If you end your entrepreneurship class by having students pitch their companies, you may have seen:
A handful of pitches are great, but most are…meh.
Pitching the Process
When we shift away from a Shark Tank-style idea pitch to a process pitch, students walk through the iterations of their business model canvases throughout the course, telling the story of:
- What assumptions they made along the way
- How they tested those assumptions
- What they changed in their business model as a result
- What assumptions they want to test next
The goal of this Process Pitch is for students to show they have learned a process for finding successful business models. This approach:
- Emphasizes skill development
- Values testing business models “outside the building”
- Engages all students in the process
In process pitches, students demonstrate:
- They understand the business model validation process
- They applied that process and evolved their business model based on experimentation
- The entire process was led by their customers’ emotional needs/problems
The reason this approach is so engaging is because it focuses students on skill acquisition: business modeling, testing business model assumptions, customer interviews, etc. Because you assess students on their process, they are incentivized to test their business model and report accurate results. The emphasis is on the students’ journey, not their outcome; the goal is not success or failure but what they learned during the process.
Learn more about Pitching the Process here.
Process Pitch Winners
We recently held a Process Pitch competition for the thousands of students using the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum, and students from Cal Poly won with their idea Spruce.ly. Out of many great entries, this amazing team stood out because they:
- Demonstrated they learned skills (proven by the number of assumptions they invalidated)
- Conducted customer interviews in a way that changed their business model
- Ran several experiments including multiple ads campaigns, and user click-mapping on their MVP
Set Your Students Up For Success This Spring
Similar to how we redesigned the antiquated Shark Tank pitches, we created the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum (ExEC) as an engaging experience that accommodates in-person, online, and hybrid classes anywhere from 8 to 15 weeks long.
We weave a cohesive thread throughout the curriculum, with a combination of personally relevant exercises that cohesively teach a set of real-world entrepreneurial skills. Professors at more than 120 colleges and universities find their students highly engaged from the first exercise where students discover their passions to the last experience where they pitch their process.
We created course shells for all of the major learning management systems, so it takes less than 5 minutes to get your new course imported.
This spring, if you want to save time while engaging your students, use “the best entrepreneurship curriculum available” – structured, cohesive, interactive experiences that will engage your students in deep learning.
Engage Your Students This Spring
If you’re looking for classes that buzz with excitement and energy with games, competitions, and activities that engage students while teaching them real-world skills . . .
Preview ExEC and see if it can help you and your students!
What’s Next?
In an upcoming post, we will share information about our upcoming Winter Summit where we will share some exciting new exercises!
Subscribe here to be the first to grab a “seat” at the Summit.
