MGT 253 and MGT 354
Two courses, taken in sequence, in which you build a real venture. You arrive with a problem worth solving and leave having tested it against customers, funded it, and pitched it to investors and operators on a stage.
The sequence
Startup Lab is deliberately split. The first course is about finding a problem that is real. The second is about finding out whether solving it can be made to repeat. Most students take both, and the venture carries across.
Find the problem. Prove someone has it.
You start from an idea or from nothing at all, and spend the semester in customer discovery: interviewing, narrowing, and building the cheapest thing that could prove you wrong. By the end you have a prototype in front of real users and evidence about whether they want it.
Startup Lab I is heavy on framing and light on system economics. That is intentional. Before you model a business, you need to be sure there is one.
Make it repeat.
The constraint changes. In Startup Lab I the open question is whether anyone wants this. In Startup Lab II it is what stops this from happening a second time: unit economics, the value chain, who has to say yes, and which assumption would end the company if it turned out to be wrong.
Startup Lab II is the exact reverse of Startup Lab I in emphasis. Running the same method against a different constraint is what it means for an approach to be transferable rather than a checklist.
Funding
Funding is not a competition. Every team in Startup Lab receives funding, distributed directly to the team.
Startup Lab venture funding is supported by Santander.
Demo Day
Every Startup Lab section ends in Demo Day, where teams pitch live to industry experts and members of the Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, who score the ventures themselves.
Demo Day is closed to the public.
Next dates November 16 and 19, 2026
Enrollment
Add MGT 253 to your class schedule in CaneLink to take part in Startup Lab I. Add MGT 354 to take part in Startup Lab II.
