The Foundry

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The Foundry
Special Recognition in Entrepreneurship
Education Innovation Awards

• William Schulze Robert Wuebker
• Department of Management
• The David Eccles School of Business
• University of Utah

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The Foundry Forging Entrepreneurs for
Life
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What happens if you build a business plan before
properly validating your business concept?
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What happens if you RIGOROUSLYvalidate your
business concept before launch?
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The Foundry

• Since 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) jobs
• One acquisition
• Two angel investments

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A Simple Proposition

Skills Knowledge Needed to Validate a Concept
Skills Knowledge Needed to Launch a company
These are very different activities, so lets
teach them as distinct activities
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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

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What do you need to validate a business concept?
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Stuff
Stuff
learn how to deal with the stuff you dont know
you dont know problem
Stuff
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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

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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.

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Execution

• Problem
• 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.

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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.

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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

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Provide Needed Technical Support

• Problem
• Entrepreneurs have no money, but have technical
  and other resource needs
• Entrepreneurs need to learn that they DONT 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

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Enterprise file sync and backup 0
TOOLS
Facebook
Mail, messaging, calendar 0
PBX for 20 teams 0
Marketing budget 0
Video server for curriculum 0
RSS and messaging feeds 0
(
Video/audio conferencing 0
All these services are free!
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Whats 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).

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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.

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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

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The Foundry
Forging entrepreneurs for life.
See http//foundryutah.com/ http//youtu.be.5420
YsMFOSo http//www.facebook.com/usparkfoundry http
//business.utah.edu/foundry
William Schulze william.schulze_at_business.utah.edu
Robert Wuebker robert.wuebker_at_business.utah.edu