Students from Harvard Business School recently launched their startups as part of Harvard's "startup bootcamp" program for first-year students.
The Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development 3 program is a 10-week crash course in building a company from scratch with a limited budget, and on a tight deadline.
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Steven Sinofsky, the former president of Microsoft's Windows Division, worked with a section of about 90 students this year, led by Professor Jan Hammond. Each startup team had roughly six students.
Here's a breakdown of the program, courtesy of Sinofsky:
- Two weeks to develop a product concept.
- Funding simulation (“stock market”) which gives some teams the opportunity to raise more capital and others will need to make do with less, and thus pivot their ideas.
- About 8 weeks to fully develop the idea, go to market strategy, prototype or actual product, and basically to show that the product can be made.
- Launch day – this is where we are today! On this day your product or service is ready to be used by people. The stock market is opened for trading and based on the launch readiness and pitches, the value of companies goes up or down and some companies do not make it past this stage.
- About 3 weeks to actually sell the product or service and ready for …
- IPO day!
Even though it's merely an academic exercise, the products are real and intended for people outside of Harvard to use.
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