Who takes the course?

  1. Students looking for a Ycombinator, TechStars or Excelerate experience and mentoring….all while building a real product and earning course credit.
  2. Students will be drawn from many schools including Kellogg, McCormick, Weinberg, Medill, Law School, and Communications.
  3. Experienced undergrads and graduate students work together.
  4. All teams will include members with technical, business, and design skills needed to produce the product.
  5. Apply as an individual, but have the chance to build your team once you are accepted
  6. Students apply to the program and faculty match expertise and interest to create a great, like-minded team.
  7. Teams are coached by a faculty, industry advisor, and experienced developers through the process.

What will we do?

  1. The course runs winter and spring to enable your team to plan, prototype, and launch business.
  2. Teams will define their project idea collaboratively, given a broad project area
  3. Project areas include iPad/Tablet App, Mobile Applications, New Media, Social Gaming, Twitter or Facebook Apps, eCommerce/Deals, Analytics, Cloud, Big Data or ideas from students in the program.
  4. Students will spend the first quarter building out their idea, including understanding market opportunity, building a business canvas, and simultaneously building a prototype product, all of which will be judged by a panel of faculty and advisory board at the end of the first quarter.
  5. In the second quarter, teams will iterate their product and launch it into the market. They will gather feedback from initial users and present a final presentation.
  6. Teams will be able to continue to work on their projects after the completion of the course. Past NUvention:Web teams have gone on to make TechCrunch, PCMag, Rolling Stone and GigaOM headlines and join incubators, while others are bootstrapping and building their businesses to this day.
  7. Learn about the other disciplines through interaction in weekly team meetings that are built into the class schedule—meetings each week are a combination of lecture and working with your team and coach.

Who will help us?

  1. Each team gets a faculty advisor with technical or domain expertise in the project area being pursued.
  2. Guest lecturers who have built and launched successful tech businesses and products will give unique insight into the process. Such speakers include the founders of Groupon, Ben Slivka (Microsoft), Bob Plaschke (Sonim), the founders of Feedburner, venture capitalists, and more.
  3. An all-star set of professors from Kellogg, The Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in McCormick, the Computer Science department, and other schools.
  4. Professors from past years included: Larry Birnbaum(McC), Fabian Bustamante (McC), Alok Choudhary (McC/K), Nosh Contractor (McC/Comm), Kris Hammond (McC), Mike Marasco (McC), Chris Riesback (McC, SESP).
  5. The course is chaired and guided by alum Todd Warren, who has taught software product development in McCormick, and spent 20 years building and launching software, web, and mobile businesses as a Vice President at Microsoft.
  6. A panel of advisors including successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and past executives of companies like Google will evaluate and advise student work.