Catalog

Nuts and Bolts of New Ventures

Sloan School of Management MIT CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 11 lectures

For 36 years, Nuts and Bolts of New Ventures has been taught during the January Independent Activities Period (IAP) at MIT. It is designed to foster an understanding of how to start a new venture (for-profit and social/development). The course details the process from an idea's inception to the development of a successful new venture to deliver products and services enabled by the idea. Explores customer identification, the business/economic models, financial projections, legal and operational issues, and financing alternatives and sources. All sessions are taught by people who have actually launched or have been involved in successful ventures. In 2026, we added an additional session called The Blues-Print for Innovation. Featuring Bob Jones, the session ties together Jones's two passions: playing blues guitar and entrepreneurship.

Syllabus

  1. 1 Session 1, Part 1: Introduction: Most Startups Fail; How to Improve Your Odds
  2. 2 Session 1, Part 2: Market Identification and Sales: Finding Your Customer
  3. 3 Session 2, Part 2: How Are You Going to Make Money?—The Business/Venture Model
  4. 4 Session 3, Part 1: Legal Issues
  5. 5 Session 3, Part 2: Organizational and People Issues
  6. 6 Session 4, Part 1: Presenting Your Venture
  7. 7 Session 4, Part 2: Negotiation Skills
  8. 8 Session 5, Part 2: Financial Projections
  9. 9 Session 6, Part 1: Why Do You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?
  10. 10 Session 6, Part 2: Common Startup Mistakes
  11. 11 Winning SBIR Contracts

Course materials