This is a  first-year gateway course and is not available for second-year bidding.  Second-years must wait until the add/drop process begins in January to add this course. 

COURSE NUMBER: MBA295A.1

COURSE TITLE: Entrepreneurship

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3

INSTRUCTOR: Jerry Engel, Steve Blank

E-MAIL ADDRESSES: engel@haas, blank@haas

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Wednesday, 4:00-7:00 PM

PREREQUISITES: MBA Core

CLASS FORMAT: Mixture of cases, lecture and guest speakers

REQUIRED READINGS: There will be no text but there will be a large collection of copied articles and cases.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: The main requirement for the course will be a business plan on a venture of the student's
choosing. Students will work in groups of four and will produce a written business plan. They will deliver a presentation based on their plan to a panel of instructors supplemented by representatives of the business community. This presentation will be a "pitch" for funding as one would do it for venture capital or as part of an initial placement offering.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

This is a course about how to start and grow a successful high potential enterprise. Since the Haas School is principally about
professionally managed businesses, the course will focus on businesses that are not small by design, but with hard work and good luck can be expected to develop into complex, major enterprises. A key vehicle for this effort is the business plan. The plan helps the entrepreneur attract support from others, because it tells them what the business is about and what its strategy will be. It helps the entrepreneur to manage a growing and necessarily complex set of dynamics by providing mileposts and indicting the resources that will be required to achieve them. And it provides a continuously updated set of standards against which to compare actual performance. The course will deal with opportunity recognition and assessment, venture capital, marketing strategies for the start-up, benchmarking success, corporate governance and going public.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Jerry Engel:

Jerome Engel has been involved with the formation and start-up of technology related ventures for over thirty years, most recently as the co-founder of AllBusiness.com. In his career he had functioned as a CPA, CFO, venture capitalist, entrepreneur, angel investor and Board member. In 1980 he founded the Entrepreneurial Services division for Ernst & Young which specialized in assisting high potential start-ups. Mr. Engel specialized in consulting on capital formation, corporate strategy and management organization, with an emphasis in software and biotechnology.

In 1990 Mr. Engel was appointed Ernst & Young's National Director of Capital Resources, where he directed the firms efforts in raising capital for its emerging business clients nationwide.

In 1991 Mr. Engel joined the University of California at Berkeley to found the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He serves as the Center's Executive Director and as Director of the Haas School's Entrepreneurship Program. Mr. Engel lectures in the MBA program of the Haas School of Business on entrepreneurship and new venture finance.

Mr. Engel serves on the Board of Directors of several ventures, including two in which he is a co-founder: AllBusiness.com and ElectraScan,Inc. He previously served on the board of Maxis Software, publisher of the award-winning SimCity series. He is an active Angel investor and serves on several Advisory Boards as well. Mr. Engel is a founding partner of Kline Hawkes California, L.P., a $100+ million venture capital fund organized to support the growth of California based entrepreneurial enterprises. In 1998 he withdrew from the active management of the fund to found AllBusiness.com.

Mr. Engel is a Certified Public Accountant and a graduate of Penn State University and the Wharton School. During his career he has advised and helped many successful Bay Area ventures get established and become thriving publicly held companies, including; Broderbund Software, Autodesk, Fair Isaac Companies and Gene Labs. He also has assisted major corporations with strategic planning and new venture development.

Steve Blank

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur and private investor. Steve has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978. Steve's last company E.piphany (NASDQ: EPNY) started in his living room in 1996.

Steve's other startups include two semiconductor companies (Zilog and MIPS Computers), a workstation company (Convergent Technologies), a supercomputer firm (Ardent), a computer peripheral supplier (SuperMac), a military intelligence systems supplier (ESL) and a video game company (Rocket Science Games). These startups resulted in five IPO's, and three very deep craters. Steve's operational roles have spanned the gamut from CEO to VP of Marketing.

Steve is currently writing a book about the methodology of sales and marketing in high-tech startups and is lecturing at the Haas School at U.C. Berkeley in the entrepreneurship program.

Steve serves as a director on the boards of three high-technology companies: Macrovision (NASDAQ: MVSN) and Immersion (NASDAQ: IMMR) as well as a bioinformatics/drug discovery company, Pharmix, and the advisory board of CafePress. In addition, he serves on the board of Audubon California and the Pescadero Conservation Alliance.