Ready to begin your entrepreneurial journey?

Ready to begin your entrepreneurial journey?

It was a packed house at MaRS Discovery District last week as we kicked off another season of Entrepreneurship 101—Canada’s largest live and online entrepreneurship course. Over the past 10 years, the course has inspired over 150,000 attendees to delve deeper into what it’s really like to be an entrepreneur. Many of these participants have gone on to launch their own successful businesses.

Entrepreneurship 101 is designed for startups

Entrepreneurship 101 covers the fundamentals of starting and building a new venture. It is NOT a general business course. The key difference between a startup and an established organization is that a startup is constantly searching for its business model and product/market fit.

Over the last few years, tools and processes have been developed to support the challenges often faced by startups. These include Steve Blank’s customer development theory, Eric Reis’ lean startup and the business model canvas by Alexander Osterwalder. Entrepreneurship 101 explores these tools and arms you with knowledge and advice to help you launch and grow a successful business.

Entrepreneurship 101 is organized into five modules that cover:

  1. Testing your ideas and turning them into a business
  2. Defining your business model and protecting your ideas
  3. Identifying and entering the marketplace that’s right for you
  4. Managing your finances and building a team
  5. Funding your business and preparing an investor pitch

The course also provides an opportunity to hear from successful entrepreneurs and startup founders through our Lived It Lectures and Meet the Entrepreneurs sessions.

Entrepreneurship can be learned

At MaRS, we believe that like any discipline, entrepreneurship can be learned. Whether you’ve launched your own company, are working for a startup team or are curious to see what entrepreneurship is all about, this course has something for you.

See what we covered last week

To learn more about the course structure and format as well as why entrepreneurship is important for supporting today’s economies, check out our brief course introduction:

Curious to know what it is really like to be an entrepreneur? Chris Draper, CEO and Founder of OStheory, talks about being a founder, the trough of sorrow and other things you should know before starting out:

How likely is it that your startup will succeed? Jon Worren, MaRS Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Senior Director for MaRS Entrepreneurship Programs, outlines the evolution and trajectory of a typical startup as well as some of the fundamental processes that contribute to a startup’s success:

MaRS offers a range of other services for founders and startups. To learn more about whether these apply to you, hear from Krista Jones, Lead, Work and Learning, at MaRS:

Next week: Four Season’s founder and chairman, Isadore Sharp

Join us next week to hear from Four Season’s founder and chairman, Isadore Sharp, in conversation with MaRS CEO, Ilse Treurnicht.

Entrepreneurship 101 course resources

And search “Entrepreneurship 101” on iTunes U.