James started his career as an early employee of Microsoft Japan and led the subsidiary’s rise to the first billion-dollar revenue subsidiary of a software company in history. After his nearly 15 year corporate career which culminated in a role as CEO of a NASDAQ listed software company, James decided to become an entrepreneur and started RTM Asia. Currently based in Beijing, James has co-founded 3 companies in China in the last 5 years.
The course covers the key phases of doing a startup: evaluating the idea, selecting co-founders, creating a pitch deck, pitching the company to investors, developing the minimum viable product (MVP), the business model and funding. Students will practice dealing with early-stage issues that cause the failure of most startups including deciding roles, alignment, splitting equity and company valuation. Finally, a number of international and Chinese startup case studies will be reviewed and analyzed.
After completing this course, students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate an understanding of the basic concepts of entrepreneurship and doing a startup
2. Demonstrate an understanding of how to take an idea, validate it, refine it and put a plan together for execution
3. Demonstrate an understanding of why startups succeed or fail and be able to evaluate critical success factors for a startup
