Course Description

Almost all human endeavors start with a Founder—a person who is willing to challenge the status quo, question prevailing wisdom on what is possible, and change our world. Founders notice problems and can see a potential solution that improves the lives of those around them. It’s an extraordinarily attractive proposition to so many, yet so few people are successful in accomplishing this goal.

A founder needs to make difficult decisions in the face of great uncertainty and massively imperfect information. How does one, often with relatively little experience, develop and exercise the judgement to make these decisions? This course will lead a discussion around The Founder Mindset and the characteristics that enables one to build businesses of significance and make a meaningful difference in the world.

Why Learn About The Founder Mindset?

The course examines the choices all founders make when starting and building a venture, and provides helpful frameworks and practical tips and tools for building, scaling, and eventually exiting the business. How do you assemble, motivate and lead a team when you have big ambitions, limited resources, and a compass instead of a map? The course will walk you through practical actions, such as selecting a team, choosing a business model, and what to consider when choosing a co-founder and writing a founders’ agreement. You’ll learn tactics for dealing with difficult situations, like firing an employee, pivoting your business model, or selling/closing the business. The course supplements case studies and discussions with simulations and role-plays, where you will be faced with challenging situations and forced to make difficult decisions. You will gain a sense of the intense pressures, difficult decisions, and extremes—highs and lows—that every founder confronts in some way.

We analyze certain pivotal choices made by over 20 founders who set out to change the world in small and big ways. We meet a Lebanese young woman who spent 10 years making the perfect swimming goggle, and we look at the journeys of people who want to save human civilization by moving to Mars or reversing climate change. We see the strange twists of fate that resulted in iconic companies like Tinder, Tesla, and Pandora. We will try to tease apart the business model and financing choices that contributed to the outcome. In most cases, the pivotal choices these founders made have their roots in “people decisions.” Yet most founders (and VCs) pay less attention to the "people" choices that are critical to success.

In this course, you will think about: How should teams be structured? How can a founder see his or her own blind spots? Can you augment a founder’s weaknesses by hiring a complimentary team? When should a CEO be replaced?

We observe how both successes and failures have common antecedents. We look at the journeys of people who have succeeded because of the way they handled their failures. We will discuss the importance of exercising judgment and making consequential decisions, all with imperfect information and insufficient resources. We will also explore the power of commitment. Despite different outcomes, each founder has made a difference that others can build on. And, by pushing their intellectual and emotional limits, founders usually emerge stronger and more resilient. The Founder Mindset is a course about this human journey to make a difference in the world.

Who Should Take This Course?

The course provides a strong conceptual foundation and practical tools for addressing common situations in entrepreneurship. In particular, this course should appeal to anyone interested in being a founder and creating something of significance. In addition, anyone interested in being involved with high-growth ventures, working with entrepreneurs as investors or advisors, working in entrepreneurial environments that are dynamic, complex and changing, or even just cultivating your own Founder Mindset can benefit from this course.

Course Structure

The course is structured into five modules that represent roughly five critical decisions that together form The Founder Mindset: Idea Generation & Commitment, Founding Team, Raising Money, Difficult Decisions, and Equity Value Creation. Each module addresses specific issues—such as choosing co-founders, negotiating equity, hiring, firing, working with your board, and building your team—that occur primarily in that stage.

• IDEA GENERATION & COMMITMENT focuses on early critical decisions a founder makes regarding idea selection and commitment. It examines the stress of maintaining outward positivity in the face of constant adversity and uncertainty, and how important it is to display commitment.
• FOUNDING TEAM explores the importance of hiring right, building a strong team, and establishing trust in your co-founder relationship.
• RAISING MONEY widens the perspective to consider how a founder should approach raising financing and how the organization should be structured so that it can deliver a product or service reliably.
• DIFFICULT DECISIONS addresses many of the perennial questions of entrepreneurship: “Should I persist, pivot, or perish (close the business)”? “How do I fire employees?” What does it mean to “fail well?”
• EQUITY VALUE CREATION addresses the cases where founders are challenged with the growth of their firms and the requirement to deliver financially, answering questions like where should the CEO focus, what metrics matter, are your actions value accretive or destructive, do you grow or exit, and is all value-creation monetary?

Course Requirements

Classes include case discussions, workshops, and team exercises that require your active participation. In addition to case discussions, you will be asked to deliver a pitch, conduct peer interviews, and reflect on your learning. There is no final exam, but instead a final project in which you will either deliver a comprehensive pitch or share how The Founder Mindset will help you achieve a greater impact.

Required Materials

You should come to class having already completed the assignment due for that day. That may entail reading cases or other required readings, watching videos, and/or participating in an activity. 

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