Entrepreneurship
through practice.
I teach students to ask better questions, talk to customers, test assumptions, and build a business model they can explain.
From an idea to evidence.
I’m an Assistant Professor of Instruction at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business. In my undergraduate entrepreneurship course, students work through the uncertainty of developing a business idea.
They interview potential customers, define a foothold market, test a value proposition, build financial projections, and pitch what they’ve learned. The work evolves as they gather evidence.
Get out of the building.
Talk to customers
Interview people about what they actually do, the problems they face, and the alternatives they already use.
Make an assumption visible
Turn a belief into a hypothesis. Use observation, prototypes, and experiments to find out what holds up.
Make the model work
Connect the customer, market, pricing, operations, and financial assumptions into a coherent business.
Start with a paperclip.
A small trading challenge that gets students practicing how to make an ask.
Try the exercise
Start with a paperclip. Ask someone to trade you something for it. Take what you receive and make another trade. After three trades, write down which ask worked best and why.
Ask about the last time.
Choose a product someone recently bought. Ask about the last time they used it, what led them to buy it, and what they were using before. Look for the job they needed it to do.
Bring the classroom into the conversation.
For guest speaking, teaching inquiries, or a conversation about entrepreneurship education, get in touch.
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