The Psychology of Start-up Teams

Leading Start-up Teams --- 9 out of 10 start-up teams fail. The majority of these failures lie not in the product or in the market, but rather in the people dynamics within the start-up team. This course is specifically designed to be one of the first courses in the world to specifically focus on how start-ups can manage the people problems and challenges core to start-up life. The objective of this course is therefore to provide you with the tools, skills, and experiences needed to successfully manage the people dynamics within start-up teams. To accomplish this, the course will bridge cutting-edge science on team dynamics and entrepreneurship with practical frameworks, experiential exercises, and well-known guest speakers (including notable start-up CEOs and venture capital partners). The course will enable you to diagnose the functioning of any start-up team in your environment and provide you with tips and tools to develop and implement interventions to improve the people-side of start-ups. Topics we will cover include how to choose cofounders and hire the dream team, effective leadership in start-ups, motivating start-up teams, crafting vision and culture, establishing roles and norms, decision-making in start-up teams, and managing distributed start-up teams.