Technology and Entrepreneurship, Spring 2007
Final Exam

The final exam for this class is at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, May 1 in Sitterson 115.

Breakfast will be served throughout the exam.  The form of the exam is three entrepreneurial forays.  Specifically, an entrepreneurial team will run a focus group and collect information about their customer base.  They will then present their proposal to a team of venture capitalists.  The venture capitalists will challenge the team with questions and then will vote whether and how much to give the team.

Thursday will be a work session for the teams.  Attendance is mandatory. Remember that we will be meeting in Murphey 302.

The final exam constitutes 20% of your grade.  There will generally be a single grade for the entire team, but I will make adjustments if there is clearly an imbalance in the preparation and participation that I see.  Specific grading criteria are described in each of the role descriptions below.

Grades and comments will be emailed later on Tuesday along with final grades.

Roles

Entrepreneurs:  You are the team that is requesting funding from the venture capitalists.  You have two tasks:  the first is a 10 minute interview a focus group of potential customers and the second is to present your case to the venture capitalists.  In presenting your case to the venture capitalist, you will give a 15 minute presentation of your idea followed by a 10 minute question period where the venture capitalists get to ask you questions.  You are to ask for a specific amount of money for specific purposes.

In order to prepare for the exam, you need to prepare for both the focus group and the venture capitalists.

To prepare for the focus group, decide what information is important to collect and how best to capture it.  Focus group participants will be given roles to play just before the session.  You will not know what their instructions are.  You will have a 5 minute caucus between the focus group and the presentation to incorporate what you hear into your presentation.

For the venture capitalists, you should prepare the basic material defined in a business plan.  I will be available on Thursday to help you make reasonable assumptions about the entrepreneurship.  You should invent any data that you do not have.  As long as your assumptions are reasonable, they will not be challenged.  You also may claim to complete any task that you need.  Of course, if you claim it, someone can ask you questions about it.  Because you are asking for money, you need a simple financial plan:  expenses and revenue for your chosen time frame.  Remember that the venture capitalist will want to be assured of sustainability because they want to make money on this deal.

You may use a PowerPoint presentation or talk through the material.  If you are not going to use presentation slides, you may want to provide the venture capitalists written material.  Absorbing data without anything visual can be very difficult.

You will be graded on your understanding of the different aspects that need to be covered and inventive ways to attack the questions.  For the focus group, you will be graded on whether you are seeking the right information.  Each member of the team is expected to participate in the focus group exercise and each member must make part of the presentation.  When questions are asked by the venture capitalists, answers should be given by different team members in turn.  If this is not happening naturally, I will intervene.  (This in fact is the only time that I will intervene.)   I, of course, expect you to incorporate technology into your plan in as many phases as is logical:  consider especially analysis, marketing, and product.  You will not be graded on whether or not you get funding if the reason for the lack of funding is that the venture capitalists do not believe in the idea.  If, however, they do not fund you because you have missed key parts of the entrepreneurial process (for example you have no financial statement), that is reason to lose points.

Venture Capitalists: You are the team that is providing funding.  Your task is to listen to the focus group presentation and the entrepreneurs’ presentation and then to ask probing questions and summarize the strengths and weaknesses of their plan.  This is your money and you may be as demanding or lenient as you want. 

You are expected to note the responses that they get from the focus group and the information that you gather from their presentation.  You are free to interrupt them during their presentation to follow up on specific points but your broader questions can be asked in the 10 minute follow up.  You will then be expected to give a short summary of the key points that you heard, critique the project, and decide whether or not to fund it and if you are going to fund it, how much. Note that you will have caucus time between each of the segments.

You will be graded on your recognition of the important aspects that should be covered and your analysis of the viability and practicality of the different aspects.  I will be looking for you to identify the holes and flaws in the plan and for solid logic behind your final decision but will not grade you on whether or not I would have made the same decision.

Focus Group:  I will hand you descriptions of the “character” that you should play in the focus group.  For example, if the entrepreneurship was to start a Franklin Street coffee shop, different people might be a coffee-fiend college student, a very social college student who lives off campus and doesn’t particularly care for coffee, a coffee-snob recent grad working on Franklin Street, a thirty-something  professor, and the manager of a Johnny T-Shirts.

You will receive a Pass/Fail grade for your role in the focus group.  You will fail only if you do not show up or are not engaged.  During the remainder of the hour that you are in this role, you may work individually on material for your later roles or on another class.  You may not have a group meeting.  There will be benefit to watching the other teams and seeing what works and does not work

The Entrepreneurships

Music:  An electronic music stand.  Have you ever watched musicians dealing with all that sheet music?  They need to turn pages in the middle of playing; they have to keep large portfolios.  With a built in screen and stored music supply, all they would need to do is bring up the right music and off they go.  To “turn pages”, we can use either a timed mechanism or a manual forward function.

Shopping: There are people who like to shop but have no money and there are people with money who hate to shop.  What if we were to pair them up and let one shop for the other?  This is not a shopping service, but the creation of a mutually beneficial partnership.  We would interview people and create partnerships.  There are at least two possible financial models:  one is to charge a matching fee and the other is to take a percentage of the money spent.

Road: Ready for a road trip?  How easy is it to arrange?  You know where you want to visit, but do you know the best route to take?  Do you know what the interesting sights are or the special events?  How about restaurants and hotels?  Sure you can piece together all of the information, but wouldn’t it be a lot easier to get some help?  This web site will bring together all of the information that you need.

Time Table

(These are maximum times.  If one segment is shorter, the schedule simply moves up.  The time is not added to another segment.)

:00-:05            preparations
:05-:15            focus group
:15-:20            caucus
:20-:35            entrepreneur presentation to venture capitalists
:35-:40            caucus
:40-:50            venture capitalists questioning of entrepreneurs
:50-:55            caucus
:55-:00            venture capitalists report out

Teams

Assignments