COURSE NUMBER: MBA 294.5

COURSE TITLE:     StEP: your very first step into entrepreneurship

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1

STUDENT ORGANIZERS: Santiago Freyria, Sid Mullik

STUDENT ORGANIZERS’ EMAILS: 

santiago.freyria@berkeley.edu , sid.mullick@berkeley.edu

FACULTY SPONSOR: Rhonda Shrader

TERM: Spring A and B – see dates below

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Attendance

COURSE OVERVIEW: StEP is aimed at any student interested into entrepreneurship. StEP is a 10 week experiential pre-accelerator program that connects UC Berkeley students across campus to pursue an entrepreneurial experience. We help students create teams, identify a problem they want to solve, run customer interviews, design, build, and iterate on prototypes (solutions), understand the unit economics and define their go to market strategy. We teach teams about fundraising and pitching. The course ends with Showcase (Demo Day) where students will pitch their ideas to VCs. At the end of the course, students will be ready to apply to accelerators (e.g. Launch, Y combinator, Skydeck, Dorm Room Fund) and pitch to additional VCs.

Course runs from February 8th to May 2nd. The first hour of class will be delivered by experienced speakers (e.g. UC Berkeley Faculty, entrepreneurs, VCs, technical experts). The next 1.5 hours are for teams to apply the theory and frameworks learned to their ideas/startups. In order to get the most from the class, teams will likely want to work outside the class to achieve weekly milestones. 

We will match each team with a mentor with expertise on your idea to support you through your journey. Selected teams will get the following perks: Fast track to Dorm Room Fund (direct interview) Hot Desk and working space at Skydeck + direct interview, and private interview opportunities with partner VCs.

This course will be enrolled via selection. For more information and to apply, visit the website: https://bea.berkeley.edu/step
You can also sign up for an info session here: https://bea.berkeley.edu/register.

Applications will be processed on an ongoing basis with a deadline of 12 noon on Jan 30

For more information please visit the website or reach out to course organizers.