Entrepreneurship
Build your team and your ecosystem
When you are no longer enough on your own, structure the founding team along relationships, roles and rewards; choose boards, advisers and accelerators deliberately, find the ecosystem catalysts, and set the negotiation and the legal structure in the venture's favor.
Your learning route
The program order
Complete the programs in order to finish the route. Each one brings short lessons, applied practice and a realistic business case together.
Plus and Pro members can create a verifiable Stratify certificate when the route is complete.
- Program 01
Building the founding team
Foundational: you learn to assemble the team a venture is actually going to need. By the end of this program you can weigh a homogeneous founding team against a heterogeneous one, work Wasserman's three Rs of relationships, roles and rewards before they become disputes, read why an equal equity split agreed too early caused eighteen months of damage at Zipcar, and hire key employees for fit with an entrepreneurial culture rather than for a resume.
- Three resources and the cofounder decision
- Living Proof and the magic broth
- Attracting key employees
Apply it: Applied: Penhallow Bio's first team
5 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 02
Boards, Ecosystems and Accelerators
Intermediate: you learn to build the support network around a venture. By the end of this program you can time a board of directors against a board of advisers, work out what an adviser's equity grant is actually worth, map the ecosystem gaps that will stall an innovation, and choose between an incubator and an accelerator for the venture you are running.
- Board of directors, or board of advisers?
- Managing professional advisers
- Ecosystems and the players who open them
Apply it: Applied: Marchwood Robotics looks for an ecosystem
5 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 03
Negotiation and Legal Structure
Advanced: you learn to sit down with cofounders, partners and investors, and to put a legal skeleton under the venture. By the end of this program you can tell a zero-sum negotiation from a mutual-gain one, work the four components of principled negotiation, negotiate investor terms on value rather than valuation alone, and match a legal form to the exit the founders are aiming at.
- Splitting the pie and enlarging it
- What founders and partners negotiate
- Choosing a legal form
Apply it: Applied: Aldbury Software's term sheet
5 lessons · ≈3 hours