Weill Medical College of Cornell University · Courses
eCornell CREA
13 courses with the subject eCornell CREA, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
eCornell CREA501Assessing Startup Viability and Funding Options0
Every startup has an element of risk. Whether you are an entrepreneur or a new investor, you need to be able to articulate a business model and evaluate how it would fit with an investor type so you can identify good opportunities for investment. In this course, you will complete a strategy framework that will help you assess the viability of a startup. By assessing and evaluating the total available market and served available market, you will conduct a target market estimate to project your product or service's potential market size. You will also create a milestone chart that helps you identify the human and capital resources necessary to launch a startup. Your compilation and review of this work will help you evaluate the specific type of investment your project needs.
eCornell CREA502Pitching Your Business Opportunity0
In this course, you will learn how to navigate the process of pitching a startup investment opportunity in order to gain investor interest. Through opportunities to both build and evaluate a pitch, both entrepreneurs and investors will gain insight into each other's perspective. In this course, you will analyze a real-world pitch to see how closely it conforms to the recommended format for a great pitch. You will then select three potential investors online and explain why they would make a good fit with your own or a selected opportunity. Finally, you will build a partial pitch deck based on selected key concepts, and then partner with a peer from your cohort to deliver, evaluate, and strengthen those pitch deck slides. By the end of this course you will have the confidence you need to create or assess a startup pitch. It is recommended to take Assessing Startup Viability and Funding Options prior to this course or have equivalent experience.
In order to safeguard the opportunity or investment before the deal is closed, certain steps like incorporation, structuring future investment, and creating a term sheet serve as protection for the interests of both parties. These assets and processes lend structure to the deal. In this course, you will recognize the tradeoffs, risks, and implications of different legal investment structures and determine the right time and circumstances for switching those structures. Working with a sample startup, you will identify both appropriate and inappropriate forms of incorporation for the opportunity. You will determine the most appropriate legal structures for both non-equity and equity investment scenarios. You will then identify which sources of investment should be sought at the different phases of the business cycle. Finally, you will list the documentation required at each business cycle phase to close the deal. It is recommended to take Assessing Startup Viability and Funding Options and Pitching Your Business Opportunity prior to this course or have equivalent experience.
eCornell CREA504Financial Planning, Valuation and Dilution0
To evaluate an investment opportunity, savvy investors rely on a company's records of its ownership percentages, equity dilution, and the value of equity issued in each round of financing. These records are kept in a company's capitalization table, or cap table, which is a record of the different rounds of investment. In this course, you will utilize and complete a cap table template to create and record a sample startup's financial records. Then, you will use the cap table to assess and analyze a series of financial outcomes based on a set of differing scenarios. Lastly, you will compute and evaluate approaches to valuation such as discounted cash flow and public market multiples based on estimates of future cash flow. This will position you to negotiate new rounds of financing and analyze the impact of new rounds on existing shareholders. It is recommended to take Assessing Startup Viability and Funding Options, Pitching Your Business Opportunity, and Protecting Your Interests or to have equivalent experience prior to this course.
eCornell CREA505Company Structure and Due Diligence0
Before closing an investment deal, an entrepreneur needs to protect their interests, and an investor needs to verify the stability of the opportunity. This series of steps is called the due diligence process. In this course, you will create a due diligence project plan for your investment or opportunity that maps out how to get from term sheet to closing. This process includes key milestones, timeframes, a detailed understanding of key players' responsibilities, and consideration for the various types of due diligence. Then, you will compile a list of questions for the due diligence checklist, a key element of the process that outlines the questions that need to be answered and the documentation that is required to close the deal. Lastly, you will identify, review, and analyze the dozens of critical documents being exchanged that are needed to finalize the investment deal and retain for future use, protection, and reference. By completing these steps, you will be ready to determine if you should move forward or hold back on your deal. It is recommended to take Assessing Startup Viability and Funding Options; Pitching Your Business Opportunity; Protecting Your Interests; and Valuation, Dilution, and Financial Planning or to have equivalent experience prior to this course.
After closing a deal, it is essential that the founder maintain a strong affiliation with the investor. Continued mutual trust and communication can increase the company's chances for growth and success. In this course, you will formulate a structure for you company that outlines the key parties and their responsibilities. You will also draft a board meeting agenda, investor update, and delegation matrix and list the characteristics of your incentive plan. Finally, you will project an index of the company records that are likely to be added one year after your investment date. By the end of this course you will have a detailed plan to help you successfully navigate your post-investment future. It is recommended to take Assessing Startup Viability and Funding Options; Pitching Your Business Opportunity; Protecting Your Interests; Valuation, Dilution, and Financial Planning; and Company Structure and Due Diligence or to have equivalent experience prior to this course.
eCornell CREA511Building and Validating Prototypes0
In this course, you will refine an idea for a physical product by focusing on the customer. Using the Business Model Canvas, you will list your initial assumptions about all aspects of product development, from value propositions to pricing. You will then create a low-cost consumer product prototype and validate it through customer discovery. You will develop a business model for that product using the Business Model Canvas, then build and test prototypes to gain actionable customer feedback. By the end of the course, you will have discovered the types of companies that can help you prototype. Please note that time to build the physical product prototypes will add about 1.5 hours to the time spent on the course.
To effectively communicate with your manufacturing partners, you must have an accurate product requirements document, or PRD. In this course, you will create and iterate on a PRD. You will assess geographic, environmental, material, and design manufacturing considerations. You will then create an organizational chart to specify the team roles that you and your manufacturing partner need to fill. After selecting the appropriate manufacturing techniques for a product, you will establish product usage specifications that can get you to a manufacturable product. This course requires the purchase of a low-cost physical product kit.
Once you create a product prototype that meets your customers' needs, you are ready to plan for small-scale manufacturing. To do this, you need to know how to communicate effectively with manufacturers. In this course, you will assess a Bill of Materials, which lists each manufactured part and raw material that you need to create a product. You will also assess a Bill of Process, which is a flow chart of every step in the process of manufacturing a physical product. You will then write a plan to test your product that can ensure that it meets specifications. You will identify how to pick a manufacturer, create a positive working relationship, and understand contracting terms. You will also obtain manufacturing quotes for the product you created in the first course. Finally, you will plan post-production activities such as packaging, distribution, and shipping, with an eye toward an excellent unboxing experience.
After you've created a low-volume production run of your product, you are ready to plan for high-volume production. In this course, you will optimize materials costs through increased volume and by designing a product for ease of fabrication. You will reduce the complexity of assembly and product variability to lower assembly costs. You will implement a set of best practices called Design for X, which will help you ensure efficient and inexpensive manufacturing that results in a high-quality physical product. At the end of the course, you will have the tools to design for high-volume production.
Once you have worked out small-scale manufacturing for your physical product, you will explore a framework called Design for X. Design for X encompasses all aspects of planning for high-volume production, where "X" can be Manufacturing, Assembly, Testing, Upgrade, Repair, Sustainability, End-of-Life, Installation, and Start. Design for X incorporates best practices from the experiences of physical product developers in making a reproducible product. You will apply these ideas to design a large-scale manufacturing process that is efficient and cost effective. This will enable you to reduce the number of steps in the process, build quality into manufacturing, and design for customer ease in the upgrade, repair, and end-of-life of the product, among other considerations. In sum, Design for X will enable you to please your customers with an excellent product that functions as promised. This course includes a video tour of a contract manufacturing firm near Cornell University. In this video, you will observe the process of plastic injection molding, a common and inexpensive process that many physical product entrepreneurs use to manufacture their products.
eCornell CREA516Developing a Distribution and Marketing Strategy0
In this course, you will explore the process of taking an unassembled product to a shippable product. You will investigate supply chain areas of fulfillment and reverse logistics (i.e., returns, recycling, and so on) as well as marketing. You will first learn how to decide whether to outsource product assembly or do it in house. You will also explore DIY sites such as Kickstarter. There are many variables that affect fulfillment and you will determine which can affect a product. After you've assembled a product, you will make a plan to design and finance the distribution strategy. You will also make a plan for what happens after the purchase: Can the customer return the product or send it in for repairs? How can they recycle the product? Is it disposable, or does it contain toxic chemicals? All these options must be defined. Finally, you will investigate how to plan product marketing.
In this course, you will explore options to finance all aspects of your product business. You will examine how to obtain financing for business operations and how to create inventory and product. You will then explore the post-purchase customer ownership cycle, including presale, selling straight to a retailer, or selling through a retailer. You will then apply this by building a multi-page spreadsheet to compare your options. Finally, you will examine types of pitches along with the components of an effective pitch. You will design your pitch using a storyboard template and then participate in a pitch competition to obtain financing for your product.
