Entrepreneurship for all: A Course by UC Berkley

Entrepreneurship for All: A Course by UC Berkley 




Berkley is a well known college in the United States. It is a university in California, famous for its courses in business and related fields. Silicon Valley is the home to many startups. This course gives us the Silicon Valley's insiders perspective for startups and entrepreneurs. It delves into the different things associated with a startup. 'Entrepreneurship for All' as the name suggests is a course for anyone willing to learn about the world of entrepreneurship.

The course is actually made up of two parts. The speakers for the two parts are entrepreneurs themselves with great knowledge, stories, and experiences to share. Umair Khan and Charles Huang, walk you through the course in a manner that catches your eye and interests you further in the topic of discussion.
One thing, that I was fascinated by from the course was that they had categorized every step of a startup into a process of persuasion. There is an order of persuasion that is followed for a startup- persuading yourself, persuading your idea, persuading investors and then finally persuading customers. 

The part 1 of this course highlights the key topics like validating your ideas, building trust withing the business, recruiting the core members of the business and MVP (minimal viable product). MVP is stressed throughout the course. MVP proves to be a very important aspect of validating your product. It builds customer-provider trust and helps the entrepreneur improve. MVP has been mentioned multiple times in both the parts of the course.

The part 2 of the course drifts more toward the practical standpoint. This consists of discussions about investors, employees, customers, etc. It states different ways one can persuade investors and all the while build connections that will help their business to grow. They talk about the need and want for employees in a rather new startup, suggesting that, in the beginning, marketing should be done by the core team itself. Persuading customers and getting their validation also plays a major role in startups and product development.



The reading assignments are really helpful and talk a lot more about the technicalities of owning a business. I love that they had guest speakers from all fields including for profit organizations, not for profit organizations and NGO's. People from the STEM, business, service as well as education were invited as guest speakers. Sal Khan, the founder of Khan Academy was one of my favorite from both sessions. The course also has an interactive aspect to it that includes the student to partake in discussions related to that week's topic. 

This course not only broadened my view about startups, it also taught me new terms that I cam implement during discussions about business. I learned a lot of new things about starting a business and what goes into the business. The knowledge I gained from this course was invaluable and has increased the probability of me partaking in a startup. 

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