UMiami offers an entrepreneurship major. I feel like it's very targeted towards a small business owner for a local establishment ie- restaurant owner, services provider,etc. That's nice and all, but it's pretty limiting. I don't think you could teach guys like us how to do what we do in a classroom. I will say, it might be useful to have some type of crash course that focused on some of the more mundane things you'll need:
term sheet negotiations, basic accounting, legal docs stuff, interviewing skills, some public speaking (for conferences/demos),etc.
There's certainly a large world of entrepreneurship out there beyond the tech sector, but I bet there's some type of common ground that can be found.
I personally don't believe you'll ever teach entrepreneurship how people here at HN are interpreting it. We expect to take nothing but our time and hopefully one day sell it for millions.
Hackers are no different than writers (which I am), musicians and artists. We start with nothing, and produce something worth far more than the sum of its parts.
If you want an entrepreneurship course to tell if you have the material of a true entrepreneur then here's my suggestion: Find a way to throw 100g of shit at a fan (that is running) and have it not splatter.
Here's the grading breakdown; 1) If you get the shit through without it splattering or being cut, you've got the makings of a billionaire. 2) If you get the shit through with slicing, but no splattering, you've got the makings of a millionaire. 3) If the shit hits the fan and splatters, you might as well get a day job and hope you make 6-figures.
Create a fan with a hole in the center so you can throw the shit through it. The fan rotates around it- the center is just bigger and hollow rather than something fancy. The fan might be bigger, but the shit won't splatter.
> I would argue that if you really want to start a company, but don’t feel like you are ready,
an MBA should be your fallback position.
This was pretty much why I went to business school. Except I didn't think about it as my fallback position. I kind of thought of it as a way to ease myself between a cushy paycheck and the wild.
Overall, my conclusion is that business school is pretty useless for starting a business. Very few people start companies straight out of top business schools (too much money in taking job), and most of what you "learn" about entrepreneurship isn't actually all that useful. Sure I learned how to write a business plan, but I never actually needed that business plan once we got started (and we completely changed the idea within a month).
term sheet negotiations, basic accounting, legal docs stuff, interviewing skills, some public speaking (for conferences/demos),etc.
There's certainly a large world of entrepreneurship out there beyond the tech sector, but I bet there's some type of common ground that can be found.