To complement students' entreprenurial journeys at Cornell Tech, students enrolled in this course will learn a set of methodologies that support identifying and onboarding early adopters as customers. Students will complete the course with a set of tools and examples of real contracts, frameworks, and system and process designs that can be used to help them in acquiring their very first customer. In addition to the tools to support customer acquisition, students will make an attempt at acquiring their first customer for a real or hypothetical startup that is being built in Startup Studio at Cornell Tech.
Course Schedule: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 10:55 am - 12:10pm
Start/End Dates: March 19th - April 25th
Recommended reading: Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
- Introduction (March 19th)
- Unpacking Early Adopters (March 21st)
- Developing Early Adopters Engagement Strategy (March 26th)
- First Customers in Practice: Hear from Succcessful Founders (March 28th)
- Customer Discovery (April 9th)
- Setting up Pilots, Alphas, and Betas (April 11th)
- Legal Agreements for Early Customers (April 16th)
- Team Presentations: Early Adopter Engagement Strategies (April 18th)
- Final Group Assignment (April 23rd)
- 40% Participation
- 30% Quizzes and Exams
- 30 Final Presentation
- No cell phones or laptops (take notes in a notebook)
- Attendance is mandatory. If you miss class, homework, and do not complete the make-up assignment, then both you and your team final grade will be impacted and the team will experience a full one-half letter grade drop.
- If you intend to miss a class, then you must email your team, cc'ing Aaron and Khoa, for accountability. You do not need to share why you are missign class, just ask for the make up assignment. The make up assignment will be due one week after receiving the assignment.
- Note, make up assignments are more work than the class time you missed. The work will be very comprehensive and challenging.