BAEP 555 - Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipate and Avoid Startup Pitfalls

This class makes you think about things that might be obvious to some, but not so much for others. I like the fact that it involves a lot of class participation where you get a variety of opinions from different peers.

The takeaways from lectures aren't particularly mindblowing, but this is a good crash course in startups from various perspectives. The class is not very demanding. Just read the case before class, answer a short pre-class poll and be prepared to discuss. There are a few other module reflections that only take about an hour each. Hovig is a great professor.

Really nice and insightful professor! Class is case-based and lots of discussion but the content is super interesting and relevant to all business students. Also there are interesting negotiation/founding exercises during sessions, highly recommend!

Great content for founders to guide from day zero. Weekly case reading/discussions

Not too much work. Good breadth of topics. May be able to replicate a lot of the learnings from the Wasserman book by the same name.

Lots of cases and examples within this class. Also several guest speakers who are starting / started their own ventures and a few USC case alumni came in person. This class is a good amount of material each week but small frequent deliverables versus large project / group projects.

Easy class. A lot of discussions in class but few takeaways / actionable items. Some cases are outdated. Slides could be better prepared. Most of the technical discussions (e.g.: term sheets/founders' agreement) lack appropriate lecture/preparation.

Minimal workload and very insightful regardless of your desired career path. Learn a lot about what could go wrong when founding a company that can translate to any general business. Dan is also an excellent professor.

Easy class, Dan is the nicest professor and I have learned a lot. Readings and polls every class and a couple assignments. I have suggest taking this class if you are interested in some part of entrepreneurship

Class is easy, teaches you more about challenges startup leaders have rather than challenges of the start-up itself. Ex) finding the right founding partners or best way to set up equity.

I recommend taking the course with Lubinski, she is a more engaging professor. Also super case-heavy course.

Light workload, interesting cases without too much depth. Conversation-heavy.

This class is too soft..

You don't have to be going into entrepreurship to appreciate this class - if anything, it's probably most interesting to those who have no clue about entreprenurship as it covers the building blocks of starting your own company. It's not at all quant heavy (we cover simple pre-money/post-money and cap tables). This is a good 'easy' class to balance out any other heavy classes you're taking. We read 1-2 cases every week but they are interesting and fairly quick.

The Prof is excellent. She is very committed to creating an amazing learning enviroment. The Class is basically a Bachelor's level class. So, it is a bit easy for MBA students. It has several case studies. We learn a lot of important skills.

Great class that brings up many aspects of starting a business that I never considered. Professor Lubinski is incredibly considerate and invested in her students understanding the material. Would highly recommend it.

I had heard great things about this class so maybe my expectations were too high. There are 2 cases each week and polls. Case discussions are very surface-level and usually people just reiterate facts from the case, professor doesn't press class to dive deeper. Fairly easy class but you can get much more out of listening to podcasts or attending entreprenurial speaker events.