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Entrepreneurship Path

Stanford GSB, Stanford University, and Silicon Valley provide exemplary conditions for idea incubation. The entrepreneurship path teaches you to scale your vision to market with precision and speed.

If this is your goal, you might focus on:

  • Experiential opportunities to test and iterate ideas, with access to unrivaled expertise
  • Big picture and systematic approaches to launch and lead a breakthrough venture
  • A low risk, high ROI learning environment to conduct early-market validation that taps a rich network of talent

Pursuing your idea for a venture while at Stanford GSB allows you to leverage the best and brightest students, guest speakers, and expert faculty to guide you along the way. At the end of your year in the program, you’ll have the confidence to launch your venture quickly, strategically, and with scalability.

MSx Alumni: Profiles in Entrepreneurship

Sample Electives

Below are courses you might consider if your path is entrepreneurship.

Startup Garage: Design An intensive, hands-on course utilizing the principles of design thinking, engineering, finance, business, and organizational skills to design and test new business concepts. Collaborative, multidisciplinary teams will identify an unmet customer need, design corresponding products or services, and develop business models to support the creation and launch of a startup.
Entrepreneurial Finance View the financial decision-making process of an entrepreneurial venture from early- to late-stages while exploring new developments like crowdfunding and liquidity provisions. Varied perspectives, from the CEO to the investor, are discussed so you fully understand the range of incentives involved in the context of negotiations.
Entrepreneurship: Formation of New Ventures This integrative course structured for future business owners focuses on the point of view of an entrepreneur or manager, rather than the passive investor. It emphasizes high-tech, early-stage, and diverse ventures.
Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital: Partnership for Growth Explore the current business landscape and the importance of the partnership between investors and entrepreneurs. Students connect with members of the entrepreneur and venture capital communities while investigating the rapid evolution of the investor sector, how investors differentiate in an “entrepreneur’s market”, and how investors work with entrepreneurs post-investment.

Featured Faculty

Stefanos Zenios

The Investment Group of Santa Barbara Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Operations, Information & Technology