What is this?

There’s no better place to explore building a startup than during your time as a student at UC Berkeley. Surrounded by ambitious & talented people and industry leading professors, there’s endless potential to create the next big thing. This course is designed to teach and inspire students to use their knowledge to build startups. We will be going over the basic building blocks of a successful startup and connect this knowledge to emerging fields. In addition, we will be providing an overview of the startup scene at Berkeley, pointing out resources ready to help students get a headstart.

Looking to take How To Build The Future in Fall 2017? Sign up here.

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Some recent news

Class Schedule + Speakers

The class will start in February at Banatao Auditorium, Sutardja Dai hall, and be on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7 to 8:30PM. The first day of class is Thursday Feb. 16th.

Auditing policy: Seats are reserved for registered students but empty seats will be filled in on a first come first serve basis.

Week Of	Tuesday	Thursday
2/13/2017	No Class	Jeremy Fiance Founder, The House, Forbes 30u30
2/20/17	2/21/17 Jason Wang Founder, Caviar	2/23/17 Joseph Hellerstein Professor, EECS, Founder, Trifacta
2/27/17	2/28/17 Holly Liu Founder, Kabam	3/1/17 Amy Herr Professor, Bioengineering, Herrlab Kelly Gardner Ph.D Bioengineering, MIT Top Innovator Under 35
3/06/17	3/7/17 Justin Kan Cofounder of Twitch, Zero-F	3/9/17 Kurt Keutzer Professor, EECS UC Berkeley
3/13/17	3/14/17 Jack McCauley Cofounder, Oculus Peter Boyce General Catalyst Partners	3/16/17 Ryan Petersen, Sean Linehan Co-founder + Director of Product Flexport
3/20/17	3/21/17 Marc Tarpenning CoFounder, Tesla Motors	3/23/17 CITRIS Foundry On Campus Startup Incubator
4/3/17	4/4/17 Jessica Mah Founder, inDinero	4/6/17 Panel with Josh Elman Partner, Greylock Partners
4/10/17	4/11/17 Kevin Hartz Founder of Eventbrite, Founders Fund Partner	4/13/17 Free Ventures On Campus Startup Incubator
4/17/17	4/19/17 Wednesday, 2:30 - 4:00PM Vinod Khosla Cofounder, Sun Microsystems, Khosla Ventures	4/20/17 Joseph Gonzales Professor, EECS, Cofounder, Turi
4/24/17	4/25/17 Maran Nelson Cofounder & CEO, Clara Labs	4/27/17 Shervin Pishevar Cofounder Hyperloop One Cofounder Sherpa Capital

Course Policies

Course Structure

The course meets twice a week. The first class of the week will feature an entrepreneur to share their experiences and knowledge in a particular area of building a startup. The second class of the week will tie that content into an emerging field that has high potential for disruption or introduce students to a startup resource on campus.

Assignments

Assignments will include preparing well-drafted and insightful questions for each speaker on a weekly basis. Each homework will be worth 1 point and in order to pass the class, you must have at least 7 points by the end of the semester. There will also be a short paper (2 pages) at the end of the semester based on student’s comprehension of articles (i.e. Paul Graham’s Essays)

Attendance

Attendance is mandatory and will be taken every class period. In the case of an absence, please notify us ahead of time; you can also keep up with the speaker series online as we’ll likely record them. Students with more than a total of 4 absences will be failed.

Grading

Grading will be based on attendance (30%), assignments (50%), course evaluation (10%), and paper (10%). Students must receive above 70% in the class in order to receive a Pass.

Reading

The class will have required articles for reading (will be disbursed later). These articles will be used to complete the written paper.

Outside of articles for the paper, there is no required reading in this class. We do have a couple of recommended books:

Zero to One (Peter Thiel)
The Hard Things about Hard Things (Ben Horowitz)
Hackers and Painters (Paul Graham)

Required Materials

A computer with internet access is required to complete assignment. If a student is unable to access a computer we will also take assignments on paper on a case by case basis.

About The Class

Build the Future is student run DeCal class founded by Jimmy Liu and Zuhayeer Musa. We started the class to serve as an important bridge for more students to explore entrepreneurial pathways. While there are a lot of entrepreneurial resources available at Berkeley, there is no easy introduction to the startup scene and we hope our course will pave the road for future founders.

We are hosted and sponsored by The House, a startup institute built for Berkeley, and home to Berkeley’s founders. The House helps build foundations for great businesses with a support platform providing founders at all stages with what they need, when they need it.