Unit 1: Introduction: From Start-Up to Scale-Up
While most entrepreneurs tend to focus on launching new businesses, the real value comes from being able to scale them up. Two-thirds of value is created when a company scales up to penetrate a significant portion of the target market. This class therefore focuses on looking at companies who can use technology to achieve scalable growth in an emerging industry. Scaling a business requires raising capital to purchase the resources you will use to scale. The challenge is to now grow the company quickly while satisfying both your customers and new investors.
Students will form groups in the first week

Unit 2: Tools to Achieve Exponential Growth
Entrepreneurship is not about having a great technological idea, but rather about creating a new business that solves a problem. That being said, technology entrepreneurs bring together the technical world and the business world in a profitable way. Once the product-market fit has been proven, growth acceleration depends on the network & platform characteristics of technology to enable a business to grow exponentially.
New Technology Ventures must identify their core competency or "engine of growth" and then think of how to scale the company - using technology - in order to acquire the most valuable customers. Scaling a company can be very risky if the start-up raises money but does not acquire new customers. Successful scale-ups develop a clear point of view about which customers are the most valuable and then build an effective technology-based strategy to acquire them.
We are now in the IoT + AI generation. Scaling can be seen as connecting more nodes, such as: places, people, situations, things. The more you connect, the bigger your growth potential.
Assignment 1: Groups need to evaluate their company and its engine of growth. How will your team use the company's core competencies to build a technology-driven strategy for customer acquisition and retention?
1. Identify the core competencies of your company
2. What is the engine of growth?
3. Audit your project with the Pentagrowth five laws of growth model
4. What technology could you implement to accelerate growth
5. Build a strategy to achieve exponential growth
6. How will the company maintain its competitive advantage?

Unit 3: Identifying Talent and Growing Your Team
You cannot scale your startup without hiring more people to fill the needs. How will you hire the talent you need in order to scale? One of the biggest challenges a company faces as it scales is to revamp its recruiting and employee onboarding processes. Managing your company's talent is the most important challenge during the scale-up phase.
This lecture therefore focuses on building the perfect team.
It is important for people hiring for a role to understand what is important in the person they hire. Clarifying skill sets and roles is important so everyone is looking for the same type of candidate. For each role you should write a job description that explains what the role will do, and what experience and background you are looking for. To execute the business plan, you must focus on attracting and retaining the best talent you can considering the company's needs for the current and future phases of development.
Assignment 2: Use the Belbin method to evaluate each person's strengths and weaknesses, then use those individual assessments to do a team assessment. What is the team missing?
First: Evaluate the individual members on your team.
Second: How is your team? Describe how you could improve as a team.
Third: Identity a key position for your project
Fourth: Prepare a hiring plan to attract people for this position
Fifth: How will you capture someone for this position? What will you offer as a salary?
Sixth: How will you retain this person in the long run. What will you offer in compensation?

Unit 4: Planning Milestones After Securing Venture Finance
Real success is not defined by the money you raise, but by how you deploy the capital and reach the milestones that you told investors you would meet. Your job while scaling a startup is to make sure to become fundable from round to round. Therefore, to move to the next funding round you will need to show investors you are on track. One way to do this is to have measured milestones that can track progress toward a specific goal or event.
Assignment 3: In the previous assignment groups focused on evaluating a key hire. That can be considered a milestone. Teams need to now draw up a timeline of other important milestones. What are the milestones for your company to scale its growth? It could be a specific product launch, a certain number of users, a retention rate, date to first revenues, date to first profit, etc...

Unit 5: Alternative Exits & Corporate Venturing Partnerships
Securing funding for scaling up the startup means at some point in the near future there must be an exit for the investors. The liquidity event always aims for financial returns via sales of shares. An alternative to this type of exit is to seek a corporate venture partnership.
There is a need for the collaboration between corporation and start-ups to achieve profitable growth
Established companies are moving toward a hybrid model in which innovation from the combination of features of corporate research and the start-up world provides the new solutions for the complex problems existing companies face in business and society at large.
Assignment 4: Is there an opportunity for your team's company to secure a corporate venture partnership?
Develop a Petal Diagram to identify different possible markets where there may be a good fit. Who are the companies in these markets that could use your product to increase their revenues?

Unit 6: During the second half of the course four entrepreneurs from different companies will come to class and explain to us first-hand a problem to solve in order to scale their company. Students will work in teams of 3 or 4 to discuss and then present in class what you feel is the best solution for the challenge according to your research, experience and collective wisdom. You can play the role of a consulting firm or the startup venture itself.