BAEP 551 - Introduction to New Ventures

Ivan is definitely an interesting professor. Students either like him or hate him. He has really good connections in LA and brings amazing speakers to the class. Almost no homework.

Ivan has a lot of experience and is still working in the space, so has a lot of recent lessons learned. Definitely a good primer to the world of new ventures, but very repetitive course material.

As I am an international student focused in entrepreneurship, this class definitely helped me learn the key terms and ways to start new ventures. The professor can be really mean sometimes, but if you didn't answer correctly a question on Monday he will not even remember on Wednesday. The speakers he brings made me much more excited about starting my own business!

Demanding professor and great exposure to successful entrepreneurs, but his description of the VC funding environment wasn't at all what I encountered during my summer internship.

It's a decent class to take if you have a new venture that you are planning on launching soon, but otherwise can be tedious.

Good class to introduce the ideas behind starting a company, but focuses mainly on "lifestyle companies," i.e. you're not going to create the next Facebook. Information in class is relevant, but nothing groundbreaking. Some of the lectures are informative, while other classes are a waste of time. I've heard that the other introductory entrepreneurship class is better.

Must take as a prerequisite

This class was really fun and he has unique ways of engaging the class. Improptu class trips to see new ventures or innovative tech companies were a plus.

The class is very unstructured which can be a little frustrating sometimes. The teacher is experienced and has a lot of interesting things to say, but a lot of the learning is done in the textbooks which are pretty comprehensive and easy to read. I leave almost every class thinking we didn't really do anything...but I still feel like I'm getting a good idea of what it takes to start a business (albeit mainly from the readings).

Good projects give you a feel for starting a business but class sessions are often not very useful.

This is a pre-requisite course for other entrepreneurship classes. It was very helpful in setting up a framework for how to think about entrepreneurship and the creation of business. There was a good amount of work involved. Also, Autry is good - but if you are a stickler for organization you might be annoyed. Like any entrepreneur he operates on the fly. There were also some really cool opportunities to meet some notable entrepreneurs and VCs and field trips.