Mastering Startup Essentials, Funding and Law in Entrepreneurship with Coursera
The holiday season is here and you are probably ready to spend some time away from your business, concentrating on other things like welcoming the New Year and spending time with family and friends. This is great, of course, but what is known to be the nature of natural born entrepreneurs, it will be difficult to completely forget about the fact that you are running a startup.
It doesn’t matter in which stage is your entrepreneurial journey, what your expertise is and what your product is, there are three things that will always be useful to know: the essentials of entrepreneurship, how to secure funding for your company, and learning about the critical legal issues in entrepreneurship. Here you can find three courses that will help you learn a lot about these three important subjects. It doesn’t matter where you are located – nowadays learning and mastering useful skills knows no limits!
Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking and Action
University of California, Irvine
About the course as overviewed on Coursera: “Success in business can be greatly enhanced with an understanding of key entrepreneurial characteristics and competencies solutions. This interactive course provides potential entrepreneurs with the knowledge of succeeding in an entrepreneurial opportunity. Topics include: how creativity, opportunity and feasibility are best evaluated; business strategies for new businesses; importance of a business plan; achieving success in a new business. At the end of the course students will have the skills and confidence to evaluate starting a business, in addition to becoming more enterprising in how they approach their roles should they decide to work in organizations.”
New Venture Finance: Startup Funding for Entrepreneurs
University of Maryland, College Park
About the course as overviewed on Coursera: “Examine the many financing options available to get your new venture funded. Learn the basics of finance, valuations, dilution and non-dilutive funding sources. Understand capital structure for new ventures, term sheets and how to negotiate them, and the differences between early-stage versus later-stage financing. Develop an understanding of how to develop winning investor pitches, who and when to pitch, how to avoid common mistakes that limit the effectiveness of the pitch, and how to ‘get to the close’. Key questions answered within the course include: * When to raise outside capital? * What kind of investors invest by stage and where to find them? * What are your fundraising options? * What are the key components of the term sheet? * How to perform company valuations? * How to pitch to investors? * What techniques help the entrepreneur ‘get to the close’?”
Law and the Entrepreneur
Northwestern University
About the course as overviewed on Coursera: “Are you a passionate entrepreneur with a new business idea, but feeling intimidated by the law? Or perhaps you are a lawyer or aspiring lawyer looking to break into the exciting world of start-ups? This course addresses the legal aspects of entrepreneurship, and is appropriate both for entrepreneurs and lawyers who hope to represent entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs face many challenges as they pursue a new business idea. With the right legal tools, they can take steps that provide significant legal protections and avoid future liability.”