MAP 2021-22 | Building an Entrepreneurial Venture

This Course focuses on how the entrepreneur plans for the launch of a new business. The Course begins with a realistic look at entrepreneurship, including options from inheritance to startup, and analyzing the market ecosystem. It then moves into the entrepreneurial process and initial steps for forming a new venture, and finally to the analysis of five types of risk and the mechanics of writing of a business plan.

Private

Faculty

Prof. George Abe

Professor

George Abe is a lecturer and Faculty Director of the Strategic Management Research (SMR) Program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His teaching responsibilities include entrepreneurship, business plan development and field study program advisories. SMR is the field study program, required of all Executive MBA students.

He was Business Development Manager for the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property, which is responsible for patent protection and commercialization of UCLA research.

Previously, he was a venture partner with Palomar Ventures, a VC firm in Santa Monica, California. Before Palomar, he was a Business Development Manager at Cisco Systems. Prior to that he was with Infonet Services Corporation (NYSE:IN, now BT) where he designed Infonet’s IP data service.

From 1998 until 2006, he was a member of the board of directors of Switchcore AB, a publicly traded fabless semiconductor designer in Sweden. He has also held board of director positions with various startup companies and not-for-profit organizations.

He is the author of Residential Broadband, which presents an analysis of high-speed residential networking, published by Cisco Press.

Education

B.A. Mathematics, UCLA
M.S. Business, Quantitative Methods, UCLA

Course Learning Objectives:

Evaluate your own interest and strengths in becoming an entrepreneur, using both objective and subjective criteria.
Move into entrepreneurship by following a set of well-defined steps and best practices, including the management of risk, to enhance the chances of success.
Develop a business plan you can present to potential investors to secure funding and launch your business.
Analyze an entrepreneurial ecosystem, based on a specific idea, to identify both opportunities and threats to proceeding with an entrepreneurial vision.
Determine the best option to become an entrepreneur, based on a specific idea and considering the five approaches to entrepreneurship.
Create a three-year action plan to move into entrepreneurship.
Plot a set of milestones for a new business, showing a plan to move from starting up to “the promised land” and justify the plan.
Use the concept of a Minimum Viable Product to create a plan to test-market your business idea.
Formulate actions to be taken on each of the business-launch details for a given business idea.
Write a specific milestone description, based on a given product/service, as part of planning for risk management.
Calculate a preliminary TAM and associated potential revenue over a specific time period.
Estimate the probable investment needed and the breakeven and payback dates when you launch your business/idea.
Write several introductory elements of a business plan for a given business idea/company, using a modified template.
Develop preliminary revenue elements of a business plan for a given business idea/company, using a modified template.
Write several operations elements of a business plan for a given business idea/company, using a modified template.

Syllabus

Learning Objectives

Analyze an entrepreneurial ecosystem, based on a specific idea, to identify both opportunities and threats to proceeding with an entrepreneurial vision.
Determine the best option to become an entrepreneur, based on a specific idea and considering the five approaches to entrepreneurship.
Create a three-year action plan to move into entrepreneurship.

Module Components:

Video Lectures:

What Can Go Wrong?
The Role and Importance of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
Five Approaches to pursuing Entrepreneurship
Why be an Entrepreneur?

Readings:

Entrepreneurs Share Their Biggest Challenges in Growing a Business
5 Myths about Entrepreneurs
Asking the Right Question
Top 10 Challenges You’ll Face as a New Entrepreneur

Case Study:

Choose Your Own Adventure

Quiz:

Evaluating Personal Fit with Entrepreneurial Venture

Learning Objectives:

Given an idea for a new business, evaluate the Total Addressable Market and the Potential Market to determine the realistic size of the opportunity.
Analyze the market to determine and describe the opportunity set in which a given idea resides.
Predict the window of opportunity for a given idea and defend your prediction, using a graph and text explanation.

Module Components:

Video Lectures:

Entrepreneurship is a Process, Not a Person
Generating, Evaluating and Selecting Ideas
Key Initial Steps to Form an Enterprise
On Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurial Ventures

Readings:

Starting a Business: The Idea Phase
7 Steps to Starting Your Own Business

Case Study:

Choose Your Own Adventure (Continued-Part 1)

Quiz:

The Process of Building an Entrepreneurial Venture

Learning Objectives:

Analyze the meaning of supply and demand projections shown graphically to make logical decisions at the one-year and two-year-from-launch timeframes.
Choose, from the five criteria for opportunity evaluation (market, with all that contains; economic harvest; competitive advantage; management team; and strategic differentiation), two for analysis in the context of a given business idea.
Create a complete market profile that includes all ten steps an entrepreneur should consider.

Module Components:

Video Lectures:

Understanding the Different Kinds of Risks
Market and Competitive Risk
Financial and Management Risk

Readings:

Risk in Entrepreneurship
The Real Risks of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs Are ‘Calculated’ Risk Takers
How to Sink a Start-Up

Case Study:

Choose Your Own Adventure (Continued-Part 2)

Quiz:

Understanding and Managing Entrepreneurial Risks

Learning Objectives:

Explain how the principles of “lean startup” might apply to a new business.
Analyze the economic realities of an industry so you can find a strategy for your business that gives you a strong competitive advantage.

Module Components:

Video Lectures:

Anatomy, Purpose and Process of Business Plan
Business Plan Development – Strategy and Revenue Generation
Business Plan Development – Operations and Financial Presentation

Readings:

What is a Business Plan?
Core Elements of a Business Plan

Case Study:

Choose Your Own Adventure (Continued-Part 3)

Quiz:

Business Plan Development

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