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Learner Reviews & Feedback for How to Finance and Grow Your Startup – Without VC by University of London

4.6
stars
456 ratings

About the Course

Who? If you’re an entrepreneur at any stage of your journey, or even an aspiring one, and you need money to start or grow your business, this course is for you. What? This course will introduce, and help you put to use in your startup, the five models through which your customers can – and will, if you ask them! – fund your business. These five time-tested models have been put to use by entrepreneurial superstars like Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and more. Sadly, though, the five models are rarely talked about and not widely understood. Until now! The five models will be brought to life by the real-world stories of an inspiring collection of incredibly creative entrepreneurs from around the world – including successes and failures – through a series of captivating no-holds-barred interviews with founders and others, and investors, too. Why? More than two generations ago, the venture capital community – VC’s, business angels, incubators, and others – convinced the entrepreneurial world that writing business plans and raising venture capital constituted the twin centerpieces of entrepreneurial endeavor. They did so for very good reasons: the sometimes astonishing returns they’ve delivered to their investors and the incredibly large and valuable companies their ecosystem has created. But the vast majority of fast growing companies never take any angel or venture funding. Are they onto something that most of today’s entrepreneurial ecosystem has missed? Indeed, should a business angel or VC be seen as the first port of call for getting your nascent entrepreneurial venture off the ground or growing it faster? Perhaps not. How? You’ll be asked to do a series of exercises – out in the real world – to put your growing toolkit to use in your business or the one you hope to start. Hands-on, practical tools to help your business start and thrive – without venture capital. You’ll join our discussion board of fellow participants, if you like, and learn from others who are putting the tools to work, just as you are. And to suit today’s fast-paced lifestyles, we’ve broken what you’ll get – short lessons, interviews, thought-provoking questions, even some optional things to read – into bite-sized chunks, so you can log in and grab them whenever and wherever you are. And what else? If, after checking out and perhaps completing this course, you find your company in a position where seeking venture capital turns out to be the right thing to do next, John Mullins leads an inspiring and hands-on executive education course at London Business School – this one face-to-face – called Financing the Entrepreneurial Business. There, among a room full of investors and entrepreneurs, you’ll study a series of captivating real-world cases and learn everything an entrepreneur – or an investor, for that matter – needs to know to handle the person who sits across the deal table and take an entrepreneurial business from start-up to exit. See https://www.london.edu/education-and-development/executive-education/topic/finance/financing-the-entrepreneurial-business#.WIVY_FyTQ-0 for info....

Top reviews

SK

Jul 18, 2020

A beautiful and well oriented course which helps proving your concept of business by customer funding and no external venture capital. Thank you so much to the course instructor and the whole team.

KK

May 12, 2017

It was an amazing opportunity wherein we had a great chance to both learn about various customer funded models through interviews, guest talks and practice them through assignments in parallel

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101 - 125 of 138 Reviews for How to Finance and Grow Your Startup – Without VC

By Nilesh C

Aug 16, 2017

Liked The Faculty.

By Roberto R

Feb 22, 2019

Great course!!!

By Rania R

Jan 14, 2024

amazing course

By Harshal S T

Sep 23, 2019

Great Topic.

By Anas

May 9, 2016

Excellent!

By maikel j p c

Jul 7, 2023

wonderful

By Akshay A

Jun 27, 2017

Excellent

By ELSA N D

Dec 13, 2020

its good

By Folomiiev O

Sep 17, 2017

cool.

By Or K K

Jun 12, 2023

good

By XIAOYU L

Nov 25, 2020

good

By Andrea J

Nov 6, 2017

The content by John is great. But there is not enough support for the course. File cannot be uploaded easily. Grading by peers is questionable. There're usually 3 people who review your work, but in one of the assignment, there is only 1 person who grade my paper. In his opinion, the paper has not met "the criteria" (actually, it did). I cannot re-submit paper afterwards, and have to wait for the whole next cycle of course to have the paper review again. This is time consuming, and very frustrating.

By Frederick B

Jan 15, 2017

Definitely worth taking! Eye opener on lots of issues and topics. I took the course while in the middle of launching my venture. I will definitely put some of what I learned there in motion and certainly keep all in mind before planing my next move.

The course rang lots of bells as i already got VCs buying shares in some of my companies. I would have had taken the course before, I would certainly have done things differently.

Better late than never!

Thanks J Mullins and LBS

By Pedro T

Apr 29, 2016

The lecture / interview approach brings diversity and different views on the table. The topic of the MOOC is actually quite simple, and it's its simplicity that makes it so important - first thought for the large majority of entrepreneurs should be to raise money by their own means, ie building a sellable product and finance the business through customers. The fact that it isn't so nowadays, is the reason for so many failures and it's also why this course is so relevant.

By SreeChandan N

Oct 9, 2017

Very good course on Entrepreneurship, especially for people who do Not have much experience in this field. Experiences from various Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists is invaluable!

By Armand S

Aug 18, 2016

I really enjoy interview with founders . This course give me lot of insights to founded by venture with customers and involve them as soon as possible. Thanks

By Sergey G

Aug 13, 2016

I found this course quite interesting, it made be consider I perspective I previously hadn't. The only drawback is that it is rather slow in places.

By MNejc

Sep 27, 2018

Enjoyed the course, learned about how to finance the startup without venture capitalists and finished before expected date.

By Rajat N S

Apr 27, 2020

After the grading process, At least the tutor should look at the Assignments submitted so as to provide fair result.

By Peter L

Nov 6, 2018

I learnt a lot from John Mullins and his guests. It will definitely help me in growing my business. Thank you.

By DESDOUITS F

May 2, 2020

very insightful even though some examples are slightly outdated

By Kaspars S

Jul 20, 2016

Valuable not only for those who wanna start without VC's

By Siddharth P

Jan 19, 2018

Best in class and inspiring for future entrepreneurs..

By Madan A

Jul 5, 2018

An Excellent Course. Wish we could go in more depth!

By Edward B

May 10, 2016

A great, practical approach to growing a startup