By Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez This blog is cross-posted from the Berkeley Opportunity Lab and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. The tax plan released by Republicans in Congress and praised by President Trump is a remarkable document in many ways, but most notably in that it achieves just the opposite of its stated goal. Presented … Continue reading »
startups
Life Science Startups Rising in the UK
Stephen Chambers spent 22 years in some of the most innovative companies in life science as the director of gene expression and then as a co-founder of his own company. Today he runs SynbiCITE, the UK’s synthetic biology consortium of 56 industrial partners and 19 Academic institutions located at Imperial College in London. Stephen and … Continue reading »
What Do I Do Now? The Startup Lifecycle
Last week I got a call from Patrick an ex-student I hadn’t heard from for 8 years. He was now the CEO of a company and wanted to talk about what he admitted was a “first world” problem. Over breakfast he got me up to date on his life since school (two non-CEO roles in … Continue reading »
It’s About Women Running Startups
Just before the holidays I had coffee with Anne, an ex MBA student running a fairly large product group at a search engine company, now out trying to raise money for her own startup. She had an interesting insight: existing content/media companies were having the same problem as hardware companies that rarely made the leap … Continue reading »
Impact! NYU Scales the Lean LaunchPad
NYU has adopted the Lean LaunchPad® class as a standard entrepreneurship course across twelve different schools/colleges within the University. Over 1,000 students a year are learning lean startup concepts. Impact! —– In August 2011 I received an email from someone at NYU I never heard of. Frank Rimalovski, the Executive Director of the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, had just read about … Continue reading »
Born Global or Die Local – Building a Regional Startup Playbook
Entrepreneurship is everywhere, but everywhere isn’t a level playing field. What’s the playbook for your region or country to make it so? ———- Scalable startups are on a trajectory for a billion dollar market cap. They grow into companies that define an industry and create jobs. Not all start ups want to go in that … Continue reading »
Watching My Students Grow
“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.” Galileo Galilei One of the great things about teaching is that while some students pass by like mist in the night others remain connected forever. I get to watch them grow into their careers and cheer them on. — Its … Continue reading »
The Woodstock of K-12 education
Describing something as the “Woodstock of…” has taken to mean a one-of-a-kind historic gathering. It happened recently when a group of educators came to the ranch to learn how to teach Lean entrepreneurship to K-12 students. — We Can Do Better than Teaching Students How to Run a Lemonade Stand Over the last few years it’s become … Continue reading »
How to Find the Right Co-Founders
How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? Surprisingly if you’ve filled out the business model canvas you already know who you need. ——- I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. She started … Continue reading »
Why Translational Medicine Will Never be the Same
There have been 2 or 3 courses in my entire education that have changed the way I think. This is one of those. Hobart Harris Professor and Chief, Division of General Surgery at UCSF For the past three years the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps has been teaching our nations best scientists how to build a Lean Startup. … Continue reading »
How To Think Like an Entrepreneur: The Inventure Cycle
The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers. That’s all well and good if you already have an … Continue reading »
Why Founders Should Know How to Code
“By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.” — Book of Five Rings A startup is not just about the idea, it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival. —- I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and … Continue reading »
Pioneering Women in Venture Capital: Kathryn Gould
I met Kathryn Gould longer ago than either of us want to admit. Kathryn has been the founding VP of Marketing of Oracle, a successful recruiter, a world class Venture Capitalist, a co-founder of a Venture Capital firm, a great board member, one of my mentors and most importantly a wonderful friend. During her career she made … Continue reading »
The Path of Our Lives
“Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not?” Robert Kennedy/George Bernard Shaw I got a call that reminded me that most people live their life as if it’s predestined – but some live theirs fighting to change it. At 19 I joined the Air … Continue reading »
How Investors Make Better Decisions: The Investment Readiness Level
Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Other than “I’ll know it when I see it”, there’s no formal way for an investor to assess project maturity or quantify risks. Other than … Continue reading »
I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum
We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum. We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. — Over the last three years the Lean LaunchPad class has started to replace the last century’s “how to write a business plan” classes as the foundation for entrepreneurial … Continue reading »
Why Lean May Save Your Life – The I-Corps @ NIH
Today the National Institutes of Health announced they are offering my Lean LaunchPad class (I-Corps @ NIH ) to commercialize Life Science. There may come a day that one of these teams makes a drug, diagnostic or medical device that saves your life. —- Over the last two and a half years the National Science Foundation I-Corps has taught … Continue reading »
Seminal Entrepreneurship and Innovation Skills CAN IN FACT BE LEARNED
Posted by Ikhlaq Sidhu, April 22nd, 2014 You may already be aware that the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship (BMofE, see link on our CET website – https://cet.berkeley.edu/curriculum/) is a unique teaching model for developing the entrepreneurial mindset, in addition to teaching tactics and providing infrastructure for the new venture process. One of the big questions in the … Continue reading »
New Lessons Learned from Berkeley and Stanford Lean LaunchPad Classes
Our Stanford and Berkeley Lean LaunchPad classes are over for this year, and as usual we learned as much from teaching the teams as the teams did from us. Here are a few of the Lessons Learned from these two classes. — Have each team talk to 10 customers before the class starts Each year we learn … Continue reading »
ESADE Business School Commencement Speech
President Bieto, Dean Sauquet, members of the faculty, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen….Thank you for the kind introduction. I’m honored to be at a university noted for knowledge, and in a city with 2000 years of history – home of Gaudí one of the 20th century’s greatest innovators. I’d like to start with a request. … Continue reading »