The Miami Method · Venture Mode
The Miami Method is how the Business School teaches structured problem solving. In a venture, the problem is not handed to you — it has to be found. These are the same six steps, run in discovery mode.
AI accelerates
Compresses the work — synthesis, modeling, building, stress-testing.
Judgment governs
Decides what the work means, and what to do about it.
In a venture the first four steps are a design thinking loop — empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. The last two are where the loop stops and someone has to commit.
Whose pain is this, and will anyone pay to remove it?
Empathize → DefineAI accelerates
Synthesizes hundreds of interviews and market signals into candidate pain points in hours.
Judgment governs
AI can cluster complaints. Only a founder decides which pain is worth a company.
Primary inStartup Lab I · Elevator Pitch | supporting: Hackathon, Startup Lab II, Business Plan Competition
What must be true for this to work — unit economics, value chain, who must say yes?
Define → ReframeAI accelerates
Generates system maps, competitor teardowns, and market-sizing scaffolds.
Judgment governs
Which constraint is actually binding — and which assumption would kill us.
Primary inStartup Lab II · Business Plan Competition | supporting: Startup Lab I
What is the cheapest experiment that could prove us wrong?
IdeateAI accelerates
Proposes experiment designs and generates testable variants at scale.
Judgment governs
Sequencing risk: testing the assumption that matters, not the one that is easy.
Primary inStartup Lab I · Startup Lab II · Hackathon | supporting: Business Plan Competition
Build it, and put it in front of real users.
Prototype → TestAI accelerates
Builds the prototype itself. AI has collapsed the cost of a working MVP toward zero.
Judgment governs
Telling real evidence from politeness; refusing to over-read a sample of twelve.
Primary inStartup Lab I · Startup Lab II · Hackathon | supporting: Demo Day
Pivot or persevere?
Test → IterateAI accelerates
Pattern-finds across experiments and surfaces contradictions in the evidence.
Judgment governs
Signal versus noise, and naming the uncertainty that cannot be resolved before committing.
Primary inStartup Lab I · Startup Lab II · Business Plan Competition | supporting: Hackathon, Elevator Pitch, Demo Day
Commit — and pitch it.
Where the loop stopsAI accelerates
Red-teams the pitch, stress-tests objections, models downside scenarios.
Judgment governs
Accountability. Investors and mentors back founders, not models.
Primary inStartup Lab I · Startup Lab II · Elevator Pitch · Business Plan Competition · Demo Day | supporting: Hackathon
The through-line
Entrepreneurship is centered on human judgment, creativity, leadership, and execution.
The Miami Method teaches students how to identify opportunities, evaluate risks, test assumptions, and build sustainable ventures. AI tools enhance the learning process, but they do not change who is accountable for the decision. Graduates leave knowing when to trust a model — and how to defend a decision that goes against one.
No matter where you are on your entrepreneurship journey, our courses, competitions, and events are designed to help you benefit from the Miami Method. Students can engage with classes, programs, and events at multiple stages, and build a learning path that aligns with their goals, interests, and venture development needs.
Each row below is one course, competition, program, or event. Each column is one of the six method steps. A tile shows whether that step is where the offering does its primary work, something it touches in support, or outside its scope.
Every filled tile is orange over green, because the chart also shows how each offering combines entrepreneurial decision-making with modern AI tools. Technology can accelerate research, analysis, and execution, but entrepreneurs remain responsible for making informed business decisions. The goal is to teach students how to use AI while developing the critical thinking required to build successful ventures.
Pass one · Discovery
Identify, validate, and refine a startup idea, then build an MVP and test it on customers who were not asked to be nice.
Primary method stages: 1, 3–6
Pass two · Sell, scale, grow
The customer is known; the constraint is growth. Build out the business model, the unit economics, and the value chain.
Primary method stages: 2–6
A weekend alongside the School of Engineering. A problem is chosen in the first hours, then it is all approach and build.
Primary method stages: 3, 4
A short pitch to external judges forces the two hardest steps together: name the problem, and commit to a recommendation.
Primary method stages: 1, 6
Decompose the business, synthesize what the evidence says, and defend it to judges who will find the weak assumption.
Primary method stages: 2, 5, 6
The event each Startup Lab section ends in. The build and the evidence are done; what is on trial is the ask.
Primary method stages: 6
Across all six steps
Founders and operators who have made these calls before — and can tell you when to override the model.
The judgment layer
Governance and ecosystem access. Opens doors across Miami and holds the program to a standard.
Governance
Scaling is not a seventh step. It is the same six steps run a second time, on a different problem — the constraint is no longer “does anyone want this” but “what stops this from repeating.” Lab I is heavy on framing and light on system economics. Lab II is the exact reverse. That is what a method being transferable actually looks like.
Courses carry their own prerequisites and sequence — Lab II follows Lab I for a reason. What does not change is the method underneath them: wherever you are in the program, you are working the same six steps and using the same language as everyone else in the room.
While technology continues to evolve, the principles of entrepreneurship remain consistent. Students learn how to identify customer needs, develop business models, test assumptions, evaluate opportunities, and create sustainable ventures. Emerging tools may change how work is completed, but the core entrepreneurial skills remain essential.
The specific tools you learn this year may look very different by the time you graduate. Technologies will change, but entrepreneurship will not.
Knowing how to identify opportunities, understand customers, and make sound business decisions is what compounds over time. That is the value of a method, and why we teach one rather than a collection of tools.
Building used to be the bottleneck. Today, ideas can be tested, prototypes can be created, and products can be launched faster than ever before.
When execution becomes easier, success depends even more on choosing the right problem, validating real customer needs, and building a sustainable business model. That is where students spend their time in the Miami Method.
