The MS in Entrepreneurship curriculum is structured across four academic quarters aligned with the stages of the startup lifecycle: Summer (Ideate), Autumn (Test), Winter (Refine), and Spring (Prepare to Scale).
Summer Quarter
Ideate
ENTRE 565 Entrepreneurial Marketing I
2 credits
This course focuses on the unique challenges of marketing in start-up organizations, and provides insights into the strategy and processes related to the launchings and promotion of new business ventures.
- Identify and describe the challenges and opportunities of marketing for entrepreneurial organizations.
- Assess market opportunities by analyzing customers, competitors, collaborators, context, and the strengths and weaknesses of a company.
- Design effective marketing strategies to maximize a company’s chance of winning in these markets.
- Learn the tools necessary to implement marketing strategy and improve performance.
- Communicate and defend your own marketing recommendations and critically examine and build upon the recommendations of others.
ENTRE 560 Essentials of Accounting for Entrepreneurs
2 credits
This class familiarizes students with the fundamentals of finance and managerial accounting. Students will learn the mechanics of accounting as well as how to prepare and interpret financial statements. Using these skills, the class will learn principles of accounting decision making from the perspectives of both external investors and internal managers.
ENTRE 563 Opportunity Recognition and Validation
4 credits
The course objectives are two-fold: (1) to develop an awareness and understanding of the range, scope, and complexity of issues involved in startups; and (2) to gain insight into how entrepreneurs conceive, adapt, and execute strategies to create new enterprises. The course will be taught primarily through case discussions, supplemented with lectures and guest presenters. During the course, the participants will be placed in the role of an entrepreneur asked to address issues related to new venture creation.
ENTRE 595 Venture Planning and Execution
2 credits
This course is intended to give students an opportunity to plan and execute on an entrepreneurial venture of their design. These activities should draw from and integrate frameworks and concepts learned through other courses in the MS in Entrepreneurship.
Autumn Quarter
Test
ENTRE 575 Entrepreneurial Leadership
2 credits
The Entrepreneurial Leadership course will help students understand the principles and practices of effective leadership as an entrepreneurial venture moves through the life cycle of birth, growth and self-sustainability.
ENTRE 567 Entrepreneurial Strategy and Decision Making
4 credits
The aim of strategic management is to identify ways in which a firm can sustain profitability in the face of competition. This course deals with the understanding of competitive dynamics, i.e. the predictable patterns in which entities in a market—direct competitors, suppliers, consumers, and potential entrants—interact with one another to determine how economic value gets divided.
ENTRE 561 Essentials of Finance for Entrepreneurs
3 credits
Finance deals with how individuals make consumption and saving decisions and how firms make investment and financing decisions. This course focuses on the essentials of finance for early-stage, entrepreneurial businesses. A core focus is on estimating and modeling a venture’s profitability and cash-flows. In other words, how much money is a business likely to make and how is this sensitive to various assumptions about costs and growth.
ENTRE 579 Special Topics: AI for Founders
2 credits
This course is designed to empower current and aspiring entrepreneurs to harness the power of artificial intelligence—without needing a technical background. You’ll explore real-world AI applications that can drive innovation, streamline operations, and support growth in startups and ventures. We’ll combine hands-on tools, engaging lectures, guest speakers, and a capstone project to give you practical, founder-focused AI fluency. By the end of the course, you’ll have a strong understanding of how to evaluate, implement, and pitch AI-powered strategies for your business.
ENTRE 595 Venture Planning and Execution
1 credit
This course is intended to give students an opportunity to plan and execute on an entrepreneurial venture of their design. These activities should draw from and integrate frameworks and concepts learned through other courses in the MS in Entrepreneurship.
Winter Quarter
Refine
ENTRE 557 Entrepreneurial Finance
4 credits
Entrepreneurial Finance is intended for individuals interested in careers in small businesses, family enterprises, entrepreneurial new ventures, and private equity and venture capital investing.
- Assess company financial statements to identify strengths and weaknesses.
- Prepare pro forma financial forecasts and cash budgets.
- Estimate a company’s future need for external financing.
- Value business opportunities using three techniques: discounted cash flow, comparable firms and trades, and the venture capital method.
- Critically evaluate the terms and provisions in typical venture capital agreements.
- Understand the issues associated with initial public offerings (IPOs)
ENTRE 566 Entrepreneurial Marketing II
2 credits
This course focuses on the decisions that entrepreneurs make and the tools that they use to implement an effective marketing strategy. The attraction and retention of profitable customers must involve evaluating the value of the innovation offered, the way in which the innovation is distributed, how pricing is set and structured, and how consumer value is communicated. Second in a two course entrepreneurial marketing sequence.
ENTRE 562 Legal Essentials for Entrepreneurs
1 credit
This course is designed to give an overview of critical and fundamental aspects of U.S. contract law, types of business structures, and intellectual property law. You will work through a licensing exercise to bring everything together.
ENTRE 570 Persuasion: Pitching, PR, Public Speaking
2 credits
As an entrepreneur, your success is directly tied to your abilities to communicate effectively… particularly in the context of the “pitch.” This course is about entrepreneurship and the role that verbal communication, influence, and persuasion play in shaping your success starting, growing, managing, leading, and even exiting a venture. To make this course as practical as possible, we will have plenty of guest speakers and “judges” to share their perspective with you. These will be some of the most influential members of the Seattle startup ecosystem: CEOs, venture capitalists, tech company executives, journalists, attorneys, etc.
ENTRE 571 Sales Essentials for Entrepreneurs
2 credits
Understanding how your product will be used to create value for a customer is the absolute starting point for an entrepreneur’s decision to enter a market and the cornerstone for effectively winning business. This course introduces students to the principles and concepts of selling and its strategic role in their new venture. Critical thinking, self-evaluation, and a genuine interest in learning how to work with others in a collaborative and innovative way will be important in this class.
ENTRE 595 Venture Planning and Execution
2 credits
This course is intended to give students an opportunity to plan and execute on an entrepreneurial venture of their design. These activities should draw from and integrate frameworks and concepts learned through other courses in the MS in Entrepreneurship.
Spring Quarter
Prepare to Scale
ENTRE 568 Digital Media Marketing
2 credits
There has been an enormous rise in the way the internet has seeped into our lives. In today’s world, it is impossible for marketers to ignore the relevance of the internet. It is imperative for firms to understand how the digital medium can be used to market products and services, maintain customer relationships and monitor customer perceptions of the firm. Moreover, the internet has propelled a shift in traditional marketing principles and the customer now has enough power to accelerate the success or failure of products and services.
ENTRE 575 Entrepreneurial Leadership
2 credits
The Entrepreneurial Leadership course will help students understand the principles and practices of effective leadership as an entrepreneurial venture moves through the life cycle of birth, growth and self-sustainability.
ENTRE 569 Strategies for Scaling and Funding Startups
4 credits
This course is intended to give students a better understanding of raising funds and working with investors in entrepreneurial markets. In contrast to public markets, such markets exhibit high turbulence, information asymmetry, and complexity. The course will provide an in-depth view of the fundraising process and the elements of deal-making and working with investors, and should sensitize students to the strategic and people issues around venture finance.
ENTRE 547 Successful Negotiations
2 credits
Despite the prevalence of negotiations in our lives, many people know little about the strategy and psychology of effective negotiations. The course allows participants the opportunity to develop these skills experientially and to understand negotiations in useful analytic frameworks.
- Be able to recognize situations that involve negotiation, even when they aren’t the formal, at-the-table encounters most commonly called negotiations.
- Be familiar with your own foibles as a negotiator, and able to control them.
- Be able to anticipate actions that your counterpart will take and to respond appropriately.
- Be familiar with the dynamics of power, of culture, of coalitions, of interests, of relationships, and of emotions that affect human interactions.
ENTRE 595 Venture Planning and Execution – Dempsey Startup Competition
1 credit
This course is intended to give students an opportunity to plan and execute on an entrepreneurial venture of their design. These activities should draw from and integrate frameworks and concepts learned through other courses in the MS in Entrepreneurship. Final Project: The program culminates with each student applying for the Dempsey Startup Competition to demonstrate their business idea in front of mentors, coaches, and advisers from the Seattle area.