SLP 2024 Curriculum
Fellowship Dates: January 09 - June 18, 2024
Classes are virtual, with select (optional, but encouraged) in-person classes. Please note, due to physical space availability some in person classes may shift or be added.
2024
C01a Tue 1/9 Welcome + Entrepreneurial Journey -- Part I
C01b Tue 1/16 Welcome + Entrepreneurial Journey -- Part II
C02 Tue 1/23 Failure Keynote & SLP Basics - IN PERSON
C03 Tue 1/30 Design Thinking for Company Focus
C04 Tue 2/06 Leading from Within
C05a Tue 2/13 Product Fair -- Part I
C05b Tue 2/20 Product Fair -- Part II
C06 Tue 2/27 Customer Development- IN PERSON
C07 Tue 3/05 Co-Founder Conflict
C08 Tue 3/12 Mission, Vision & Values
C09 Tue 3/19 Product Development Lifecycle
C10 Tue 3/26 Startup Metrics
C11 Tue 4/02 Spring Social - IN PERSON
C12 Tue 4/09 Sales and Partnerships
C13a Tue 4/16 Pitch Workshop - PART I - IN PERSON
C13b Tue 4/23 GTM Strategy
C14 Tue 4/30 Startup Financing by Stage
C15 Tue 5/07 How to Run a Tight Fundraising Process
C16 Tue 5/14 Legal, Finance and Operations
C17 Tue 5/21 Pitch Workshop — Part II - IN PERSON
C18 Tue 5/28 Hiring and Team Building
C19 Tue 6/04 Mental Health
C20 Tue 6/11 Pivot, Persist or Stop
C21 Tue 6/18 Graduation & EJ Update IN PERSON
C22 Sat 6/22 Grad BBQ- IN PERSON
Curriculum Details
Your Entrepreneurial Journey
A critical component of your education at SLP is learning from your peers. During this class, you'll give the fellows a brief overview of your entrepreneurial journey. This isn't a startup pitch - this is about why you've chosen to become an entrepreneur and where you hope the path will take you. SLP classes are customized to you and this is your chance to tell us how we can help you grow.
Failure Keynote & SLP Basics
Startups are about being resilient. Hear from a well-known VC and ex-founder who candidly shares his failures and successes in founding companies.
Authentic leadership
Leadership in a startup is more than a strong pitch at a competition, or even a brilliant product - it's the ability to enable your team to achieve more collectively than they could individually. This class will highlight the commonalities among successful leaders in the tech sectors as well as pitfalls to avoid.
Product Fair 1 & 2
The product fair is an opportunity to show other fellows your product and company, and to solicit their feedback for further growth. You'll demo your product, and tell the fellow peers what you've been working on - your successes and your failures, so that they and the SLP alumni network can help move you closer to your goals.
Cofounder Conflict
As entrepreneurs, you and your cofounder will immerse yourselves in an environment fraught with high risk and a perpetual lack of information. The stress of such an environment will manifest in conflict, and what you do with that conflict determines the fate of your company. In this class, we'll address how to deescalate conflict and focus on the fundamental causes of tension, and how to approach resolving that tension.
Customer Development (Jobs to be Done)
You've likely heard it said that a successful product is a painkiller, not a vitamin. The process for identifying which of those categories your product falls in is critical to your company's success. In this class, we'll overview the tenants of the lean startup methodology, of developing tight feedback loops, and of team communication to increase your chances of finding product-market fit.
Mission Vision Values
This class helps fellows build a strong foundation for their company. Mission, Vision and Values help founders communicate their startup to customers, employees and investors. As your company grows, it’s important this defining foundational layer is already in place so that you as a founder can decide what is within scope of building in the product or not.
Product Development Lifecycle
As your product(s) move from inception to your customers, it will traverse many stages along the way. Each of those stages requires different forms of talent, financing, and feedback. In this class, we'll explore each of the primary stages from the perspective of hardware and software alike.
Startup Metrics
Understand why metrics are critical to every company and learn about standard measures and frameworks. You'll practice developing experiments and custom metrics at a given stage of your company and get expert perspectives on key metrics for different objectives. You'll walk away with tools to adopt standard metrics and create your own.
Spring Social
Being a founder requires emotional support. The holiday party will give you a chance to take a break from company-building and focus exclusively on your personal relationships with other fellows. At the end of the day, entrepreneurship is a bumpy road - you'll want a few friends in the car with you, along for the ride.
Pitch Workshop
A key part of being a CEO is the ability to pitch - pitch your product, your team, yourself. And it's not only to investors - it's to potential hires, to strategic partners, to distributors. During this eight hour class, we'll help you hone your pitch and give you the opportunity to pitch in front of a panel of top NYC venture capitalists.
Culture, DEI, and Hiring
A founder’s ability to hire and lead their teams is one of the most (if not the most) critical determinants of their business success. The culture you create from the start can live on (and take on a life of its own), thus its important to integrate a focus on on diversity, equity, and inclusion from the beginning.
Legal, Finance, and Operations
In order to create and run a successful start-up there are many logistical, financial and operational needs. For most founders, these are new areas of expertise that require research, self-teaching, or partnership with outside service providers. Understanding how to manage these details is critical to running your company on a day-to-day. During this class fellows will learn the basics around legal and finance areas of need for early-stage start-ups including basic knowledge, common pitfalls, and recommended resources to learn more.
Startup Financing by Stage
Much of startup development is dominated by financing. At SLP, our focus is on helping you learn how to develop a strong product in the right market - but doing that often requires financial partners. This class highlights the key things to know at each stage of the fundraising process - from the first steps to post Series A.
Mental Health
Mental Health is a challenge we all face in some capacity, exacerbated by the challenges of being a founder and often failed to address. This feels even more heightened b/c of Covid. To be a strong leader you must manage yourself and your mental health. During this class we want to create a safe space to raise and normalize mental health for founders as well as to provide fellows with some tools and resources to manage their own mental health.
Term Sheet Breakdown
Obtaining interest from an investor if the first step in the financing process. From there, you and your financial partner will have to negotiate a series of terms on the investment, which are summarized in a term sheet. During this class, you'll learn the different types of terms you may receive from your investor by competing with your classmates to achieve the best terms in a mock investment round.
Go to Market Strategy
The factors of successful startups include a product that solves a market need and a communications machine to let the world know. As part of this class, we'll discuss how to gain good press for your team, what to do when bad press hits, and how content marketing can play an effective role in building and shaping your brand.
Sales & Partnerships
Startup sales isn't just about getting as much press as you can, or attending a few conferences. It's an iterative, quantitative process that can be honed over time - first, maybe by one or two individuals in your company's early days, but with time, across large teams. Learn the key metrics you should be paying attention to, and how to experiment with different sales channels.
Pivot or Persist
A reality of the startup pursuit is the possibility of needing to shut down your company. But how do you know when it's time to shut down, versus time to power through a rough patch? We'll give you the tools to make this decision, and coach you on how to communicate your decision to your team and your investors.
Graduation
After seven months, your time as an SLP fellow has come to a close. However, your time as an SLP alumni is just beginning. During graduation, we'll take the opportunity to recognize your achievements and induct you into the SLP alumni community