LONGHORN STARTUP ​ UT Austin Fall 2020 Syllabus as of 08/24/2020 by Joshua Baer & Mellie Price ​ ​ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Longhorn Startup Seminar (LSS): Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Lectures ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Longhorn Startup Seminar (LSS) is a lecture-based course in the Fall semester that features ​ prominent entrepreneurs telling the stories of how they founded their companies and answering questions from the students. Students get to pitch their idea to the class and participate in speed-dating events to meet potential co-founders and get advice from mentors. Any student from any college can register. For more information visit LonghornStartup.com ​ Class Format ● 5:45pm Zoom room opens ● 6:00pm Open Pitch Pizza ● 6:35pm Announcements ● 6:40pm Video Quiz ● 6:45pm Guest Speaker ● 8:00pm Adjourn Meeting Times Thursday 6:00pm-8:00pm over Zoom at zoom.longhornstartup.com ● August 27 - How to Start Starting a Company with Joshua Baer ​ ● September 3 - Co-founder Speed Pitches ● September 10 - Lean Startup with Ash Maurya + Open Pitch Pizza ​ ​ ● September 17 - Founder Stories with Brett Hurt and AMA + Open Pitch Pizza ​ ​ ● September 24 - Founders Stories and AMA + Open Pitch Pizza ● October 1 - Founder Stories with Matt Chasen and AMA + Open Pitch Pizza ​ ​ ● October 8 - Founder Stories with Jason Cohen and AMA + Open Pitch Pizza ​ ​ ● October 15 - Founder Stories and AMA + Open Pitch Pizza ● October 22 - Founder Stories with Pamela Valdés and AMA + Open Pitch Pizza ​ ​ ● October 29 - Longhorn Startup Lab AMA with Katherine Allen & Kush Singh + Open ​ ​ Pitch Pizza ● November 5 - Venture Capital AMA with Kelsi Kamin, JD Weinstein & Nick Spiller + ​ ​ Open Pitch Pizza ● November 12 - Speed Pitch Competition + Open Pitch Pizza ● November 19 - Lab Interviews ● November 26 - Thanksgiving ● December 3 - Lab Interviews * Seminar topics and speakers subject to change ** AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything” Course Numbers Open Registration is available for the following courses: ● ES177 = Longhorn Startup Seminar (Cockrell ENG) ● CS178 = Longhorn Startup Seminar (CNS/CS) ● FA160 = Longhorn Startup Seminar (Fine Arts) ● COM125 = Longhorn Startup Seminar (Communications) ● MAN137 = Longhorn Startup Seminar (McCombs) Motivation Our motto at The University of Texas at Austin is: What Starts Here Changes the World. One of the most effective ways of changing the world is innovation through startups. The Longhorn Startup Seminar is intended to inspire undergraduate students at the University of Texas to pursue entrepreneurship and to serve as a funnel of prospects to the Longhorn Startup Lab taught in the Spring. Instructors Joshua Baer helps people quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs. He’s the founder of ​ Capital Factory, a coworking community and accelerator designed to help startups find their first investors, customers and employees. Josh founded his first startup in 1996 in his college dormitory at Carnegie Mellon University and now teaches a class at the University of Texas for student entrepreneurs. He has been recognized as a Henry Crown Fellow and Braddock Scholar at the Aspen Institute, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations Young Leaders Forum, an Eisenhower Fellow, and a recipient of the Anti-Defamation League Torch of Liberty. Josh lives in Austin with his wife Amy and three children. The best way to reach him is on Twitter @joshuabaer Mellie Price is the Executive Director of Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs at McCombs School ​ of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-founder of Capital Factory. She is also the co-founder of SoftMatch, a service company that works with high growth startups scaling through acquisition. Mellie was the founder of Austin’s own Front Gate Tickets and served as its CEO until it was acquired. A frequent presenter and keynote speaker, Ms. Price is an active ​ member of the Texas entrepreneurship community and a winner of the prestigious Austin ​ Business Journal’s 2015 Profiles in Power Award as well as the 2014 Tech Titan Award. She is ​ a member of the Board of Directors for KLRU (PBS-TV), Leadership Austin, SAFE Alliance, and ​ ​ ​ ​ the National LGBTQ+ Victory Fund. You can follow her on Twitter @mellieprice ​ Guest Speakers Previous guest speakers include: ● Ash Maurya, author of “Running Lean” ● Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and founder & CEO of 3Com ● Brett Hurt, founder & CEO of Coremetrics, Bazaarvoice, data.world ● Cyan Banister, Partner at Founders Fund and AngelList ● Mark Cuban, founder & CEO of Broadcast.com and Shark Tank shark ● Dean Drako, founder & CEO of Barracuda Networks and Eagle Eye Networks ● Heather Brunner, CEO of WP Engine ● Jason Cohen, founder & CTO of WP Engine ● John Hanke, founder & CEO of Keyhole (Google Earth) and Niantic Labs (Pokemon Go) ● Kendra Scott, founder & CEO of Kendra Scott ● Mellie Price, founder & CEO of Front Gate Tickets & co-founder of Capital Factory ● Michael Dell, founder & CEO of Dell Technologies ● Mike Maples, Partner at Floodgate and first investor in Twitter, Chegg, Lyft ● Rony Kahan, founder & CEO of Indeed Faculty Office Hours Office hours are generally held prior to the lectures each week. You can reserve a spot with Mellie Price here: https://bit.ly/MellieOfficeHours ​ Teaching Assistants Abigail Porter and Dawood Kanchwala Email: [email protected] ​ ​ Office Hours: TBA at zoom.longhornstartup.com The Teaching Assistant assists with registration, organizing speakers and events, promoting them on campus, and screening potential Lab students. If you are interested in being a TA for future Longhorn Startup courses (apply here). ​ ​ Undergraduate Catalog Course Description Longhorn Startup Seminar is an interdisciplinary entrepreneurship lecture series for students interested in entrepreneurship and the Longhorn Startup Lab. Learn from faculty instruction and successful entrepreneurs as guest speakers. Speed dating events to help meet co-founders and mentors. Speakers vary each semester, so the course can be taken multiple times. Prerequisites This course has no prerequisites. Other Teaching, Speaker, and Mentoring Resources There is a Longhorn Startup Slack community open to anyone at UT Austin and everyone connected to the class. Students can post questions and get help from the instructors, TAs, mentors and other students. There is a wide array of entrepreneurship teaching resources available on the Internet. These include written course materials and videos from the McCombs School of Business, MIT Open Courseware, and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, to name only three of the best of many. The instructors will be using some of these materials for preparation assignments. Guest lecturers will also be invited, which have in past semesters included former Tivoli CEO Frank Moss, Dell Founder-CEO Michael Dell, National Instruments Founder-CEO Dr. James Truchard, Bazaarvoice Founder/CEO Brett Hurt, and Jonathan Coon of Impossible Ventures. Connecting Longhorn Startups to the resources they need to advance is an important part of the practicum. The instructors and mentors will be looking to provide these connections. A particular resource to be recruited toward the end of the semester will be professional investors — angels, venture capitalists, and strategic partners — who will be invited to “Demo Day” near the end of the semester to witness presentations, see demos, and consider making investments in Longhorn Startups. There are many other resources for entrepreneurs at UT, around Austin, and beyond. The instructors and mentors are always looking for opportunities to help connect teams with those external resources, among them other courses, recruiting mixers, conferences, entrepreneur networks, startup workshops, startup accelerators (for example, UT Austin’s Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), McCombs’ Texas Venture Lab, Dell Social Innovation Challenge, Y Combinator, Capital Factory), and business plan competitions. Textbooks The course textbook is: Ash Maurya, Running Lean, O’Reilly Media, 2012. ​ ​ Among our optional, recommended readings are: ● Gordon Daugherty, Startup Success ​ ● Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich ​ ● Steven Gary Blank, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, 2006. ​ ​ ● E. Ries, The Lean Startup, Crown,, 2011. ​ ​ ● P. Denning and R. Dunham, The Innovator’s Way, MIT Press, 2010. ​ ​ ● Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Harper & Row, 1985. ​ ​ ● Bill Aulet, Disciplined Entrepreneurship, Wiley, 2013 ​ ​ ● R. Dorf, T. Byers, Technology Ventures: From Ideas to Enterprise, McGraw Hill, 2008. ​ ​ ● T. Hopkins, Selling for Dummies, Wiley, 2011. ​ ​ Grading This is a pass/fail class that is graded based on attendance. Students are also required to submit a Lean Canvas for a business idea. Students who attend at least 10 lectures/events from start to finish and submit a Lean Canvas will receive a passing grade. Arriving late and leaving early will negatively impact your attendance grade. Our speakers are volunteering their time to come to help you. Don’t be rude to them by showing up late or leaving 10 minutes early. Date of Final Exam There is no final exam. Collaborative Practices At any given time during the practicum, all team members should be fully engaged in practicum activities, including preparation of written and oral reports. Tasks should be assigned to team members evenly, but in a way that capitalizes on individual