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We simply completed the fifteenth<>annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford. The category had gotten so in style that in 2021 we began educating it in each the winter and spring periods.
Throughout the 2025 spring quarter the eight groups spoke to 935 potential prospects, beneficiaries and regulators. Most college students spent 15-20 hours per week on the category, about double that of a standard class.
This Class Launched a Revolution in Educating Entreprenurship
This class was designed to interrupt out of the “how you can write a marketing strategy” because the capstone of entrepreneurial schooling. A marketing strategy assumed that each one startups wanted to was to jot down a plan, elevate cash after which execute the plan. We overturned that orthodoxy once we identified that whereas current organizations execute enterprise fashions, startups are looking for them. And {that a} startup was a short lived group designed to seek for a repeatable and scaleable enterprise mannequin. This class was designed to show startups how you can seek for a enterprise mannequin.
A number of government-funded applications have adopted this class at scale. The primary was in 2011 once we turned this syllabus into the curriculum for the Nationwide Science Basis I-Corps. Errol Arkilic, the then head of commercialization on the Nationwide Science Basis, adopted the category saying, “You’ve developed the scientific technique for startups, utilizing the Enterprise Mannequin Canvas because the laboratory pocket book.”
Beneath are the Classes Discovered displays from the spring 2025 Lean LaunchPad.
Crew Cowmeter – early detection of cow infections via organic monitoring of milk.
In case you can see the Crew Cowmeter presentation click on right here
I-Corps on the Nationwide Institute of Well being
In 2013 I partnered with UCSF and the Nationwide Institute of Well being to supply the Lean LaunchPad class for Life Science and Healthcare (therapeutics, diagnostics, gadgets and digital well being.) In 2014, along side the Nationwide Institute of Well being, I took the UCSF curriculum and developed and launched the I-Corps @ NIH program.
Crew NowPilot – AI copilot for enhancing focus and government perform.
In case you can’t see the Crew NowPilot presentation click on right here
I-Corps at Scale
I-Corps is now supplied in 100 universities and has skilled over 9,500 scientists and engineers; 7,800 individuals in 2,546 groups at I-Corps at NSF (Nationwide Science Basis), 950 individuals in 317 groups at I-Corps at NIH, and 580 individuals in 188 groups at Vitality I-Corps (on the DOE). 15 universities in Japan now train the category.
Crew Godela – AI physics engine – with a primary disruptive market in packaging.
In case you can’t see the Crew Godela presentation click on right here
$4 billion in Enterprise Capital For I-Corps Groups
1,380 of the NSF I-Corps groups launched startups elevating $3.166 billion. Over 300 I-Corps at NIH groups have collectively raised $634 million. Vitality I-Corps groups raised $151 million in extra funding.
Crew ProspectAI – An AI gross sales growth agent for lean gross sales groups.
In case you can’t see the Crew ProspectAI presentation click on right here
Mission Pushed Entreprenurship
In 2016, I co-created each the Hacking for Protection course with Pete Newell and Joe Felter in addition to the Hacking for Diplomacy course with Jeremy Weinstein at Stanford. In 2022, Steve Weinstein created Hacking for Local weather and Sustainability. In 2024 Jennifer Carolan launched Hacking for Schooling at Stanford.
Crew VLAB – accelerating medical trials with AI orchestration of knowledge.
In case you can’t see the workforce VLAB presentation click on right here
Design of This Class
Whereas the Lean LaunchPad college students are experiencing what seems to them to be a completely hands-on, experiential class, it’s a rigorously designed phantasm. Actually, it’s extremely structured. The syllabus has been designed in order that we’re providing continuous implicit steerage, construction, and repetition. It is a crucial distinction between our class and an open-ended experiential class. Steering, Course and Construction –
For instance, college students begin the category with their very own preliminary steerage – they imagine they’ve an thought for a services or products (Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps) or have been given a transparent real-world drawback (Hacking for Protection). Coming into the category, college students imagine their objective is to validate their commercialization or deployment hypotheses. (The educating workforce is aware of that over the course of the category, college students will uncover that almost all of their preliminary hypotheses are incorrect.)
Crew Blix – IRB medical trial compliance / A management layer for AI governance for monetary companies.
In case you can’t see the workforce Blix presentation click on right here
The Enterprise Mannequin Canvas
The enterprise mannequin / mission mannequin canvas affords college students steerage, specific route, and construction. First, the canvas affords a whole, visible roadmap of all of the hypotheses they might want to take a look at over all the class. Second, the canvas helps the scholars goal-seek by visualizing what an optimum endpoint would appear to be – discovering product/market match. Lastly, the canvas gives college students with a map of what they study week-to-week via their buyer discovery work. I can’t overemphasize the necessary position of the canvas. Not like an incubator or accelerator with no body, the canvas acts because the connective tissue – the body – that college students can fall again on in the event that they get misplaced or confused. It permits us to show the idea of how you can flip an thought, want, or drawback into business follow, week by week a bit at a time.
Crew Plotline – A wise advertising calendar for writer’s ebook launch.
In case you can’t see the workforce Plotline presentation click on right here
Lean LaunchPad Instruments
The instruments for buyer discovery (movies, pattern experiments, and many others.) provide steerage and construction for college kids to work outdoors the classroom. The specific objective of 10-15 buyer interviews per week together with the requirement for constructing a continuous sequence of minimal viable merchandise gives metrics that monitor the workforce’s progress. The necessary workplace hours with the instructors and assist from mentors present extra steerage and construction.
Crew Eluna/Driftnet – Knowledge Heart knowledge aggregation and power optimization software program.
In case you can’t see the workforce Eluna/Driftnet presentation click on right here
AI Embedded within the Class
This was the primary 12 months the place all groups used AI to assist create their enterprise mannequin canvas, construct working MVPs in hours, generate buyer questions, analyze and summarizing interviews.
It Takes A Village
Whereas I authored this weblog publish, this class is a workforce challenge. The key sauce of the success of the Lean LaunchPad at Stanford is the extraordinary group of devoted volunteers supporting our college students in so many crucial methods.
The educating workforce consisted of myself and:
- Steve Weinstein, accomplice at America’s Frontier Fund, 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley expertise firms and Hollywood media firms. Steve was CEO of MovieLabs, the joint R&D lab of all the key movement image studios.
- Lee Redden – CTO and co-founder of Blue River Know-how (acquired by John Deere) who was a pupil within the first Lean LaunchPad class 14 years in the past!
- Jennifer Carolan, Co-Founder, Associate at Attain Capital the main schooling VC and writer of the Hacking for Schooling class.
Our educating assistants this 12 months have been Arthur C. Campello, Anil Yildiz, Abu B. Rogers and Tireni Ajilore.
Mentors helped the groups perceive if their options might be a commercially profitable enterprise. Because of Jillian Manus, Dave Epstein, Robert Feldman, Bobby Mukherjee, Kevin Ray, Deirdre Clute, Robert Locke, Doug Biehn, and John Danner. Martin Saywell from the Distinguished Careers Institute joined the Blix workforce. The mentor workforce was led by Todd Basche.
Abstract
Whereas the Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps curriculum was a revolutionary break with the previous, it’s not the top. Within the final decade enumerable variants have emerged. The category we train at Stanford has continued to evolve. Higher variations from others will seem. AI is already having a serious impression on buyer discovery and validation and we had every workforce listing the AI instruments they used. And at some point one other revolutionary break will take us to the following degree.
Filed below: Buyer Improvement, Lean LaunchPad |