Workshop
Design & Rapid Prototyping
Nothing may be more key to your eventual success than rapidly, iteratively, and cost-effectively testing your hypotheses on a regular basis. This workshop is intended to accelerate your understanding of why, and how to, design and build testable prototypes - software and/or hardware - to get from a thousand "no"s to a million "yes"s - i.e. product-market fit or pre-seed raise. This is a hands-on workshop. You'll build a prototype, and if brave enough, actually present it.
Lecture Only
1+ hour lecture
Q&A
Reference bibliography
Lecture + Workshop
1+ hour lecture
Break
1+ hour prototyping workshop
:15 - :30 mins team presentations
Reference bibliography
Topics
Historical context
Importance of design / prototyping
Speed / iteration / testing
A contextual model for building rapidly
How to evaluate and utilize the right tools
Software (logical) vs. hardware (physical) design & production
Importance and use of AI
Past / Recurring Workshops
AI Entrepreneurs at Berkeley
Stanford
Business
School
Workshop
Juggling Ice-Breaker
Years ago, Caroline Winnett, Executive Director of SkyDeck asked what we could do in the way of an initial ice-breaker exercise for each new cohort of teams. Objective: take the students out of their comfort zone, do something physically active, underline how to take best advantage of the SkyDeck program and advisors, and encourage mixing with new colleagues.
We somehow stumbled on the fact that both Caroline and I knew how to juggle - to some extent - and thus was born what has turned into a bit of a tradition.
Each new cohort at SkyDeck now starts with this juggling ice-breaker. The session consists of a short presentation (history of juggling, juggling as a metaphor for entrepreneurship) and then we attempt to teach 100+ people how to juggle. We currently run between 4-5% of each group learns to juggle for the first time.
Each session culminates with Caroline and Tim attempting a 3-3-10 passing pattern - we usually fail. And that's the point …
