

Stanford's new course on building a startup - Sami_Lehtinen
http://startup.stanford.edu/

======
hasenj
Sounds more like a "how to build a web app" course. [0]

Building a startup involves a lot of "soft skills" that not all developers are
familiar with: marketing, talking to customers, overcoming all sorts of
psychological blockers/fears about putting yourself, your ideas, and your
product "out there" for all people to judge.

When I saw the title, I hoped that it would focus on those aspects of building
a startup, sort of like the 30x500 course by Amy Hoy.
[http://unicornfree.com/30x500](http://unicornfree.com/30x500)

[0] There's nothing wrong with doing a course for how to build web
applications. I just don't think it's the same thing as building a startup.

EDIT:

It seems the official name of the course is "Startup Engineering", which makes
a lot more sense than the submission title: "How to build a startup".

Please fix the title of the submission so that this comment might be
deprecated.

~~~
skarmklart
_Building a startup involves a lot of "soft skills" that not all developers
are familiar with: marketing, talking to customers, overcoming all sorts of
psychological blockers/fears about putting yourself, your ideas, and your
product "out there" for all people to judge._

Give me the specs for a $19.9 ebook on that, please :) I've been of the mind
to write something like that for a while.

~~~
hasenj
Haha, a book would be nice, but I think really the only way to learn this is
by experiencing it. The book should be more of a guide about how to put
yourself in the environment that forces you to learn this stuff.

~~~
dasil003
Yes, I agree you can only actually learn by doing. No amount of book-reading
will equal your first startup in terms of practical knowledge and how to apply
it. That said, one's own startup is necessarily narrow in scope and there is a
ton that the active practitioner can learn from anecdotes from other startups,
especially across different markets and industries, and with different talent
and network constraints.

------
balajis
Hey guys - this is the instructor here. You can sign up for the class at
coursera.org/course/startup. The startup.stanford.edu webpage will be updated
sometime tomorrow to start tracking the Coursera MOOC content.

Happy to take any feature requests, bug reports, etc. here or via email
(balajis at stanford dot edu).

~~~
Smirnoff
Hi Balaji. I plan to build a website as a part of your class. Since I am not
very tech savvy (basic knowledge of html, css, and python), will you still
recommend taking your course?

~~~
balajis
Hi Smirnoff: try out the first few lectures and see if it fits your
background. The key is how quickly you can pick up the web programming stuff.

~~~
Smirnoff
Great. I will give it a try!

------
Fomite
The title and description are somewhat at odds. "Startup Engineering", the
title, makes sense - the kind of things a certain breed of startup are looking
for in software engineers.

On the other hand, "Stanford's new course on building a startup from the
ground up" offers only one week for "Promotion, CAC/LTV/Funnel, Regulation and
Accounting" \- things that are a little bit important for building a business.

And by "startup" this clearly only applies to a certain breed. If you wanted
to start a Biotech startup (as a random example), the class is nigh useless.

It's a way narrower course than some of the descriptions suggest.

~~~
balajis
Hey Formite - this is the instructor here. I actually did start a reasonably
successful biotech/genomics company named Counsyl[1] (~200 employees, testing
3% of US births, $65M in funding) and I do think the ambit of the course is
broad enough to assist with that.

It's a good strategy these days to build one's business on top of a software
core, with APIs for all major business functions and physical interface layers
only when absolutely necessary. That's really the overall principle that I'm
trying to communicate, along with examples in practice. Let's see if I end up
being successful in this pedagogical goal!

[1]
[http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/counsyl](http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/counsyl)

~~~
Fomite
balajis - Thank you very much for your reply, and I'd like to say that I'm
happy to be corrected. I've signed up for the class despite my concerns that
it's...tangental at best to my interests...but if you succeed, I be quite
content in being wrong.

------
bassemfayek
I've been following the edTech space very closely for almost two years now. So
I have a good idea on what free online courses are out there. I also went over
all the comments below.

Here is a google doc with a collection of the best eight online courses
available on platforms like Coursera, Udacity, Venture Lab, and iTunes.
Together these courses form a kick-ass Internet Startup Major.

[http://bit.ly/125Yidy](http://bit.ly/125Yidy)

happy to edit if you have suggestions

------
csomar
Building a startup is different than building a web app. It's sad to see that
the instructors are not aware of the massive difference between the two.

Building a startup course should have no technical details. I'd recommend
Udacity "How to build a startup" course any time and even for small
businesses.

~~~
alainmeier
The main lecturer co-founded one of the biggest personal genomics companies in
the US, so I'm quite certain that he realizes the difference between the two.

The course emphasizes using CS-related skills in any startup for product
development and getting insight into your market. Example exercises are things
like scraping competitor data, wading through genomic data from the cmd line
and building internal APIs for managing company data.

------
clubhi
I was excited about this. But then I realized it was mostly about software
development.

Something I've realized was that it's not even worth it for me to work on my
own ideas. I might as well focus on taking all the money my clients are
willing to throw at me and look into hiring people to work on my ideas for
much less money than I can make.

I'd love to see a course along the lines of transitioning from software
developer to small business owner. At some point it stops making financial
sense to read about balancing photons in radioactive black trees when you
already make more point and clicking on a DBMS UI. I need to hire a few people
to start helping me out. So much comes along with that that I'm not prepared
for.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
While there's some merit to what you're saying -- you're advocating an
arbitrage, since you make more money developing for clients and can hire
people for much less you still have money left over. But keep in mind the
passion and dedication it takes to make a great product and know that you
might not get that when simply hiring someone for less money than you make.

~~~
clubhi
You make a valid point. One that I often make. However, I'm more of talking
about moving my passion and dedication over to running a business and not just
blindly sending projects to other firms/freelancers.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Yup. I'm actually working with some freelancers right now and paying for it
with my day job (though I'm not a developer myself and chose to work with
people specialized in certain areas).

------
AYBABTME
The course launches tomorrow/today on Coursera:

[https://www.coursera.org/course/startup](https://www.coursera.org/course/startup)

------
trg2
Just enrolled. It looks like this is the second time the class has been
offered. Has anyone on HN already taken the course? What did you think?

~~~
abromberg
I also took the class in the winter at Stanford and had an awesome experience.
We focused on the things that mattered and a bunch of really cool startups
came out of the class. I can also imagine that it'll be excellent online --
Balaji put together great writeups of the content we covered that I'm still
referencing now and I believe the (amazing) guest lecturers were filmed.

~~~
jordn
Have you got any links to some of the startups that came out of v1 of this
class?

------
Sami_Lehtinen
Old discussion (4 months ago):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5089487)

------
narsil
It would be helpful for a class on Startup Engineering to elaborate on company
building rather than jumping to product building immediately.

Quoting Fred Wilson:

 _[...] most of our portfolio companies build the product first, then the
business, then the company. And building a company is often difficult for
founders because they are so focused on the product._ [1]

That said, the course does seem to touch on important topics to build a web
product with tools out there today. I found the Unix section [2] a bit
ambitious. If someone came in with little knowledge of Unix prior to this, as
the PDF seems to assume, it provides just enough rope to hang yourself with.

The Introduction [3] also ends with "Time to start coding", which seems like a
great way to build a SaaS product, but maybe not a company.

[1] [http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/10/building-a-company-vs-
buildi...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/10/building-a-company-vs-building-a-
business.html)

[2] [https://spark-public.s3.amazonaws.com/cme184/unix.pdf](https://spark-
public.s3.amazonaws.com/cme184/unix.pdf)

[3] [http://spark-
public.s3.amazonaws.com/cme184/introduction.pdf](http://spark-
public.s3.amazonaws.com/cme184/introduction.pdf)

------
jdale27
"startup" == "SaaS web startup", apparently.

~~~
xtqctz
Can you expand this critique? I'm a recent grad with the prerequisite
knowledge they ask for (barely) and aspirations to build cool stuff. Is my
time better spent elsewhere? If so, where?

~~~
biot
If the cool stuff you want to build includes things like alternative energy
sources (solar, wind, wave, and so on) then 90% of the course will be of
little benefit to you. However, if your definition of cool stuff can be boiled
down to "software on the internet" then this course will likely be helpful.

~~~
abromberg
I actually disagree a bit here -- Balaji and Vijay (the instructors) have both
built incredibly successful companies based on many of the principles that
they teach in the course. Sure, the online course won't teach you to do
genomics or protein folding or build solar panels, but what it will do is
allow you to create many of the components that support businesses like those.
Thinking in a broader sense about what APIs for various business functions can
do and how they can help you can be a tremendous help and this class can teach
you how to build those APIs.

------
rbres
I took this course with Balaji at Stanford - definitely the best course I've
taken. It was open-ended enough to let me pursue my own entrepreneurial/tech
interests but provided enough support to help me avoid mistakes and learn
relevant material. Can't wait to see how this course goes on a global level.

------
twic
Misread the title as "Stanford's new course on building an airship".
Disappointed now.

------
HunterV
I have very little programming experience/skill but really want to take this
course and am up for a challenge. Is it doable?

Anything that I could do to supplement the course to make up for my
disadvantage?

~~~
eru
> Is it doable?

I guess there's no harm trying.

> Anything that I could do to supplement the course to make up for my
> disadvantage?

If you want to learn programming, I can recommend "How to design programmes"
(Full text available online at htdp.org)

------
harshagowda
I have an idea, and requires lot of coding hours , I feel if i start coding ,
By the time i finish the product will have many more competitors :) , Should i
do a Proof of concept and look out for investors ?

~~~
HunterV
No. No. No. No.

I just spent the last year of my life doing a 'proof of concept' and 'looking
out for investors'. You'll spend your life always with a sense of insecurity
drawn on by the fact that you don't have a real product.

Now, if your favorite Uncle is an investor and absolutely loves you, that's a
whole different story. But realistically, make a product, find users who love
it, then campaign for them by finding people to invest.

Otherwise you'll lose sight of why you're doing this.

------
likeapub
"In the second part, you will apply these concepts to develop a simple command
line application, expose it as a webservice, and then integrate other
students' command line apps and webservices together with yours to create an
open-source mobile HTML5 app as a final project."

I am a little confused. Does that mean we cannot simply develop our own
startup idea? Why do we have to integrate other students' apps?

------
mtoddh
Anyone know if there's a list of the project ideas (some of which it sounds
like became startups) from previous classes? I've looked around on Google but
didn't find any such list. It would be interesting just to see what some of
the ideas have been and which ones got traction...

------
michaelrbock
Seems to me like they added course material for the first 2 weeks and then
stopped...I wonder why. Anyone at Stanford with any insight?

~~~
balajis
The full Stanford course materials for the Jan-Mar timeframe are at
stanford.coursera.org/cme184-001. The startup.stanford.edu URL tracked the
first few weeks, but this was redundant for Stanford students and another page
to keep up to date. So the material there is more of a teaser for people
interested in the Coursera MOOC class.

That said, it will be more useful for the Coursera students to have a site
that is accessible when logged out, so look for startup.stanford.edu to track
the MOOC course material beginning tomorrow evening or so.

------
darseex
Question: Does this cost money?

~~~
Mithrandir
It's free online:
[https://www.coursera.org/course/startup](https://www.coursera.org/course/startup)

------
jjsz
Is there a reason I can't access the material from the winter semester?

~~~
balajis
The material has changed significantly since v1. Page will be updated soon to
track Coursera materials.

------
Discordian93
Seems very interesting. I signed up, when is it starting?

------
rfnslyr
Page keeps loading for me, then bogs down, and then freezes completely and
kills my chrome browser. Anyone know what's up?

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