We covered the most common legal issues – non-disclosure agreement, 5 legal entities to do business under non-incorporated and incorporated, and its benefits. All types of incorporated were covered in this lesson as well as the methods of financing a start up. Two guest speakers were invited to speak – Justin Hovey, an attorney who focuses on venture financings, mergers and acquisitions and corporate and securities matters. And Jorden Woods, a fundraising consultant who led 3 IT-focused companies over the last 12 years: two enterprise software companies and a management consultancy.

To get more interesting information about the topics, I have uploaded the slides from the lesson here:

There are a lot of marketing options available for every business. Several start ups are doing online marketing – Social Media, PR, SEO, and Pay Per Click. You can easily reach your target audience online without spending a lot of money. Online and offline marketing are both effective. Every business must try all available options to advertise and promote products or services. In this class, you will learn how to market and launch your business effectively.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend the last session ,see the quick review here.

I’ve also attached the slides of today’s topics:

If you missed the last session, see the quick review here.

To get more information from today’s lesson, you can take a look at these slides:

We’ve had a quick review of prior material. We discussed several topics such as databases, the comparison of frameworks, the difference between the frontend and the backend programming and about various advanced IDEs. There are lots of different IDEs, generally used for different purposes. If you would like to see the highlights of the discussion, please go through the slides I have attached here:

Click here for the next class.

In this class we’ve had a quick review of the last session and most of the day – programming. We’ve also learned why some programmers take 10 minutes to code a feature, and others take 3 hours. This class covered the Environment Set Up: the app you use when you write a code; Source Control a.k.a Version Control – the app you use to store your code safely; Testing; Frontend Programming; HTML; CSS; Javascript; and lastly, we discussed about the Programming Principles.

I have uploaded the slides from the class here:

Update: the sixth class notes are here.

Most of the day we’ve done Wire-framing. We covered about the user interface design, pre-designed themes, Branding and Aesthetic Design and on how to keep your website simple and enjoyable for the customers.

Summary of the discussion:

Update: the fifth class notes are here.

In this class, we’ve had four topics. First, we talked about the components to a website. Second, the pros and cons of Content Management Systems (CMS). Third, we discussed about the Market Research Tools and Techniques – the use of Google SERP, Google Adwords, Google Analytics, and many more. Lastly, we covered the process of building a website.

I’ve attached the slides from the class here.

Update: the fourth class notes are here.

Today we had lots of guests come for our exciting pitch event.  The pitch event was structured as follows:

• First, we discussed about what pitches are and what makes great pitches
• Then, volunteers did some practice pitches for fake companies, with company ideas courtesy of http://itsthisforthat.com/
• After the practice pitches, each person was given $150 of monopoly money to “invest” in the other pitches.
• Then, in randomly-selected order, each student gave their 2 minute pitch, with a cutoff at 2:30. Investors (other students) gave feedback and had the option to invest however much of their $150 they wanted to.
• Lastly, the top 3 winners were announced.

The pitch event was really great, and a handful of great pitches turned out to raise a healthy amount of monopoly investment.

After pitches, we talked a lot about pitch decks, and started actually pitting them together.  We used a pitch deck template from Guy Kawasaki, talked about naming products and companies, and used crunchbase to look up the history of a few web startups.

Here are the slides:

Update: the next class notes are here.

Today we had three topics.  First, we talked about the course itself, which is 10 sessions long and is extraordinarily fast-paced and hands-on.  Second, we talked a lot about the history and context of startups.  For example, what happened during the dotcom bubble and the significance of Silicon Valley.  Lastly, we covered the lean startup model and customer development.

I’ve attached the slides from the class here.

Update: the second class notes are here.

Here are the slides, in case you missed them.

P.S. I also announced this about a week ago.