Courses

Have a great idea for a startup but don’t know where to start or how to build it on a shoestring budget, or even without technical knowledge? You’ll be surprised how far you can get on your own—all without having to raise any funding or hire any employees. Using principles from each phase of the product design cycle and from the lean product framework, we will explore your idea, learn how to validate it as a product, get rolling with prototypes, and test out your first revenue streams. You will learn strategies to define and refine your target users, interview those users, brainstorm solutions based on your interviews, develop a minimum viable product, create a rapid prototype, test with customers, experiment with business models around your product, and determine how much this idea is worth. Each week, we will go over concepts with real-world case studies—including how the Google Maps team got started with no equipment and no data—and students will present progress on their own ideas based on the lessons from the previous week. This course is a combination of lectures, class discussion, and at-home assignments.