Our motto at The University of Texas at Austin is: What Starts Here Changes the World.
Among the most effective ways of changing the world is by starting companies –
entrepreneurship, which is what we aim to teach.

1 Semester Startup (1SS) is an interdisciplinary entrepreneurship practicum for
undergraduates already on startup teams. We aim to help advance these “Longhorn
Startups” by teaching fundamentals of company formation, but mostly by connecting the
teams into networks of real world resources: outside speakers, startup mentors, and
professional investors.

We aim to give our students practice in operating the machinery of Free Enterprise.

Joshua Baer is a Specialist in Computer Science (CS), a successful entrepreneur, angel
investor, and startup incubator evangelist.

Professor Johnny Butler in the McCombs School of Business directs the Kelleher Center
for Entrepreneurship and the IC2 Institute — Innovation, Creativity, and Capital.

Professor Bob Metcalfe has 23+ years of successful experience in high-tech
entrepreneurship and venture capital. He is now UT Austin Professor of Innovation and
Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise. He is also Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering, where he is growing the Engineering
Entrepreneurship Center.

Kyle Cox, Austin Technology Incubator. Mentor Wrangler.

Jason Nolasco, Alumnus Volunteer, Community Manager.

Mariel Bolhouse, Teaching Assistant, BME ’12, NCIIA Student Ambassador, President
of UTexas TES Chapter.

Writing Teaching Assistant, Sam Frazier.

1 Semester Startup. Interdisciplinary entrepreneurship practicum for teams of students
starting companies. Skill development and mentoring in startup formation, technology
development, market validation, marketing, sales, operations, human resources, program
management, and finance. Emphasis on written and oral presentation of startup
activities. Three lecture hours per week with additional team meetings to be arranged
with team faculty advisors and startup mentors.

1SS has no prerequisites.

Startup teams (not individuals) may apply at http://1SemesterStartup.com. The instructors will consider startup applications and accept up to about 10 well-formed teams. Registration of students will only be allowed after team acceptance.

1SS may be taken twice with instructor permission.

The ideal 1SS team comes with one or more faculty advisors, expert in the startup team’s
technology. An unwritten goal (not anymore) of 1SS is to draw more professors into the
entrepreneurial processes of UT and the Austin startup community.

1SS has been approved for senior project credit in Electrical and Computer Engineering,
but only if the team has an ECE professor advising and at least four engineers.

Because 1SS is a practicum, we aim to recruit about two dozen experienced, successful,
articulate, and committed entrepreneurs from the Austin startup community to serve as
1SS team mentors. Each team must have a one or more mentors from the 1SS roster of
mentors. These mentors will provide ongoing practical advice to 1SS startup teams and
help connect them to networks of outside resources.

There is a wide array of entrepreneurship teaching resources available on the Internet.
These include written course materials and videos from the McCombs School of

Business, MIT Open Courseware, and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, to
name only three of the best of many. The instructors will be using some of these
materials for preparation assignments. Guest lecturers will also be invited, such as former
Tivoli CEO Frank Moss and Dell Founder-CEO Michael Dell, who spoke last semester.

Connecting 1SS startups to the resources they need to advance is an important part of the
practicum. The instructors and mentors will be looking to provide these connections. A
particular resource to be recruited toward the end of the semester will be professional
investors — angels, venture capitalists, strategic partners, and early adopters — who will
be invited to “Demo Day” to hear startup presentations, see demos, and consider making
investments in 1SS’s Longhorn Startups.

There are also many resources for entrepreneurs at UT, around Austin, and beyond. The
instructors and mentors will be looking for opportunities to help connect teams with those
external resources, among them other courses, recruiting mixers, conferences,
entrepreneur networks, startup workshops, startup accelerators (like Joshua Baer’s own
Capital Factory), and business plan competitions. In particular, 1SS is closely aligned
with Rob Adams and his Texas Venture Labs (TVL) and with Isaac Barchas and his
Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), either of which might be a next step for startups
after 1SS.

1SS will have two TAs for approximately 30 students organized in approximately 10
teams. One TA will assist instructors in organizing and grading, while the Writing TA
will assist instructors and mentors in working with the teams on improving and grading
their written and oral communications.

The following texts are optional; other readings will be suggested during lectures.

P. Denning and R. Dunham, The Innovator’s Way, MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2010.

Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Harper & Row: New York, 1985.

Steven Gary Blank, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, paperback and PDF, 2006.

E. Ries, The Lean Startup, Crown: New York, 2011.

R. Dorf, T. Byers, Technology Ventures: From Ideas to Enterprise, McGraw Hill: New York, 2008. See http://www.mhhe.com/dorfbyers2e, http://edcorner.standford.edu, http://eclips.cornell.edu/homepage.do.

T. Hopkins, Selling for Dummies, Wiley: Indianapolis, 2011.

1. Learn basics of startup formation.
2. Experience the advancement of your own startup.
3. Receive mentoring from successful, articulate, and committed entrepreneurs.
4. Get connected to resources needed for the advancement of your startup.

Here are most of the questions we hope to help you answer:

How do you have an idea for filling a market need? Where will you get the technology?
How do you validate your big idea? What does it mean for a startup to “pivot?” How
big does it have to be? Will there be any competition? How do you sell the idea to
people you need on the team? Whom can you trust? Will you hire or recruit your team?
Will everybody be paid the same? Will anybody leave your company at any point? Are
brothers-in-law good candidates for CFO? What is a CFO? Who will be CEO? How
should you build your board of directors to govern your company? How much on-the-job
training can you afford? Does your startup need a culture? Is honesty the best policy?
Will there be parties? Should you have a President’s Club? How does the team change
over time? How best to organize and manage your company as it grows? Will you need
adult supervision, people who know how to manage things? Will you eventually have to
cave in and hire some salespeople? What is the difference between marketing and sales?
How do you plan for the monies you’ll need? Spreadsheets? How do you name your
startup? How do you get traction with investors, if you need any? How much is your
startup worth at various times? How many rounds of finance might you need and how to
structure them? How do you develop a go-to-market strategy with an initial product?
How do you develop and test that first product? Yes, test? How do you position your
startup and market it? How do you rename your company? How to find customers and
sell to them? How do you structure partnerships? How do you support and get follow-on
orders from customers? How do you decide on your second product? What changes as
you get bigger? Are you still having fun? How do you get liquidity for your
shareholders, including employees with stock options? How much of THE SOCIAL
NETWORK should you believe and use to guide your startup? IPO or M&A or what?
How do you become serial? Will you come back and be one of our mentors after your
third IPO? If 1SS works for you, will you someday donate a building to UTexas? Stuff
like that.

Among the personal skills we plan to teach are how to be healthy, speak, write, sell, and
plan in the startup context. OK, here is the answer at the back of the book: listening.

At the end of 1SS, we aim to have your startup profitable, ready to raise money, defunct,
or worth you taking a second semester of 1SS to continue your startup’s development.

Admission to 1 Semester Startup is by permission of the instructors. Preference will be
given to seniors with well-rounded startup teams that win commitment of at least one
mentor from the 1SS mentor roster.

All teams of 1SS will convene on Thursday evenings. All team members are with few
exceptions, to be approved in advance, required to attend and participate in all practicum
evenings. Failure to attend or participate lowers your grade and reduces your ability to
contribute effectively to the team. During these evenings, the instructors and their guest
lecturers will convey concepts, frameworks, principles, and techniques for starting
companies – how better to use the machinery of Free Enterprise. Team members will be
graded by their team members, by mentors, by TAs, and by instructors on their
participation and contributions.

The normal format of a 1SS class is 6-6:30pm update, 6:30pm-8pm lecture, and 8-9pm
breakouts into teams or groups of teams. On evenings when there are guest speakers, say
like former Tivoli CEO Frank Moss and current Dell CEO Michael Dell (who have
previously presented), the evening may be reception, talk, and discussion instead. In
some cases, we will open up 1SS talks to UT’s wider entrepreneurial community, usually
under the auspices of the student-run Technology Entrepreneurship Society (TES).

Teams are expected to meet between practicums, including at least 1 hour per week with
mentor(s).

Each team member will write a weekly 1-page “progress and priorities update” and
distribute as email to team members, faculty advisors, startup mentors, TAs, and
instructors. The purposes of these updates are reporting and collaboration. They will
communicate what the team member accomplished last week and what their priorities are
for next week in advancing the startup. The writing in these updates will each week be
graded by the Writing TA.

There will also be weekly assignments related to the lecture topic including watching
videos, reading assignments, and exercises that will be submitted and graded.

1SS Thursday classes begin on January 19. At that gathering, Bob Metcalfe will give an
introductory and inspiring (he hopes) talk. Following that, each student will give a 60-
second “elevator pitch” introducing themselves to the class — outlining their
background, skills, and interests, something interesting about themselves, say, in 60
seconds flat. These pitches will be captured on video and uploaded for comments by the
instructors, TAs, and students. We look forward to doing this again toward the end of the
semester and enjoying the improvements.

Each team will demonstrate their product or service, perhaps only in prototype form,
during Demo Day on May 3rd. This will be a graded presentation for the team with
participation by all. There will be a rehearsal of the Demo Day pitch on April 19.

Each team will write and present at least an initial and final version of their business
plans, the last of which will be the final practicum presentation at Demo Day. An
acceptable plan can be written out with charts and graphs and/or submitted as a
PowerPoint deck with informative and well written slide notes. All team members will
collaborate in the preparation of these written and presented plans. The plans will be
graded for writing, speaking, and content. Team members will receive the team grade on
these.

Each team member will prepare a written chapter to back up the Demo Day presentation.
The first draft of these chapters will be due following the creation of an outline and
allocation of assignments by the team. These chapters will be approximately 10 pages in
length, or however much longer it takes to cover the sub-topic of the plan. These
chapters will be revised based on feedback from team members, instructors, and the
Writing TA, who will critique and grade them at least twice, draft and final.

Various kinds of ownership are important machinery of Free Enterprise. Equity
ownership of corporations formed by 1SS startup teams is an important matter to be
confronted by the teams with guidance from their startup mentors and 1SS instructors.
Any agreements as to ownership of an 1SS startup must be in writing – no oral promises
real or imagined are allowed.

UTexas will not have ownership of 1SS startups. The instructors will not own or be in
any way compensated by 1SS startups during their participation in 1SS. 1SS mentors will
not take ownership in or be employed by 1SS startups during 1SS. Investors other than
these may be sought at various times by 1SS startups, with the unconflicted advice of
mentors and instructors.

Ownership of intellectual property (IP) by 1SS students, their teams, and faculty advisors
(if any) is an important matter to be confronted by the teams with guidance from their
startup mentors and 1SS instructors. In particular, 1SS will work with teams on any
dealings with the UTAustin Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC).
Participation in 1SS will not alter whatever the startup’s ownership position is on IP.

A pool of legal advisors is being sought.

Weekly progress and priorities updates and revised business plan chapters should be sent
by email to team members, startup mentors, faculty advisors, instructors, and the Writing
TA. The initial and final business plan presentations should be submitted by email to the
instructors and TAs.

Evaluations of the course and instructors will be conducted during and especially near the end of the semester.

The University of Texas Honor Code will be followed regarding academic dishonesty, which will not be tolerated.

UTAustin provides academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. For
such, call Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at 512-471-6259 (voice) or 816-
329-3986 (video). Please notify 1SS instructors or TAs as quickly as possible if material
being presented is not accessible to you.

If you are worried about someone who is acting differently, you may use the Behavior Concerns Advice Line (BCAL) at 512-232-5050 or visit http://www.utexas.edu/safety/bcal.

By state law, the number of course drops for academic reasons is limited to six (6). What does this mean? Best you find out when thinking about dropping 1SS.

Students are responsible for keeping the University informed, 1SS in particular, as to changes in their email address. Students are expected to check email frequently enough, say daily, to stay current with University-related communications. If you fall out of touch with 1SS, you must let us know as soon as possible and take action to reconnect. No news is bad news.

You are required to evacuate and assemble outside University buildings when a fire alarm is activated or an announcement is made. Please familiarize yourself with all exit doors and get confident that you could exit promptly in an emergency.

Ideally, but not without exception, existing interdisciplinary teams of about five diverse members will apply and be accepted to the 1SS entrepreneurship practicum. However, through a series of gatherings and mixers (“speed dating”) before the start of semester, an effort will be made by the instructors and TAs to fill out teams and to match them with mentors as best we can.

Teams will regularly report progress in two ways: by exchanging weekly one-page
individual progress and priorities updates to team members, mentors, and TAs; and orally
in weekly meetings with mentors.

Each update will summarize past, present, and future team activities, give details
regarding open issues, and provide an overview of team progress.

The weekly meeting with mentors will cover open issues raised in the exchanged written
updates and discuss your general progress. During these meetings, which should last
approximately an hour, the mentor will take the role of your “manager” and give you
important feedback.

At any given time during the practicum, all team members should be fully engaged in
practicum activities, including preparation of written and oral reports. Tasks should be
assigned to team members evenly, but in a way that capitalizes on individual strengths
and experience. If your strengths lie in particular project areas (for example, planning,
proposing, researching, implementing, managing, coordinating, communicating,
researching, and so on), then put your energies into those areas. However, that does not
absolve you of responsibilities in other areas, of understanding what’s happening in those
areas.

Activity	Instructors	Mentors	Writing TA	Peers	Total
Weekly Updates			10%	5%	15%
Initial Plan Chapter		5%	5%		10%
Final Plan Chapter	5%		10%		15%
Rehearsal Demo Day	5%			5%	10%
Final Demo Day	10%	5%	5%	10%	30%
Participation	10%			10%	20%
Total	30%	10%	30%	30%	100%

Teams will prepare both written and oral reports. These will consist of weekly progress
and priorities updates and two business plans, initial and final.

The Writing TA and instructors will grade these against professional standards of
technical content, writing quality, and project reporting. The Writing TA will grade your
reports for appearance, readability, and style and mechanics. The goal here is to give
students frequent opportunities to practice and improve their communication skills, which
are essential to startup success.

The instructors will grade oral and written reports for depth, comprehensiveness, and
accuracy of technical information. Note that you will receive separate grades from these
graders and that, overall, approximately 60% of the grade of your assignments is
weighted toward technical quality, with approximately 40% weighted toward writing
quality.

Oral reporting will occur in parallel team meetings and in two presentations for the
semester. Practicum instructors will hear and grade both plan and demo presentations.
Mentors will be asked to grade participation communication skills in parallel and out of
classroom meetings.

To help you assess your performance as a team member, all members will periodically be
asked to evaluate each other’s performance as team members. The practicum instructors
will use these peer assessments to give credit to team members who make outstanding
team contributions or to deny credit to students who make little or no contributions.

Growing successful startups is much about people. Therefore, conduct in 1SS is all
important, and we all have to work hard at it.

For Pete’s sake, be on time. It is OK to be early for a meeting, but it is not OK to be late.

For good reason, they say that 80% of success is just showing up (on time). So please do
not miss classes or meetings. If you do, it will count against you in grading participation
– 1SS is not a class you can learn by cramming somebody else’s notes the night before.

Please let the instructors and TAs know promptly if there is any problem that is
preventing you from performing satisfactorily in 1SS. Do not delay in reporting your
problems, so we can fix them before much damage is done.

There is no final exam.

There will be a “Demo Day,” attended by professional investors on April 26th from 6pm-
9pm in RLM 6.104, or in a bigger-better venue to be arranged. Last semester, Demo Day
was in the McCombs End Zone Club and attended by ~300 people.

This will be the last 1SS class for Spring 2012. We hope by then you will be a more
skillful and more confident entrepreneur and that your startup will be well on its way to
changing the world.