Venture Creation Tactics (15.388)

About the Class

Faculty

Advanced, intensive, project-based subject intended for solo-founders or startup teams already working on building a new, high-impact venture, with a refined business plan. Supports students in their development of data to derisk the opportunity of pursuing a new venture full-time for founders, investors, and new recruits. This lab-style class promotes rapid experimentation by connecting the dots from the frameworks, concepts, and first principles covered in the introductory entrepreneurship courses and guides students on how to tactically apply them in real-world situations. Topics include advanced early go-to-market, enhanced target customer profile and persona development, digital advertising, outbound sales, UX design, rapid prototyping, recruiting early team members, and executing a fundraising plan. Application required; consult instructor. All students welcome, including undergraduates and cross-registered students. No listeners.

Macauley Kenney

Macauley Kenney is an Entrepreneur in Residence and a lecturer at MIT Sloan and MIT D-Lab. Macauley is an executive leader at SurgiBox, a medical device venture creating novel surgical technologies. At SurgiBox, she oversaw the launch of the first ultraportable operating room, taking the product through the design for manufacturing process and into use on the battlefield in Ukraine. Macauley also served as the PI on a $2.5M SBIR P2 with US Air Force Special Operations Command, and as company liaison for DOD engagements. She is passionate about human-centered design and increasing the success of impact-based ventures, particularly in hardware. Macauley teaches manufacturing technologies, with a focus on adaptation within low-resource settings, at MIT’s D-Lab. She is also the author of two patents on OR technology. Prior to this she was an early joiner at a rapidly expanding consulting startup in Bogota, growing the company 4x in two years and overseeing the expansion into three new country offices: Kenya, Peru, and Morocco. A serial entrepreneur, Macauley has specialized in scaling organizations in emerging markets, and has led operational systems for ventures in the U.S., Rwanda, and Uganda. Additionally, she has studied early founding team dynamics and their impact on growth strategies. Her research has been featured in multiples news outlets, including Forbes and Engineering for Change. Macauley is an accomplished public speaker, winning the MIT Can Talk competition while at university, and the North American Present Around the World Competition. She frequently serves as a competition judge, and coaches public speaking with an emphasis on stage presence and narrative building. Macauley holds an MS in Technology and Policy from MIT, a Sustainability Certificate from MIT Sloan, and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from WPI. Outside of her work as an EIR she serves on the Council of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, an international professional engineering society.

Nagarjuna Venna

Nagarjuna Venna is the Co-founder, CPO & SVP of Strategic Alliances at BitSight.

Paul Cheek

Paul Cheek is a serial tech entrepreneur, software engineer, an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and a Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Paul currently teaches the "New Enterprises" course and previously taught the Advanced Entrepreneurship course, "Building an Entrepreneurial Venture: Advanced Tools and Techniques.” He built MIT's entrepreneurship platform, Orbit, and also coaches entrepreneurs in various programs like the MIT delta v accelerator, MIT fuse, Sandbox Innovation Fund, workshops, and hackathons. Paul is currently building Oceanworks, the global marketplace for recycled ocean plastic materials and products aimed at accelerating the market for recycled ocean plastic to clean up our oceans. Prior, Paul co-founded Work Today, a venture-backed digital staffing and recruiting company. As CTO, he designed and built the company's technology platform and grew the business from 0 to 50,000 workers. Paul has also built technologies for and consulted with LogMeIn, BlackRock, Prudential, Mazda, and more.