SEMESTER: Fall 2019

COURSE NUMBER: EW295T.13

COURSE TITLE: Building A Consumer Internet Business

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1

INSTRUCTOR: Prashant C. Fuloria

CLASS WEB PAGE LOCATION: bCourses

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Sunday, 9/8 & Sunday 9/22, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM.

Please note the unorthodox nature of this course, which meets all day on 2 Sundays. To earn a passing grade, you must attend BOTH class sessions in their entirety.

PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA 206 Marketing Management

CLASS FORMAT:

16 hours of lectures, delivered on two Sundays (2 weeks apart)
8 hours of lectures on each Sunday (4 hours morning + 1 hour lunch break + 4 hours afternoon)
No formal cases, but pre-assigned reading that will be discussed in class

REQUIRED READINGS: No formal case studies and no course reader. Will assign some relevant topics and associated articles one or two weeks before the first class. All material for the class will either be provided by the instructor or found in the public domain.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:

Performance on assignments (70%)
Class participation (30%)

CAREER FIELD:

Highly relevant for entrepreneurs, product managers, marketers and other business practitioners involved with consumer-facing Internet companies.
Also relevant for marketing and product professionals in other companies whose customers are end-consumers who can be engaged through the Internet.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
In today’s world, it is hard to imagine any consumer-facing business at scale that does not use the internet as part of its core operations around attracting and engaging users, and generating revenue. Even traditionally “offline” industries, such as transportation and education, have been deeply disrupted by the deployment of consumer-facing internet services, by both new entrants and incumbents. This course looks at key established themes relevant to building a successful consumer internet business and makes the assertion that many of these are relevant for all consumer-facing businesses today.
Course Objectives

Learn what it takes to build a consumer internet business for “long-term” success (“long-term” as measured in internet time!)
Understand three key themes around building a successful consumer internet business - (user) growth & (user) engagement, monetization, “platform-ization”, with these different themes being important at different stages of the business’ evolution
Identify the stage of evolution of a specific consumer internet business, and find ways to address the needs of that business
Internalize how the move from desktop to mobile has changed how companies can achieve growth & engagement, monetization, and “platform-ization”

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Prashant Fuloria is a seasoned internet technology product executive. He is currently COO at Fundbox, an Israeli-American fintech company that has built a B2B credit platform to solve the working capital needs of SMBs.

Most recently, Prashant was SVP of Advertising Products at Yahoo, managing engineering and product teams driving Yahoo’s advertising business. Prashant joined Yahoo through the acquisition of Flurry, the world’s leading mobile app analytics platform, where he was the Chief Product Officer, responsible for product strategy and delivery.

Prior to Flurry, Prashant was Director of Product Management at Facebook, responsible for Facebook's commerce products, including Facebook Credits, and all of Facebook’s advertising products. Before joining Facebook, Prashant was Product Director at Google, where he most recently managed all of Google's products for the Asia-Pacific region. Prashant also worked for several years building monetization products at Google, both as an early PM on AdWords and as the PM Director for global billing & payments.

Prashant holds a PhD and MA in Business, a PhD Minor in Operations Research and an MS in Statistics, all from Stanford University. Before joining Stanford, Prashant studied at IIT Delhi, where he was awarded the President's Gold Medal, and also played guitar for Euphoria, at one time India's largest-selling rock band. Prashant lives in Los Altos, California, with his wife, a fellow IIT Delhi and Stanford grad, and their two children.