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Curriculum

The Master of Science in Entrepreneurship curriculum is built on the same rigor as our MBA coursework, but is focused on the stages of entrepreneurial development (with an emphasis on strategy, marketing, and finance) and real-world practice.

Each quarter includes a lead course oriented around a set of challenges that are particularly salient in that stage of the entrepreneurial process. Each lead course includes a practicum project associated with a critical entrepreneurial milestone.

To complete your entrepreneurship education, we offer a variety of workshops in leadership, design thinking, lean business principles, and the art of the pitch so when you graduate you are ready for the next step in your career. Sign up for our mailing list to learn more.

Program overview:

Duration: 12 months, starts annually in June
Quarters: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring
Total Credits: 46
Program Type: Full-time, weekdays and some evenings
Class Type: Cohort-based, in-person
Course Sequence: Lock-step

MS in Entrepreneurship courses at-a-glance: 46 credits

Ideate:

  • Opportunity Recognition and Validation
  • Essentials of Accounting for Entrepreneurs
  • Entrepreneurial Marketing I
  • Venture Planning and Execution

Test:

  • Entrepreneurial Strategy and Decision Making
  • Legal Essentials for Entrepreneurs
  • Essentials of Finance for Entrepreneurs
  • Successful Negotiations
  • Entrepreneurial Leadership – Leading yourself, Leading a team
  • Venture Planning and Execution

Refine:

  • Entrepreneurial Finance
  • Entrepreneurial Marketing II
  • Persuasion: Pitching, PR, Public Speaking
  • Venture Planning and Execution

Prepare to Scale:

  • Strategies for Scaling and Funding Ventures
  • Digital Media Marketing
  • Sales Essentials for Entrepreneurs
  • Entrepreneurial Leadership –Leading through growth, Leading through change
  • Venture Planning and Execution – Dempsey Startup Competition
  • Special Topic

Summer: 10 credits

Opportunity Recognition and Validation

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.

Essentials of Accounting for Entrepreneurs

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.

Entrepreneurial Marketing I

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.

Venture Planning and Execution

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: 13 credits

Entrepreneurial Strategy and Decision Making

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.

Legal Essentials for Entrepreneurs

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.

Essentials of Finance for Entrepreneurs

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.

Successful Negotiations

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.

Entrepreneurial Leadership – Leading yourself, Leading a team

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.

Venture Planning and Execution

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: 10 credits

Entrepreneurial Finance

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)

Entrepreneurial Marketing II

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.

Persuasion: Pitching, PR, Public Speaking

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.

Venture Planning and Execution

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: 13 credits

Strategies for Scaling and Funding Ventures

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.

Digital Media Marketing

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.

Sales Essentials for Entrepreneurs

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.

Entrepreneurial Leadership –Leading through growth, Leading through change

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.

Venture Planning and Execution – Dempsey Startup Competition

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.

Special Topic