assignments
Your final grade for this course will be a function of your performance on individual projects and team projects, class participation and case study write-ups and/or workshop deliverables, a final assignment in the form of a seven-slide pitch (plus presentation slides in appendices) and a reflection paper.
The write-up deliverable will be turned in at the start of class, workshop deliverables will be completed and submitted during class, while venture pitch will be submitted via Airtable. Appropriately, the Gradebook section of the Collab site for the course will list each assignment as well as the due date and time. The specific question or topic for each of the write-up and/or workshop deliverables will be found in the class calendar or distributed during class time.
Follow these links for more information regarding the course's policies for Grading (including the grading scale, late work, etc.), Mobile Devices, and the Fine Print.
Quizzes (3 Quizzes total = 20 points)
There will be 3 quizzes given over the course of the semester. The quiz will be given via Collab and the topics covered by the quiz will be announced in advance. You will have 5-7 days to complete each quiz.
Case Write-Up, Workshop Deliverables, and class participation - (40 points)
For case discussions, you will complete a one-page write-up prior to class. You will then submit that write-up on Airtable before class starts. For these write-ups, please use size 11 Arial or Helvetica as the font, 1.5 as the line space, and one-inch all around as the margins.
Throughout the semester we will work through a series of in-class workshops. During each of these sessions you will complete and submit a deliverable (on Airtable).
Frankly speaking, persistence—sometimes in the form of just getting done what needs to be done—is known to be a key component of a founder's career. And so, just getting done what needs to be done, in the form of these deliverables, plays a key role in your total grade for this course.
In the case of matters of health, or other understandably important reasons for not being able to submit a case write-up or attend a workshop, simply email Professor Etienne and or Professor Ransler so we can figure out the most appropriate solution for your completion of the assignment.
Case Write-Up . Each case write-up deliverable will be worth 2 point.
For case write-ups, you can only earn full points if the write-up is not only well-written (i.e., structure spelling, grammar, etc.), but also it is clear from the response that you have read, are familiar with, and have contemplated the case and the question(s). Poorly-written write-ups, or those responses that do not suggest you have read, are familiar with, and have contemplated the case, will earn a score of 1. By and large, completing all aspects of the deliverables will warrant a score of 2 points. You will earn a score of zero (0) if you do not submit a write-up or deliverable.
Workshop Deliverable Scoring. The maximum possible points for each workshop is provided in the class schedule.
For each workshop you can only earn full points for completing all of the activities and actively engaging in discussion in class around the activity. Just completing the workshop activity will earn you 90% of available points. Present in class and not completing the workshop activity will earn you 50% of available points and zero (0) if you don't participate in the workshop activity.
Final Project Presentation Pitch Deck (20 points)
Final Presentation pitch, limited to 7 slides with up to five presentation slides of appendix materials (with an additional page(s) for references). The pitch deck will be graded in two ways.
First, on Nov 30th and Dec 5th, teams will be randomly chosen to give their final project pitch in a 5-minute, in-class format. Thus, you must be prepared to give your pitch on either day. The in-class pitch will be 5 points towards your final grade and will be graded on three main components: the "hustle" that your team showed to create a meaningful venture, the quality of the overall communication of the pitch, and the logic to your argument for needing capital.
Second, the pitch deck in it's final form is to be submitted via Airtable by 11:59pm EST on Friday Dec 9th. Only one member of each team needs to submit this assignment. The written pitch deck with appendices will be 15 points of your final grade.
To complete this assignment, you should form a group of five students (i.e., four students plus yourself), and utilize the tools provided in class to advance your concept idea into an experiment which captures value.
As groups, you will work together to produce a seven-slide pitch deck that argues for how much you would like invested (or how much grant funding you would require) for your startup and why is that investment (or grant funding) required.
To construct this argument, you will work your way through nearly all of the ingredients of a venture pitch, each of these ingredients having been a part of a class discussion, write-up, or workshop during the semester. In fact, these ingredients were all part of one of the discussions we will have in the course: Anatomy of a Startup
There is both a Grading Rubric for the assignment as well as a suggested Pitch Guide for constructing your pitch, and each of these files can be found in the listing for this Final Assignment within the Assignments section of Collab. This Rubric and Guide should be quite clear in terms of the required ingredients of the pitch. You are not obligated to order your pitch as the various parts are ordered in this guide — other than including the Intro at the beginning of the pitch deck.
Final Reflection Paper (15 pts):
This is an individual assignment that requires you to go through all the topics discussed in class and reflect on the learning outcomes and how it has shaped and influenced the way you think about Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Startups. For this exercise revisit on the ENTP 1010 class as a whole and identify a minimum of 3 insightful exercises, learning experiences and/or concepts that resonate with you. Take some time and examine your thoughts about these events. This may involve revisiting any prior experience and knowledge you may have had on entrepreneurship and startups prior to this class. Reflect on how these fundamental knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions that you had prior to taking ENTP 1010 are connected to your experience in the class. In a sense, how did the concepts/exercises in this class change you or your outlook on entrepreneurship? We are looking for no more than 3 pages for your reflection paper. Your score will be based 80% on your writing of the events/concepts and 20% for exceptional writing.
This reflection paper is due on Friday, Dec 9th 2022 at 5:00pm to be submitted via Airtable. As far as the formatting requirements for the Final Reflection:
1.5 spacing;
Helvetia or Aria font, 11-point;
one-inch margins, top, bottom, left, and right;
no greater than 3 pages of text;
Final Project Peer Evaluation (5 pts)
Each team member will have the opportunity to evaluate the member's performance on a scale of 1 - 5 points. The average of the scoring for each person will be assigned as their peer evaluation score.