ads cost £0.70 per lead and convert 7%. Gross contribution on a first box is £9.50, while 60-day repeat purchase is estimated at 42% for gym buyers and 55% for office buyers. Students compute first-order acquisition economics and debate the better beachhead. They discover that the cheaper lead is not necessarily the stronger launch channel.

Where students struggle

Students optimise reach instead of fit. Require them to connect segment choice, proposition, channel, price and unit economics into one launch argument.

Reading and a quick check

Use a recent go-to-market practitioner note alongside Barringer and Ireland’s marketing chapter. Quick check: ask which segment the venture is deliberately not targeting and why.

Where a simulation fits

Go To Market fits directly here. Students act as the founder of a protein-bar company entering the US market and make segmentation, targeting, positioning, region, channel, pricing, pack and promotion decisions.

Where it leads

The go-to-market plan must now connect to cash: whether each customer and the venture as a whole can become financially viable.

Central question: Can the venture create attractive customer economics before cash runs out?

Entrepreneurial finance at this stage is about decision visibility, not false precision. Students need to understand revenue drivers, contribution margin, CAC, retention, burn, runway, break-even logic and the resources required to reach the next evidence milestone.

What this concept covers

Revenue model, gross margin and contribution margin.
Customer acquisition cost, retention and lifetime-value logic.
Fixed costs, burn rate, runway and break-even.
Cash needs, milestone planning and use of funds.
Scenario analysis rather than single-point forecasts.

Learning outcomes

Calculate core unit-economics and runway measures.
Distinguish accounting profit from cash survival.
Build a simple base, upside and downside operating scenario.
Connect resource requirements to specific venture milestones.

How to teach it

Use a one-page operating model rather than a five-year spreadsheet at first.
Ask students to separate controllable cost choices from market assumptions.
Require a cash runway calculation under base and downside scenarios.
Make the use-of-funds table refer to evidence milestones, not vague categories such as “marketing”.

Case-style example

LaundryLoop offers weekly pickup and delivery for student accommodation. It charges £14 per order, pays fulfilment partners £8.20 and incurs £1.30 of variable support and payment cost. Paid acquisition is £24 per customer, average monthly frequency is 2.2 orders and expected average customer life is six months. Fixed monthly costs are £18,000 and cash on hand is £108,000. Students compute contribution per order, payback and simple runway, then debate whether to spend an extra £20,000 on acquisition or extend the product pilot. They discover why growth can shorten runway even when unit economics look positive.

Where students struggle

Students use revenue growth as proof of viability or produce detailed forecasts unsupported by evidence. Keep the model sparse and insist that each assumption has a source or a test plan.

Reading and a quick check

Use OECD (2026) for financing context and the textbook chapter on venture financial strength. Quick check: ask what happens to runway if growth doubles but CAC rises 30% and payment terms stay unchanged.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation fits because startup teams must connect revenue streams, cost structure, unit economics and use of funds to a pitch that investors can question.

Where it leads

Financial viability creates the basis for deciding what team, governance and legal structure the venture needs before taking external capital.

Central question: What people, roles, incentives and legal arrangements does the venture need before it can scale or raise capital?

Many entrepreneurship courses leave people and governance until after the pitch. In practice, founder roles, equity, decision rights, hiring gaps, incorporation choices, IP and basic governance can determine whether an otherwise attractive venture is investable. The aim is not to teach company law in detail, but to make students identify the decisions that need specialist advice.

What this concept covers

Founder roles, skills gaps and team formation.
Equity splits, vesting and incentive alignment.
Boards, advisers and early governance.
Legal form, contracts, employment and regulatory exposure.
Intellectual property strategy and when professional advice is required.

Learning outcomes

Evaluate whether a founding team covers the venture’s critical capabilities.
Explain the incentive consequences of different founder-equity arrangements.
Identify governance decisions that become material before funding.
Recognise legal and IP issues that require professional advice.

How to teach it

Give teams a capability map and force them to hire, contract or defer each gap.
Use a founder-equity scenario where equal splits are not obviously fair.
Ask students to draft a simple decision-rights matrix.
Use a red-flag exercise that distinguishes business judgement from matters needing legal advice.

Case-style example

BioPatch has three founders. Maya developed the prototype and has worked full-time for 12 months, Leo brings hospital access but works two days a week, and Noor joined three months ago to lead commercialisation. Maya proposes 45/30/25 equity; Leo argues for equal thirds. The company expects to raise £750,000 within six months and a university may own background IP. Students compare equity and vesting structures, map decision rights and identify the IP question requiring legal clarification. They discover that founder alignment is both an incentive and investability issue.

Where students struggle

Students look for a universal “fair” equity split or make legal conclusions beyond the course evidence. Grade the reasoning, assumptions and escalation points rather than a single answer.

Reading and a quick check

Use Barringer and Ireland’s chapters on the new-venture team and legal foundation. Quick check: ask which founder issue could become most expensive if postponed until a financing round.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation can expose team coordination and investor questions, but a dedicated founder-agreement workshop is usually the stronger teaching activity for governance and legal choices.

Where it leads

With the venture structured, students can examine external funding and the trade-offs between valuation, ownership, control and investor incentives.

Central question: How much capital should the venture raise, at what valuation and on what terms?

Funding is where venture economics and governance meet. Students should calculate pre-money and post-money valuation, investor ownership and founder dilution, but also see why board rights, voting, consent and protective terms can matter as much as the headline valuation. The teaching target is a negotiated financing decision, not memorisation of term-sheet vocabulary.

What this concept covers

Funding sources and capital requirements.
Pre-money, post-money valuation and ownership.
Dilution, option pools and founder control.
Board representation, voting, consent and protective terms.
Investor incentives, negotiation ranges and future-round consequences.

Learning outcomes

Calculate ownership and dilution from a proposed financing.
Compare funding offers on economic and control dimensions.
Defend a funding amount and valuation range using venture evidence.
Negotiate a term sheet while preserving the venture’s next-round flexibility.

How to teach it

Start with a simple £500,000 raise and require ownership calculations before introducing control terms.
Give founder and investor teams different reservation points and priorities.
Run downside and future-round scenarios to show why terms interact.
Require a negotiation memo explaining which terms were conceded and why.

Case-style example

OrbitLearn needs £1.2 million to reach 24 months of runway. Investor A offers £1.2 million at a £4.8 million pre-money valuation for 20% post-money ownership, one board seat and a 12% post-financing option pool. Investor B offers £1.0 million at a £6.0 million pre-money valuation for about 14.3% ownership, but requests two of five board seats and consent rights over hiring the CFO and future debt. Students calculate dilution, compare runway and control, then recommend or counter one offer. They discover why the highest valuation is not automatically the best deal.

Where students struggle

Students focus on valuation percentage and ignore control, option-pool mechanics, investor fit and whether the funding amount actually buys enough time to reach the next milestone.

Reading and a quick check

Assign Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev (2020) on how venture capitalists make decisions, together with a current term-sheet note. Quick check: ask students to name one term that affects economics and one that affects control.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Funding is the direct application. Startup and VC teams analyse the same early-stage venture independently, draft opening term sheets and then negotiate funding amount, valuation, ownership, option pool, board representation, voting and protective terms.

Where it leads

Once capital terms are defensible, students need to communicate the venture as a coherent investment case and make launch decisions under challenge.

Central question: Can the team convert evidence into a persuasive, defensible venture case rather than a polished story?

A pitch is useful when it compresses the venture’s logic without hiding uncertainty. Students should present the customer problem, evidence, market, business model, economics, team, ask and use of funds, then defend the weak points. The investor side is equally important: students should learn to compare ventures against stated criteria rather than be captured by presentation quality.

What this concept covers

Investor pitch architecture and evidence selection.
The funding ask, use of funds and milestones.
Investor screening criteria and investment theses.
Questioning, objection handling and negotiation.
Launch readiness and decision gates.

Learning outcomes

Build a concise evidence-led venture pitch.
Defend market, unit-economics and funding assumptions under questioning.
Evaluate competing ventures against explicit investor criteria.
Translate pitch feedback into a launch or next-test decision.

How to teach it

Limit teams to a short pitch so evidence must be prioritised.
Give investor teams pre-committed criteria before seeing ventures.
Score the quality of questions as well as founder answers.
Debrief mismatches between what investors said they valued and what they actually funded.

Case-style example

FoundryFlow pitches a workflow tool for small manufacturers. It has 11 pilot customers, £7,800 monthly recurring revenue, 3% monthly logo churn and a pipeline of 34 prospects. The founders seek £900,000 at a £4.5 million pre-money valuation to hire sales and product staff. One investor values traction but worries that two customers produce 48% of revenue; another prefers a pre-revenue competitor with a larger addressable market. Students prepare a four-minute pitch and an investor scorecard, then defend which venture should receive scarce capital. They discover how explicit criteria reduce storytelling bias.

Where students struggle

Students optimise slide design and market size while hiding contradictory evidence. Grade whether the team surfaces the assumptions that an investor would reasonably challenge.

Reading and a quick check

Use CashDrop (A) as a live case option and the textbook pitching/business-plan material selectively. Quick check: ask students to remove one slide and explain why the investment case remains coherent without it.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation fits most strongly here as a capstone. Startup teams pitch live to student VC firms; investors question the assumptions and negotiate capital and ownership in a market where not every venture is funded.

Where it leads

The final concept asks what happens after launch and funding: how the venture learns, scales responsibly, pivots and eventually creates or realises enduring value.

Central question: How should a venture grow without scaling a weak model, losing strategic coherence or ignoring stakeholder consequences?

Growth should close the course because it forces students to integrate everything before it: customer evidence, economics, capabilities, funding and market structure. Students should distinguish repeatable growth from premature scaling, identify what systems and leadership must change, and recognise that responsible entrepreneurship includes decisions about employees, customers, investors and wider social impact.

What this concept covers

Product-market fit signals and repeatability.
Scaling channels, operations, systems and leadership.
Pivots and strategic adaptation.
Growth financing, partnerships, acquisition and exit pathways.
Responsible entrepreneurship, stakeholder trade-offs and learning from failure.

Learning outcomes

Evaluate whether a venture is ready to scale.
Identify bottlenecks that will worsen as volume grows.
Recommend a pivot, growth investment or disciplined stop decision.
Assess growth choices against both venture value and stakeholder consequences.

How to teach it

Give students a fast-growing venture with one weak operational metric and ask whether to accelerate.
Use a scale-readiness scorecard covering demand, unit economics, operations, team and cash.
Ask teams to distinguish a strategic pivot from reactive feature churn.
End with a board-style decision that requires both commercial and responsibility arguments.

Case-style example

GreenCrate delivers reusable packaging to independent food retailers. Revenue has grown from £40,000 to £165,000 in 12 months, gross margin is 38% and customer retention is 86%, but reverse-logistics costs rise sharply outside its home city. A national retailer offers a contract that could add £420,000 of annual revenue but requires launch in five cities within four months and £190,000 of working capital. Students calculate the incremental cash need and debate accept, stage, renegotiate or decline. They discover why a high-growth contract can destroy a model that is not operationally repeatable.

Where students struggle

Students equate growth with success and “pivot” with any change. Require evidence that the core model is repeatable and clear criteria for what should change, what should remain and who bears the cost.

Reading and a quick check

Use the GEM 2025/2026 report for the startup-to-established-firm transition and a recent scaling case. Quick check: ask students to name the metric that would make them slow growth even if revenue is rising.

Where a simulation fits

Startup Creation can be debriefed here by comparing funded and unfunded ventures, valuations, ownership and investor choices, then asking which teams are genuinely ready for the next milestone. A scaling board memo is the best additional activity.

Where it leads

This closes the lifecycle. Students should now be able to move from uncertainty and opportunity to evidence, business-model choices, market entry, finance, funding, launch and responsible growth.

Connecting the concepts

This alignment map keeps the course from becoming a sequence of canvases and frameworks. Each stage leaves behind evidence that can be revisited later, which makes the final capstone an integration of earlier work rather than a sudden business-plan assignment.

Stage of venture work	Principal concepts	Expected student output	Assessment evidence
Frame the opportunity	Concepts 1-3: uncertainty, customer evidence and value proposition	Opportunity thesis, discovery evidence log and value proposition.	Formative evidence of problem quality, assumptions and evidence discipline.
Design the venture model	Concept 4: business model and value capture	Business Model Canvas plus dependency map.	Formative evidence of model coherence and value capture.
Test market attractiveness	Concept 5: market sizing, PESTLE, Five Forces and SWOT	Reachable-market estimate and strategic-context recommendation.	Formative or low-stakes analytical memo.
Run experiments	Concept 6: MVP and experimentation	Experiment card with threshold and next-decision rule.	Formative evidence of hypothesis quality and interpretation.
Choose how to enter	Concept 7: go-to-market	Beachhead, channel and positioning recommendation.	Applied output, potentially supported by Go To Market results.
Prove financial viability	Concept 8: unit economics and runway	Operating scenario and use-of-funds note.	Quantitative evidence of assumption discipline.
Make the venture investable	Concepts 9-10: team, governance and funding	Founder/governance memo and negotiated financing terms.	Summative group evidence plus individual concession rationale.
Defend and integrate	Concepts 11-12: pitch, launch, scale and responsible growth	Investor pitch and board-style scale/pivot/stop recommendation.	Summative group output plus individual oral or written defence.

Adapting for undergraduate and postgraduate students

The architecture holds across levels; the difference is scaffolding and tolerance for ambiguity. Undergraduates can make sophisticated venture decisions if the task tells them what evidence to work with. MSc, MBA and executive cohorts can be given noisier data, less obvious questions and more responsibility for deciding what information is missing.

For a 12-session semester design, 24-36 contact hours plus independent discovery, reading and assessment work can support roughly 150-180 notional learning hours. The course/module/unit owner should translate that into local credit rules and adjust fieldwork expectations for ethics, accessibility and cohort context.

Course design area	Undergraduate version	Postgraduate / MBA / executive version
Course emphasis	Build the venture lifecycle clearly and use structured decision templates.	Move quickly into ambiguous evidence, competing stakeholder positions and live defence.
Scaffolding	Provide interview guides, simple market data, worked unit-economics examples and model templates.	Give incomplete information, require source selection and make students decide what additional evidence is worth acquiring.
Customer evidence	Use supervised discovery and explicit coding categories.	Expect stronger research design, triangulation and critique of bias and representativeness.
Financial depth	Contribution margin, CAC, basic runway, pre/post-money valuation and dilution.	Add scenario models, cap-table changes, financing alternatives and deeper sensitivity analysis.
Strategy depth	Use PESTLE, Five Forces and SWOT with clear prompts.	Require students to select, weight and reject evidence, then defend strategic consequences.
Funding work	Use structured term-sheet calculations and guided negotiation.	Use reservation points, board/control trade-offs, future-round implications and investor-fit analysis.
Assessment	Structured venture memo, pitch and individual reflection or short defence.	Open-ended board/investment memo, negotiation evidence and more demanding oral challenge.
Executive education	Use as a reference level where appropriate.	Compress theory, draw on participant ventures and emphasise portfolio decisions, corporate entrepreneurship and resource commitment.

The 12-session syllabus

The course arc follows the venture lifecycle: opportunity and customer evidence first, business-model and market choices next, experimentation and go-to-market in the middle, then venture economics, team and governance, funding, pitching, scaling and final integration. Application is not deferred to the end - each session leaves behind a concrete artefact or decision.

The table is designed for weekly teaching, intensive blocks or blended delivery. Where a simulation appears, it is placed after students have enough theory to make a defensible choice.

Use the visual above as the session-level course map; the table below gives the lecturer-ready teaching focus, student activity, simulation fit and assessment output.

Session	Topic	Teaching focus	Student activity	Best-fitting simulation, where relevant	Assessment or output
1	Entrepreneurship under uncertainty and opportunity	Opportunity, entrepreneurial action, effectuation, evidence and ethical framing.	Students compare three opportunities, build an opportunity thesis and identify reversible versus irreversible commitments.		Opportunity thesis and uncertainty map.
2	Customer discovery and problem-solution fit	Segments, interviews, behavioural evidence, early adopters and problem importance.	Teams design discovery interviews, code evidence and revise a problem statement.		Customer-discovery evidence log.
3	Value proposition and venture concept	Customer outcomes, alternatives, differentiation and early proposition testing.	Students build and challenge value propositions against the status quo.	Startup Creation	One-page value proposition with strongest evidence and weakest assumption.
4	Business models and value capture	Business Model Canvas, revenue logic, channels, costs, partnerships and model coherence.	Teams map a venture model, identify three key hypotheses and trace one customer through the economics.	Startup Creation	Business Model Canvas plus assumptions note.
5	Market sizing, industry and strategic context	TAM/SAM/SOM, competitors, PESTLE, Five Forces and SWOT synthesis.	Students size a reachable market and convert environmental and competitive analysis into a go/test/delay recommendation.	PESTLE Analysis / Porter's Five Forces / SWOT Analysis	Market attractiveness and strategic-context memo.
6	Experimentation, MVPs and evidence	Hypotheses, MVP forms, thresholds, pivots, vanity metrics and ethical testing.	Teams design one minimum credible test and pre-commit to a decision threshold.	Startup Creation	Experiment card with result threshold and next decision.
7	Go-to-market strategy	Segmentation, targeting, positioning, launch regions, channels, pricing and promotion.	Students select a beachhead and compare channel economics before running a market-entry decision.	Go To Market	Go-to-market recommendation and launch dashboard.
8	Unit economics, financial viability and resources	Contribution margin, CAC, retention, burn, runway, break-even and use of funds.	Students build a simple operating model and test base and downside cash scenarios.	Startup Creation	Unit-economics and runway note.
9	Teams, governance, legal foundations and IP	Founder roles, equity, vesting, capability gaps, decision rights, legal form and IP.	Teams resolve a founder-equity case, build a capability map and identify professional-advice red flags.		Founder and governance decision memo.
10	Startup funding, valuation and term sheets	Capital needs, pre/post-money valuation, dilution, option pools, board rights, voting and protections.	Founder and investor teams calculate economics, compare terms and negotiate a financing.	Startup Funding	Negotiated term sheet plus individual concession rationale.
11	Pitching, investor judgement and venture launch	Pitch architecture, investment criteria, use of funds, investor questioning and launch gates.	Startup teams pitch; investor teams assess ventures against pre-committed criteria and negotiate scarce capital.	Startup Creation	Investor-ready pitch and funding/launch recommendation.
12	Scaling, pivots, exits and responsible entrepreneurship	Product-market fit, repeatable growth, operational scale, pivots, growth financing, exits and stakeholder trade-offs.	Students complete a scale-readiness board decision and debrief what the capstone evidence changed.	Startup Creation	Final board memo: scale, stage, pivot, partner, sell or stop.

10-week course structure

The 10-session version combines adjacent foundation topics while preserving discovery, experimentation, go-to-market, funding and the final venture decision.

Session	Compressed topic
1	Opportunity, uncertainty and entrepreneurial action
2	Customer discovery, value proposition and problem-solution fit
3	Business models, market sizing and strategic context
4	Experimentation, MVPs and evidence
5	Go-to-market strategy and Go To Market Simulation
6	Unit economics, runway and resource planning
7	Team, governance, legal foundations and IP
8	Startup funding, valuation, ownership and Startup Funding Simulation
9	Pitching and Startup Creation capstone
10	Scaling, pivots, responsible growth and final integration

14-week course structure

The 14-session version uses the extra time for deeper customer research, separate strategic-analysis practice, a fuller funding negotiation and more capstone reflection rather than simply adding more theory.

Session	Expanded topic
1	Entrepreneurial mindset, uncertainty and opportunity
2	Customer discovery and research design
3	Problem-solution fit and value proposition
4	Business Model Canvas and value capture
5	Market sizing and competitor analysis
6	PESTLE, Five Forces and SWOT workshop
7	Experimentation, MVPs and pivot decisions
8	Go-to-market strategy and Go To Market Simulation
9	Unit economics, cash runway and financial viability
10	Teams, founder equity, governance, legal foundations and IP
11	Funding strategy, valuation and dilution
12	Startup Funding Simulation and negotiation debrief
13	Startup Creation pitch and funding market
14	Scaling, responsible growth, exits and capstone board defence

Simulations: What they are and why they belong in this course

Entrepreneurship is a decision-led subject. Lectures and readings can explain opportunity, business models, market frameworks, venture economics and funding terms, but students only discover whether they can use those ideas when another stakeholder questions the evidence, capital is scarce or a choice closes off another option.

Simulations belong where they make a concept harder to fake: founders must defend customer and market assumptions, investors must commit to criteria, teams must choose among channels or strategic conditions, and a funding negotiation forces valuation, ownership and control into the same decision. They should come after the concept teaching and be followed by a debrief that connects behaviour back to the intended learning outcomes.

There is also an accreditation and quality-assurance argument for well-designed experiential work. The useful evidence is not that students enjoyed a game; it is that they made recorded decisions, justified trade-offs and can be challenged on what those decisions show. If you need the accreditation language itself, what AACSB and AMBA say about simulations sets it out.

Traditional case study vs simulation

Teaching format	What it does well	Limitation	Best use in this course
Traditional case study	Gives a rich decision situation with background, exhibits and a teaching question.	Students can discuss a decision without having to commit, negotiate or live with a consequence.	Best for opportunity evaluation, founder dilemmas, growth choices, governance and go-to-market comparison.
Simulation	Places students into a role where they must analyse, prioritise, negotiate or make a trade-off.	Needs preparation and debriefing; otherwise activity can outrun the learning objective.	Best after students know the frameworks and need to apply them to market entry, funding or integrated venture creation.

A simulation is not a substitute for concept teaching and it should not be added as a reward at the end. The design rule throughout this page is simple: teach the concept, run the decision, then debrief the evidence.

Where simulations fit

The two strongest full-course fits are Startup Creation and Startup Funding. The first integrates the venture-creation arc from opportunity to a live funding market; the second isolates fundraising, valuation, ownership, founder control, investor incentives and term-sheet negotiation. Go To Market and the three strategic-analysis simulations work as shorter, more focused applications.

Course point	Simulation	How to use it	Why it fits
Sessions 3-4, 6, 8 and 11	Startup Creation	Use as a staged capstone from opportunity and Business Model Canvas through pitch and funding.	Integrates problem-solution fit, market sizing, business-model choices, unit economics, investor criteria, pitching and negotiated ownership.
Session 10	Startup Funding	Use after students know capital requirements, pre/post-money valuation, ownership, dilution and basic control terms.	Puts startup and VC teams on opposite sides of a live funding negotiation over economics and governance.
Session 7	Go To Market	Use after segmentation, targeting, positioning and channel economics.	A focused individual market-entry decision linking target segment, regions, channel, positioning, price, pack and promotion.
Session 5	PESTLE Analysis / Porter's Five Forces / SWOT Analysis	Use one as the principal strategic-context application and the others selectively.	Turns environment, industry structure and strategic synthesis into a recommendation rather than a list of framework labels.

The Startup Creation Simulation fits as the integrated capstone because it begins with opportunity and problem-solution fit, moves through market sizing and the Business Model Canvas, and finishes in a live funding market. Startup teams build and pitch ventures while VC teams define investment criteria and decide which ventures to back. Capital is deliberately scarce, so a polished pitch does not guarantee funding.

Why it fits here

By this stage students can make the venture-building choices rather than merely fill a canvas. The two-sided market adds a useful test: startup teams must make the case coherent enough to survive investor questions, while VC teams must turn an investment thesis into actual selection behaviour.

What students do

Startup teams define the opportunity, customer problem, solution and value proposition, size TAM/SAM/SOM and complete the Business Model Canvas.
VC teams write an investment thesis, set screening criteria and build an Investment Process Document before seeing all pitches.
Startup teams create a pitch covering problem, solution, market, business model, use of funds and funding ask.
During the live market, founders pitch and move between investor firms while investors question assumptions and compare competing ventures.
Both sides negotiate investment amount and percentage ownership, which produce an implied post-money valuation; ventures can raise main funding, secondary funding or remain unfunded.
The cohort then compares which ventures raised, at what valuation and ownership, and whether investor decisions matched stated criteria.

Recommended course placement

Start the analysis work after customer, value-proposition and business-model teaching.
Let teams continue market sizing, unit economics and pitch creation as the relevant sessions are taught.
Use the live pitch and negotiation after students have covered funding basics, or as the capstone immediately after Session 11.
Finish with an individual reflection or board memo so the group outcome is converted into attributable assessment evidence.

Knowledge students should have before the simulation

Opportunity, customer and value-proposition logic.
TAM, SAM and SOM.
Business Model Canvas and basic unit economics.
Basic funding ask, ownership and post-money valuation logic.
Ability to defend assumptions under questioning.

Delivery format

Area	Recommended Format
Duration	6-10 hours, run in one extended block or divided across shorter teaching periods.
Format	Team simulation with roughly 70% of teams as startups and 30% as VC firms.
Level	Undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA.
Prior knowledge	Beginner accessible; no prior startup or venture-capital experience is required.
Delivery	Classroom, online or hybrid; dashboard-guided by the lecturer.
Evidence	Team submissions, venture artefacts, negotiated terms and comparative outcomes can support professor-defined assessment. The platform does not replace academic judgement or establish individual contribution on its own.

Why it fits here

Students already know the calculation mechanics, so class time can focus on negotiation and trade-offs. A higher valuation may preserve ownership but come with more control rights; a larger round may extend runway but create more dilution. The paired roles make those trade-offs explicit because each side has different objectives.

What students do

Startup and VC teams first analyse the same venture independently and establish target ranges and priorities.
Each side prepares an opening term sheet before seeing the other side’s position.
Teams compare the opening positions, classify disagreements and decide where they have room to trade.
They negotiate provision by provision across funding amount, pre/post-money valuation, investor ownership and founder dilution, option pool, board representation, voting/consent and protective terms.
At the end, teams review the signed or unsigned outcome and compare selected terms and cohort-level metrics with peers in the same role.

Recommended course placement

After Session 10 once students can calculate pre-money, post-money, ownership and dilution.
Run across one extended workshop or split analysis/strategy from live structuring and debrief.
Use before the final pitch or capstone so students can revise their funding ask and governance choices.
If assessed, pair the team outcome with an individual concession rationale or short oral defence.

Knowledge students should have before the simulation

Basic startup funding sources and capital requirements.
Pre-money and post-money valuation.
Investor ownership and founder dilution.
Purpose of an option pool.
Basic board, voting/consent and investor-protection logic.

Delivery format

Area	Recommended Format
Duration	3-5 hours.
Format	Deal negotiation: one startup team paired with one VC team.
Recommended team size	3-5 students per team, creating a paired negotiation group of 6-10.
Level	Undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA.
Prior knowledge	Beginner friendly; no prior startup-finance course is required, but this course should teach the key valuation and ownership mechanics first.
Delivery	Classroom, online or hybrid; can be run in one session, across several classes or partly as homework.
Evidence	Final negotiation status, agreed terms and selected cohort comparisons can support academic judgement. The public product page states that the platform does not generate a grade or score for this simulation.

AI impact on Entrepreneurship teaching

Generative AI changes the speed of early entrepreneurial work. Students can produce idea lists, interview scripts, competitor summaries, market-size assumptions, Business Model Canvas drafts, pitch structures and financial scenarios in minutes. That makes polished output a weaker signal of learning and increases the value of evidence provenance, live challenge and the ability to explain why a decision was made.

The course should therefore make AI use explicit rather than accidental. A defensible policy can permit idea generation, structuring, language improvement and declared analytical support while requiring students to verify claims, protect confidential interview data, label AI-assisted synthesis and retain responsibility for every assumption. AI-generated personas or invented interviews must never be counted as customer evidence.

How AI is changing the subject

AI can make entrepreneurial exploration broader and faster, but it can also create false confidence. It is particularly good at generating plausible alternatives and weak at proving that a customer actually behaves in the way the venture needs. In teaching, that means shifting attention from the first draft to source quality, experiment design, contradiction, missing information and the decision that follows.

Implications for teaching and assessment

Teaching area	AI implication	Lecturer response
Opportunity generation	AI can generate many ideas and trend narratives quickly.	Require a specific opportunity thesis grounded in observed customer or market evidence.
Customer discovery	AI can draft questions or summarise notes, but synthetic personas are not customer evidence.	Audit interview provenance and ask students to distinguish quotes, behaviours, inference and AI-assisted synthesis.
Market analysis	AI can produce competitor and market summaries that may contain stale or fabricated claims.	Require source links, triangulation and an explicit list of claims that still need verification.
Business models	AI can propose multiple canvas variants with little effort.	Grade coherence, dependency logic and the test chosen for the riskiest assumption.
Financial viability	AI can draft forecast assumptions and scenarios.	Require students to state evidence for each major driver and defend sensitivity choices.
Funding and term sheets	AI can explain terms but may miss how provisions interact.	Use negotiated scenarios and live questioning on ownership, control, dilution and future rounds.
Pitching	AI can produce polished copy and slide structures.	Reduce credit for polish and increase credit for evidence quality, challenge response and decision logic.

Course session	Core textbook chapter	Supplement with
Session 1 - Entrepreneurship under uncertainty and opportunity	Ch. 1: Introduction to Entrepreneurship	Readings 1 and 3
Session 2 - Customer discovery and problem-solution fit	Ch. 2-3: Recognizing Opportunities; Feasibility Analysis	Reading 7
Session 3 - Value proposition and venture concept	Ch. 2-4: Opportunities and Business Models	Reading 6
Session 4 - Business models and value capture	Ch. 4: Developing an Effective Business Model	Reading 5
Session 5 - Market sizing, industry and strategic context	Ch. 5 plus Ch. 3: Industry/Competitor Analysis and Feasibility	Reading 1
Session 6 - Experimentation, MVPs and evidence	Ch. 3-4: Feasibility and Business Model iteration	Readings 4 and 7
Session 7 - Go-to-market strategy	Ch. 11: Unique Marketing Issues
Session 8 - Unit economics, financial viability and resources	Ch. 8: Assessing a New Venture's Financial Strength and Viability	Reading 2
Session 9 - Teams, governance, legal foundations and IP	Ch. 7, 9 and 12: Ethical/Legal Foundation, New-Venture Team, IP
Session 10 - Startup funding, valuation and term sheets	Ch. 10: Getting Financing or Funding	Readings 2 and 8
Session 11 - Pitching, investor judgement and venture launch	Ch. 6 and 10: Business Plan communication and Financing	Reading 8
Session 12 - Scaling, pivots, exits and responsible entrepreneurship	Ch. 13-14: Challenges of Growth and Strategies for Firm Growth	Readings 1 and 2

Real case studies to use

The fictional cases inside the twelve Concept Details are licence-free seminar exercises with all required data. For a longer assessed case, the two externally published options below give verified founder, funding and go-to-market decisions from Harvard Business School / Harvard Business Publishing sources.

Funding and founder control

CashDrop (A)

Funding and founder control

Rembrand Koning, Paul A. Gompers and Sarah Gulick, Harvard Business School / Harvard Business Publishing, 2021.

Why it fits: Use in Session 10 or 11 to discuss whether and why a rapidly growing founder-led venture should take venture capital, what investor influence means and how founder priorities shape financing choices.

Assessment fit: A short individual investor-choice memo or founder board recommendation.

View case study

Go-to-market

Osteoboost: Go-To-Market Strategy in a Healthcare Startup

Go-to-market

Regina E. Herzlinger, Ben Creo, Jacob M. Cook and Rachel Lev-Corn, Harvard Business School / Harvard Business Publishing, 2025.

Why it fits: Use in Session 7 to compare B2B, direct-to-consumer and combined go-to-market routes where cost, scalability, payment and regulatory conditions create genuine trade-offs.

Assessment fit: A channel recommendation with decision criteria and launch metrics.

View case study

Sample session plan: Startup funding, valuation, ownership and term-sheet negotiation

This sample session is designed for the point where students already know venture economics and have a credible funding need. A two-hour class can use the opening, mini-lecture, offer analysis and negotiation preparation, with the negotiation and debrief moved to a second block. For a longer workshop, run the full sequence and use Startup Funding as the applied centrepiece.

Session stage	Time	Teaching purpose	Lecturer approach	Student output
Pre-class preparation	Before class	Give students the funding mechanics before class time is used for negotiation.	Assign the Startup Funding briefing, a short cap-table exercise and one recent VC decision reading.	One-page note with target funding need, valuation range and three non-price priorities.
Opening frame	10 minutes	Set the central question: “What is a good funding deal for this venture, not just a high valuation?”	Introduce capital need, milestone runway and the founder/investor incentive conflict.	Students state which terms they expect to trade and which they would protect.
Mini-lecture	20 minutes	Connect funding mechanics to founder control and future flexibility.	Review pre-money, post-money, ownership, dilution, option pool, board representation, consent and protective terms.	Students can calculate the economics and classify control terms.
Offer analysis	25 minutes	Make students compare packages rather than headline valuation.	Give two funding offers with different amount, valuation and governance rights. Ask teams to calculate ownership and identify future-round consequences.	Two-offer comparison with preferred option and red lines.
Negotiation preparation	20 minutes	Force each side to prioritise.	Founder and investor teams set target, reservation and tradeable terms and write a rationale for each.	Negotiation mandate with target ranges.
Live negotiation	45-60 minutes	Turn calculations into a stakeholder decision.	Run a paired term-sheet negotiation or the Startup Funding Simulation structuring stage.	Agreed or unsigned term sheet with concession log.
Committee challenge	20 minutes	Test whether the agreement is defensible rather than merely completed.	Challenge both sides on valuation evidence, runway, board control, option pool and next-round flexibility.	Short oral defence from both founder and investor perspectives.
Debrief	20 minutes	Connect outcomes back to incentives and evidence.	Compare deals across the room and ask why similar facts produced different terms.	Individual reflection identifying one concession to keep, one to reverse and one evidence gap to investigate.

Closing question: If the highest valuation also brings the tightest control rights or insufficient cash to reach the next milestone, what makes a funding offer genuinely attractive?

Assessment options for an Entrepreneurship course

The intended learning outcomes reward judgement rather than recall, so assessment should ask students to recommend, design, negotiate and defend. A common defensible architecture is one group applied output carrying most of the summative weight plus an individual defence or reflection that produces attributable evidence, subject to local regulations and moderation practice.

The formats below are a menu, not a checklist. Most courses need two assessment points. Whatever you select, publish criteria that credit evidence quality, assumption defence, recognition of what the analysis cannot resolve and responsible treatment of stakeholder consequences. That is also the practical answer to free-riding: design individual evidence into the assessment rather than trying to infer contribution afterwards.

Assessment format	How it works
Customer-discovery evidence dossier	Students submit interview protocol, anonymised evidence log, synthesis and a revised problem statement. Grade evidence quality and the change in judgement, not the number of interviews alone.
Business-model and experiment brief	Teams present a Business Model Canvas, identify critical assumptions and design an MVP or experiment with thresholds and next-decision rules.
Go-to-market strategy memo	Students choose a beachhead, channel, positioning, price and launch metrics, with enough unit-economics logic to defend the choice.
Venture economics and runway note	A compact operating scenario covering contribution, CAC, retention, burn, runway, use of funds and downside sensitivity.
Funding and term-sheet recommendation	Students compare or negotiate funding offers and defend valuation, ownership, control and investor-fit trade-offs.
Investor pitch and Q&A	Teams pitch the venture and are marked partly on live defence of evidence, assumptions and use of funds.
Capstone venture board memo	Teams recommend launch, scale, stage, pivot, partner, sell or stop using evidence from the full course.
Individual oral defence or assumptions reflection	An attributable component in which each student explains specific decisions, unresolved evidence and what would change the recommendation.

Grading with the Startup Creation Simulation

The simulation should be assessed through the venture evidence and decision process rather than whether a team “won” funding. Startup teams build the opportunity, value proposition, market sizing, Business Model Canvas and pitch; VC teams pre-commit investment criteria and choose which ventures to fund. Team submissions, negotiated terms and comparative outcomes support your academic judgement but do not establish individual contribution on their own.

For startup teams: quality of opportunity, customer and value-proposition logic.
Coherence of Business Model Canvas, market sizing, unit economics and use of funds.
Quality of pitch evidence and response to investor questioning.
For VC teams: clarity and consistency of investment thesis and screening criteria.
Quality of venture comparison, questioning and investment selection.
Quality of negotiated funding amount, ownership logic and post-simulation reflection.
Individual assumptions note or oral defence to produce attributable evidence.

Grading with the Startup Funding Simulation

Startup Funding should be assessed as a financing and negotiation exercise. The public product page describes startup and VC teams analysing separately, drafting opening term sheets and negotiating valuation, ownership and governance terms. The platform records the deal outcome and selected cohort comparisons, but it does not generate the academic grade.

Accuracy of pre-money, post-money, ownership and dilution calculations.
Quality of funding-need and valuation rationale.
Ability to prioritise economic versus control terms.
Negotiation discipline: targets, reservation points, concessions and coherent trades.
Understanding of option pool, board representation, voting/consent and protective terms.
Quality of post-negotiation explanation of what changed and why.
Individual concession rationale or oral defence for attributable evidence.

Grading with the Go To Market Simulation

Go To Market is a focused individual strategy exercise. Use the simulation’s strategy choices and outcome as evidence, then grade the student’s reasoning against the course concepts rather than converting the platform ranking directly into marks.

Segment and beachhead choice.
Consistency of region, channel and positioning decisions.
Pricing, pack and promotion logic.
Interpretation of acquisition and market-entry trade-offs.
Post-simulation explanation of which assumption they would change after seeing the outcome.

Grading with the strategic-analysis simulations

PESTLE Analysis, Porter's Five Forces and SWOT Analysis can support lower-stakes or formative assessment in Session 5. Mark students on evidence prioritisation and the recommendation that follows, not on whether every framework box is filled.

Materiality and evidence quality.
Consistency of scores or priorities with the written rationale.
Ability to connect external conditions and industry structure to the venture decision.
Recognition of uncertainty and conflicting interpretations.

Moderation and free-riding: publish common criteria before the activity, retain the same individual-evidence rule for every team and use platform outputs as supporting evidence rather than an automatic grade. Where teamwork carries summative weight, the individual note or defence should be substantial enough to differentiate performance when contributions differ.

Common mistakes when teaching Entrepreneurship

The strongest courses repeatedly move students from claim to evidence and from evidence to a resource commitment. Most weaknesses arise when a framework or artefact becomes the goal rather than a decision tool.

Common mistake	Why it weakens the course	Better approach
Teaching entrepreneurship as inspiration rather than a decision discipline	Students remember founder stories but cannot evaluate whether a venture should proceed.	Use founder examples to frame decisions, then require evidence, thresholds and recommendations.
Starting with the solution	Teams become attached to features before proving the customer problem.	Begin with customer evidence and make teams state what would falsify the problem hypothesis.
Treating positive interviews as validation	Compliments and stated interest can create false confidence.	Look for behaviour, frequency, existing workarounds, commitment and willingness to pay.
Using canvases as completed answers	Students fill boxes without testing whether the model is coherent.	Circle assumptions, map dependencies and require a test for the riskiest one.
Equating a large TAM with an attractive opportunity	Top-down market slides can hide a tiny reachable beachhead or poor economics.	Require bottom-up SOM and connect market scale to channels, competition and unit economics.
Running MVPs without decision thresholds	Teams collect activity data but do not know what result means “continue” or “change”.	Set the hypothesis, metric and threshold before the experiment runs.
Teaching go-to-market as a list of channels	Students propose social media, partnerships and PR without choosing.	Force one beachhead, one primary route and measurable acquisition economics.
Leaving finance until the funding week	Students cannot tell whether growth is helping or shortening runway.	Introduce unit economics and cash viability before external funding.
Teaching valuation without control and dilution	Students assume the highest headline valuation is always best.	Compare funding amount, ownership, option pools, board rights, consent terms and future-round flexibility.
Grading pitch polish instead of venture judgement	Strong presenters can outscore stronger evidence.	Weight evidence, coherence, risk recognition and live defence more heavily than design polish.
Having no explicit AI-use policy	Students may substitute generated market claims or synthetic customers for evidence.	State permitted uses, require verification and declarations, and assess what must remain defensible by the student.

Frequently asked questions

Use parallel teams with identical decision gates.
Sample pitches and oral defences rather than hearing every team in plenary.
Use structured peer review before lecturer moderation.
Keep an individual evidence component so group size does not hide contribution.

The live simulation pages do not state a maximum cohort size for Startup Creation or Startup Funding; timetabling, rooms and facilitation become the practical constraints.

Core: Barringer and Ireland, Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures, Global Edition, 7th edition, Pearson. It maps cleanly from opportunity and feasibility through business models, legal foundations, finance, marketing and growth.

Alternative: Hisrich, Peters and Shepherd, Entrepreneurship, 12th edition, McGraw Hill, especially useful where entrepreneurial mindset, plans, capital and growth receive more weight.

Sample descriptor: This module examines how entrepreneurial opportunities are identified, tested, financed, launched and scaled under uncertainty. Students use customer discovery, business-model design, market and industry analysis, experimentation, go-to-market planning, venture economics and funding negotiation to make and defend evidence-based venture decisions. Assessment combines applied group work with attributable individual evidence.

Sample AI-use statement: Generative AI may be used for idea generation, structure, language editing and clearly declared analytical support where permitted by the assessment brief. AI output is not customer evidence or a source in itself. Students remain responsible for verifying claims, protecting confidential data, documenting material use and defending every assumption, calculation and recommendation submitted for assessment.

Related course guides and teaching resources

Principles of Management Course Guide

Useful for planning, organisation, leadership and managerial decision-making around new ventures.

Principles of Marketing Course Guide

Useful for segmentation, positioning, channels, customer value and go-to-market decisions.

Introduction to Finance Course Guide

Useful for time value, investment logic, statements and the finance base behind venture economics.

Introduction to Business Course Guide

Useful where Entrepreneurship sits inside a broader survey of markets, firms, finance and management.

Startup Creation Simulation

Use as the integrated venture-building and funding-market capstone.

View simulation

Startup Funding Simulation

Use for valuation, ownership, founder control, investor incentives and term-sheet negotiation.

View simulation

Next steps for your module

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What should an Entrepreneurship course cover?

Entrepreneurship course overview

Why this course matters

Career path fit

Typical course structure

Applied learning opportunities

Who this guide is for

What does an Entrepreneurship course cover?

The course at a glance

Learning outcomes

Core concepts

Concept Details

Concept 1 - Entrepreneurial mindset, uncertainty and opportunity

Concept 2 - Customer discovery and problem-solution fit

Concept 3 - Value proposition and venture concept

Concept 4 - Business models and value capture

Concept 5 - Market sizing, industry and competitive analysis

Concept 6 - Experimentation, MVPs and evidence

Concept 7 - Go-to-market strategy: segmentation, targeting and positioning

Concept 8 - Unit economics, financial viability and resource planning

Concept 9 - New-venture teams, leadership, governance and legal foundations

Concept 10 - Funding, valuation, ownership and term sheets

Concept 11 - Pitching, investor judgement and venture launch

Concept 12 - Scaling, pivots, growth, exits and responsible entrepreneurship

Connecting the concepts

Adapting for undergraduate and postgraduate students

The 12-session syllabus

Adapting the syllabus to 10-week and 14-week courses

Simulations: What they are and why they belong in this course

Traditional case study vs simulation

Where simulations fit

Startup Creation Simulation