If you're like me, you want to go to Sloan to get a startup off the ground. You might have a project that you are already working on or one that you will not hatch until this coming fall. So what is available at Sloan that will help your startup succeed?
Courses
While there are dozens of courses at MIT Sloan that have to do with entrepreneurship, I am heavily biased towards courses that have a ton of hands-on, practical application rather than the more academic approach to learning that doesn't get your hands dirty. Here are a few classes that I found very useful:
15.391 Early Stage Capital - A half semester course that provides a first-rate understanding of the world of angel investors, venture capitalists and teaches you to become proficient in the lingo of the term sheet (participating preferred is NOT a good thing!). You get to do two "real world" simulations where you meet with actual lawyers and discuss a term sheet and also do a mock negotation with a real VC.
GSD (aka Get Stuff Done) - Ok, so the official name of this class is actually 15.S17 Applications in Advanced Entrepreneurial Techniques, but I had to look that up because everyone calls it GSD. This class is much less structured than most classes and gives a phenomenal opportunity to make progress on a project you are already working on and to meet people who are not from Sloan. You have to apply to get into this class of about 25 students, half of whom are those amazing Course 6 (Computer Science) undergrads that you hear about but never meet. To get credit for the course you must make progress on a startup project during the semester-- typically with a deliverable of a beta version of your product or, in some invaluable cases, evidence that your idea won't actually work. Lean startup iteration!
15.280 Communications For Leaders - This core class is a requirement for all MBA students, and it's chock full of opportunities to practice one of the most important aspects of launching a company: communicating your vision. Between speaking, memo writing, emailing and giving constructive feedback to a team, this class will make you a better communicator. Don't like speaking in front of people? This class helps you to get over that mortal fear, and you'll need to if you're going to convince anyone to work with you or invest in your company.
15.S16 Entrepreneurial Product Development and Marketing - This is a half semester class that is co-taught by Brian Halligan, co-founder of Hubspot, an inbound marketing software company that came out of MIT Sloan 6 years ago and is expected to go public soon. Brian challenges you to use inbound marketing tactics to grow your site traffic and get more customers. I believe this class now includes teams receiving a small amount of money (like $2,000) that they are required to use to test different marketing channels. Pretty cool, huh?
Exposure
The MIT $100K is a year-long series of competitions that track the "lifecycle" of a startup, from idea inception in September to presenting a formulated and vetted business to prospective investors in April. There are several different competitions that run independently of each other, but the purpose is that if you had a great idea at the beginning of the school year you would pitch it at the t=0 event, then present your 1 minute pitch at the Elevator Pitch Competition, then prototype during the Accelerate Competition in Dec-Jan, then compete in the Business Plan Competition in the spring.
I've participated in several of the events and found them to be helpful for several reasons:
1. You practice your pitch. It's much better the 50th time you say it.
2. You get the attention of future team members and investors, especially if you are a finalist in any of the events.
3. It forces you to make progress and the competition aspects pushes you to stand out, which is much more "real world" than any multiple choice test in class.
Teammates
One of the biggest challenges facing any startup is finding the right people to get the startup off the ground. I found this task impossible in my previous role as an investment professional-- I only knew other analytical, consultant-types of people who didn't have any different skills than I had. While being at MIT makes the process of meeting people with skills complementary to my own easier, you still have to go out there and actually meet them.
Call it networking. Call it team building. Call it self-discovery. As long as you work on a bunch of different projects, don't half-ass what you contribute to the group and treat people well, you'll have a list of people who you want to call up when you've closed that first round of funding and need to hire someone from MIT.
I am @dlrdaniel on Twitter. I post about startups, content marketing, and good food and wine.