BUILDING BLOCKS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP FROM AN IDEA TO A BUSINESS

Course Objective: How do we become entrepreneurs? Students over the course of this semester will learn the process of creating a new-venture. Throughout this course we will focus on creating and developing essential parts of a business plan and pitch the business plan to investors. Students will work in teams to launch a venture from an idea and work through market analysis, product viability assessment, competitive positioning, team-building, product life-cycle planning, marketing strategy, and spend time on the financial planning. We will discuss organizational and legal issues associated with forming a brand-new company as well as the challenges of finding the necessary financing. We will spend time in understanding value creation with focusing on understanding how one’s decisions will affect the future financials of the venture. At the end of the semester students will gain skills necessary to be successful in creating a new venture and will be comfortable at pitching in front of investors and gain the confidence to engage and contribute in financial discussions.

Course Content: Course will involve the steps from idea creating to the essential parts of business plan building (with a focus on financial projections) and pitching ideas to investors. Each team will create a venture and successfully pitch these ideas to investors at the end of the semester.

The course will include guest speakers (thanks to Gokhan Tosun (our PhD student) who is on the Board of Directors of Gedik Yatirim. We will rely on his broad network of venture capitalists/private equity teams). For the time being the potential guest list includes:

• Haluk Nişli / Inveo Ventures GM (Entrepreneurial ecosystem overview – Turkey and Global)
• Yancep founding members – Pre seed and seed investment Tohum öncesi ve tohum yatırımı
• Yancep kurucu ortakları -HOP founding members
• Venture Growth -Baki Kara / BiStock founding member – Product Market Fit & Pivot
• Boğazici Ventures / Barış Özistek – Technology Investments