Winner Announcements: Startup School in Partnership with International Trade Institute

10X INNOVATION LAB PARTNERS WITH TAITRA TO DEVELOP THE NEXT GENERATION ENTREPRENEURS

This past month, 10x Innovation Lab completed its 5 month long intensive entrepreneurship program with the International Trade Institute (ITI) which is under TAITRA's jurisdiction.

Over 20+ weeks, the 113 students enrolled in the program learned about Silicon Valley innovation and how to build success startup companies from the ground up through a combination of highly regarded frameworks and content and hands on experience.

THE PROGRAM FORMAT

Led by Aaron McDaniel, a faculty member at UC Berkeley’s top rated Haas School of Business where he teaches entrepreneurship and innovation, students had the opportunity to do what entrepreneurs do in the real world. Students joined into teams, evaluated potential venture ideas and market trends and interacted with potential customers and partners. They had the opportunity to build prototypes of their products and services (MVPs, Minimum Viable Products), create landing pages, videos and other marketing materials and developed investor pitch decks. The program included both in-person learning sessions and both lectures and workshops via interactive webinar.

Topics covered through the program’s curriculum included: business idea identification and evaluation, new product development, effective customer interactions, marketing, effective networking, pitching investors, pivoting and adapting your venture, business model creation, company culture development, building a strong team of employees and advisors, and scaling and exiting a business. Students also learned how to implement the topics they learned not just in new startup ventures but also in established companies and government organizations. The course material included real-life examples from Silicon Valley and global ventures that have raised billions of dollars in venture capital and exited with billions of dollars in profits.

Through reading real-life case studies from the Harvard Business School, students learned about the types of decisions entrepreneurs and business leaders must make to grow their companies. Through accomplished Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor guest speakers, students had the opportunity to interact with people who have put course concepts into practice while getting the chance to ask them questions about the keys to their successes. Students also had the opportunity to be mentored by Aaron McDaniel and 10x's Aya Iwasuji, as they built their businesses.

At the end of the 20-week program, students had the opportunity to apply all that they learned by submitting a final project that tracked their progress and what they learned over the course of the program. Students also had the chance to pitch their businesses to the [ITI] leadership team, 10x Innovation Lab staff and their fellow classmates at Go-To-Market Day. The winning team, Innovation IV created a new backpack/carrying case that improved on many of the problems with existing products on the market. Other venture ideas included products and services in the gaming, food delivery, education and tourism industries.

IN CONCLUSION

The feedback from both the [ITI] leadership team and students were very positive. Students stated that this was one of the best classes they had taken and that the concepts and mindset they learned are applicable and useful for any job they have whether it be starting a new company or working for a large enterprise or government organization. One student remarked, ‘’I have never been exposed to a course like this, and for me personally, it was transformational. It really inspired me to pursue working on my own company or to join a Taiwanese startup.” Students gave the course high marks in their end of program evaluations and the Executive Director of ITI Peter Chang said, “We wanted to inspire our students to think out-of-the box and to be exposed to entrepreneurial education. 10X brought in their expertise and gave our students the tools to executive fast on ideas and to think innovatively.”

10X Innovation Lab is proud to partner with ITI, TAITRA, Taiwan Tech Arena and many other Taiwanese organizations and is excited to continue to partner with [ITI] to offer this course again while expand it’s programs and partnerships like it across the globe.