Startup Creation and Funding
A practical four-day course that takes you from an idea to a venture ready to seek funding.
About this course
A practical four-day course that takes you from an idea to a venture ready to seek funding. You will test whether customers really have the problem you want to solve, design a business model, and plan a minimum viable product that lets you learn quickly without spending heavily.
The second half turns to money: simple forecasts, runway and the full range of funding options, from bootstrapping and angel investors to grants and loans. You finish by building and presenting a short investor pitch and receiving structured feedback, and you leave with an Alalamia certificate.
What you'll learn
- Test a business idea against real customer problems before committing money
- Design a business model using a structured canvas approach
- Plan and run a minimum viable product to learn quickly and cheaply
- Measure early traction with simple, meaningful indicators
- Build a basic financial forecast and estimate funding needs
- Compare funding options from personal savings to investors and grants
- Prepare and deliver a concise, persuasive investor pitch
Curriculum
- What makes a startup different from a small business
- Opportunity versus idea
- Common reasons startups fail
- Founder roles and team composition
- Defining the problem worth solving
- Customer segments and personas
- Problem interviews
- Validating demand before building
- The business model canvas
- Value propositions
- Channels and customer relationships
- Revenue streams and cost structure
- Build, measure, learn
- Forming testable hypotheses
- Pivot or persevere decisions
- Learning from small experiments
- Types of MVP
- Scoping the smallest useful version
- Collecting and reading feedback
- Iterating towards product and market fit
- Estimating market size
- Competitor mapping
- Positioning and differentiation
- Early go-to-market planning
- Start-up costs and running costs
- Simple revenue and cash forecasts
- Break-even analysis
- Burn rate and runway
- Bootstrapping and personal funds
- Friends, family and angel investors
- Venture capital and how it works
- Grants, competitions and crowdfunding
- Loans and microfinance
- How early-stage ventures are valued
- Equity, dilution and ownership
- Key terms in an investment agreement
- Choosing the right investor
- Structure of a pitch deck
- Telling the story with evidence
- Handling investor questions
- Practice pitches with feedback
Who it's for
Aspiring founders, early-stage entrepreneurs and innovation staff who want to launch and fund a new venture with less guesswork.
Before you start
- A business idea or early-stage venture is helpful but not required
Part of these Alalamia diplomas
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