the foundry

The FoundryWilliam Schulze & Robert Wuebker

Department of ManagementThe David Eccles School of Business

University of Utah

Special Recognition in Entrepreneurship Education Innovation Awards

The Foundry: Forging Entrepreneurs for Life

What happens if you build a business plan before properly

validating your business concept?

What happens if you RIGOROUSLY

validate your business concept before launch?

The FoundrySince its launch in May 2010, three Foundry Classes have:

• Proposed and researched 114 ideas

• Rigorously tested 69 business concepts

• Incorporated and launched 56 companies

As of 9/30/11: 43 of 56 still active$5.5 million total revenue (all ventures)75 (paying) jobsOne acquisitionTwo angel investments

A Simple Proposition

Skills &Knowledge Needed to Validate a Concept

Skills &Knowledge Needed to Launch a company

These are very different activities, so let’s teach them as distinct activities

What do you need to build a company?

A great product concept

How to build it

How to distribute it

How to market it

How to hire people

How to manage people

•Real product knowledge•Managerial Experience•Mentors•Access to Capital and so on

What do you need to validate a business

concept?

Stuff Stuff

Stuff

…learn how to

deal with the “stuff you don’t know you

don’t know”

problem

So what is the problem?• Fleshing out and really testing an idea is hard work

• Asking questions is scary (and hard)

• Its lonely … you need support to keep on going

• Its feels risky … there is always a chance you will have to kill your dream

• Execution is difficult … its easy to manage things inside a company but entirely different when you are on your own

So how do we do it?

1. Group Activities:

• 1 one-hour team meeting per week

• Weekly (bi-weekly) evening education sessions featuring guest speakers

• Monthly Project Review -- Instructor along with community members grill team on

progress

2. Online Instruction available 24/7 via our YouTube Channel -- 163 instructional videos available on all topics

3. Online Resources used to support team activities (dropbox, facebook, salesforce.com, quickbooks, and so on.

ExecutionProblem:

Entrepreneurs must know how to execute … but most of our students have no idea how to manage a project or execute.

Solution

Teach Students how to be effective managers by teaching them (and insisting they use) a simple, lightweight management reporting system developed at Oracle.

Management reports MUST be filed weekly 24 hours before weekly management meeting.

Weekly Management Meeting

Problem:

Entrepreneurs must know how to find answers to questions that are hard to define, difficult to figure out how to find answers, and difficult to ask

Solution:

Use weekly management meeting entirely for problem-solving, where students learn to work, as a community, to help solve each others problems

Meetings are student-led and peer-driven: Our job is to pour coffee and shut up … it is NOT to answer questions

Taking risks in front of others generates trust, friendship, support, and provides the emotional supported needed to do what needs to be done.

Provide Quality Educational Content

Problem:

Entrepreneurs need answers now, not when we are available.

Entrepreneurs need to develop judgment about the quality of information provided

Solution:

YouTube Channel: usparkfoundrytv has 168 short videos on entrepreneurship basics, available 24/7 and free to all

Weekly Evening Socials featuring carefully selected guest speakers. Social time is crucial as it is when the seeds of a student-drive mentor relationships are sown

Provide Needed Technical Support

Problem:

Entrepreneurs have no money, but have technical and other resource needs

Entrepreneurs need to learn that they DON’T need money

Solution:

Extensive Reliance on free on-line tools (we pay for salesforce.com and for quickbooks.com when they are ready).

We are entirely free: We charge no fees, take no equity, offer no funding, and are open to anyone, not just U of U students

Enterprise file sync and backup = $0

Mail, messaging, calendar = $0

PBX for 20+ teams = $0

Marketing budget = $0Video server for curriculum = $0

RSS and messaging feeds = $0

Video/audio conferencing = $0

Facebook:

(

All these services are free!

TOOLS

What’s unique?• Free: no fees or rent and we do not take an equity stake

or claim intellectual property as a condition of entry.

• Open to any type of startup -- high growth, lifestyle, social venture.

• Focus on training the entrepreneur, not on the company.

• Teams use peer-driven methods to solve problems and self-identify emerging educational needs.

• Teams seek out their own mentors – they are not provided or assigned.

• Unprecedented opportunity for community engagement and exchange of resources (career services, training, investment, participation).

Why Exciting?• Lightweight, low-cost, highly imitable

• Robust – three classes, taught three different ways, three different leaders: same outcome

• Works across industries: Teams vary from cupcakes and social media, to consumer products (ski company) and life sciences. We have 14 social ventures slated for Spring ‘12

• Fleshes out and compliments existing entrepreneurship programs, does NOT compete with them.

Developments: • Press: Businessweek; NY Times, Forbes, Local TV

• New Foundry Programs Launched

• US : Foundry RPI , Foundry U of Pacific, Foundry Pace, Foundry U of Washington

• International: Foundry Armenia, Foundry Torku, Foundry Ghana

• YouTube: 20+ new videos, 64,000 views to date

• Social venture experiment – Spring 2012

Robert Wuebkerrobert.wuebker@business.utah.edu

The FoundryForging entrepreneurs for life.

William Schulzewilliam.schulze@business.utah.edu

See:

http://foundryutah.com/http://youtu.be.5420YsMFOSohttp://www.facebook.com/usparkfoundryhttp://business.utah.edu/foundry