Course Detail

The focus of this course is on the concepts and practice of creating a new business in the applied life sciences. The course has many components in our attempts to make it realistic and useful, and these can be collected into two major categories: identifying and evaluating business opportunities, and conceiving, writing, executing and defending a business plan.

The first category contains several components including understanding the technical nature and content of the current practices in an area - what is the technical state of the art - the nature of the market in the relevant area, and the nature of the competition? What are the technical hurdles, if any? A new idea can only be evaluated in the context of these issues, which makes the analysis fundamentally interdisciplinary.

The second category includes a wide range of conceptual and practical problems. These problems include, for example, how can one best develop a competitive advantage, formulate realistic goals, organize to meet those goals, assess the need for capital, recruit the right management team, gain the financial strength to survive and thrive, enter the market or create a new market, develop an intellectual property strategy, develop an appropriate FDA regulatory strategy and create a strategy for alliances and partnerships.

Student teams will be formed to create business plans for early stage ventures. The course will be taught as a seminar course with heavy student participation in every facet of the course. A number of guest speakers and discussion leaders, in addition to the faculty involved, will give the benefit of their experience in the field. Students will present their business plans to a panel of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and the KGI community.

Required Reading

Term Sheets & Valuations -A. Wilmerding, Aspatore Books (2003)
Seed Stage Venture Investing- William L. Robbins, Aspatore Books (2006)

Class 1: Ten Key Considerations for a Business Plan

Class 2: Integrating Technologies with Business/Market Needs

Class 3: How Early Stage Investors Find Deals; and in-class "Speed-Business Plan" (using one of the plan ideas that was not selected, class will brainstorm ideas for a collective business plan)

Class 4: Founders. Discussions with founders; War stories and insights

Class 5: How to Write a Business Plan (BP)

Class 6: Corporate Governance, Sarbanes-Oxley and New Business Ventures

Class 7: Academic and corporate partnerships in startup companies. Deal structures

Class 8: Funding negotiations, including Term Sheets, etc.

Class 9: First in-house Critique of Business Plans.

Class 10: Office Hours & Drop-In

Class 11: Company valuation techniques. Pre & post-money valuation.

Class 12: Role Play to Negotiate Term Sheets

Class 13: Exits - IPO's and Mergers & Acquisitions

Class 14: In-house Critique of Business Plans.

Class 15: Office Hours & Drop-In

Class 16: Final Business Plan presentations to panel of investors and entrepreneurs

Class Participation and Workshops  40%
Written Business Plan    30%
Oral Defense of Business Plan    30%