Date: Aug 15, 2013 Author: Lauren Hepler Source: bizjournals (
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Menlo Park education startup NovoEd Inc. said Thursday that it has inked deals with several business schools to offer online entrepreneurship courses. Universities including Babson College, Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco will offer up online classes on VC investing or financing your cutting-edge ideas.
Classes hosted on NovoEd's platform will also be offered by the Kauffman Fellows Academy. The online education fellowship, a project of entrepreneurship think-tank Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is aimed specifically at investors.
"I'm very excited because this is a collection of superstars," said NovoEd co-founder and Stanford professor Amin Saberi. "The goal is to add more classes."
Saberi and co-founder Farnaz Ronaghi, both natives of Iran, started NovoEd in January 2013. The online learning platform that integrates elements of social media was originally developed as an in-house Stanford program called Venture Lab (read more about the company here).
With the new partnerships, the educational institutions involved will provide courses ranging from "VC 101" by the Kauffman Fellows Academy to "Financial Analysis of Entrepreneurial Ideas" by Babson College. The courses will carry a note that says they are "powered by NovoEd," though Saberi declined to specify how much revenue the company stands to generate from the partnerships.
However, the plan is to keep the majority of courses open to the public. That's in line with NovoEd's past Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, offerings.
"Nearly all of our courses are open to everybody," Saberi said. "Most of them are free. There may be a small fee for certificates at the end."
He added that select courses will come with an up-front fee, including the VC 101 course that will cost $250 to register.
Saberi said he is particularly encouraged by the partnership with the Boston area Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College. The school has the No. 1 program for entrepreneur education, according to U.S. News & World Report rankings.
"They are starting with four courses, but the goal is to go up to 20-30 courses," Saberi said.
Eventually, he hopes to add online courses similar to university electives, giving the examples of team-building or more advanced finance classes. There is even talk of a fully online master's degree program down the road.
NovoEd is backed by Costanoa Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kapor Capital, Learn Capital, Maveron, Ulu Ventures and a number of angel investors. It doesn't disclose the capital it has raised. Previous online education startups born out of Stanford, Coursera and Udacity, have raised $65 million and $21 million, respectively, after leveraging their MOOCs to create independent companies.
Silicon Valley founders, funders and startup advocates have all deployed dramatically varied approaches to teaching the abstract topic of entrepreneurship.
There's the boarding school strategy favored by venture capitalist Tim Draper, pricey MBA programs at elite universities, international startup programs or a growing number of online education channels.
