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Led by Joseph Schumpeter Simulacrum
Eight tutorials on the work of shaping a business opportunity — from recognising the gap, through validating it, designing the business model, financing the venture, building the team, scaling the operation, and surviving the founder's psychological tests. Led by Joseph Schumpeter on creative destruction and Clayton Christensen on disruption and Jobs-to-Be-Done, with guests across the entrepreneurship faculty.
Courses are available to holders of a paid pass or membership. See passes & membership →
Led by Joseph Schumpeter Simulacrum
The question
Drucker Simulacrum's seven sources of innovative opportunity. The module covers each source (the unexpected, the incongruity, the process need, industry/market structure changes, demographics, changes in perception, new knowledge), the entrepreneur as recogniser-and-actor rather than just inventor, the Schumpeter Simulacrum distinction between invention and innovation, the five forms of innovation revisited, environmental scanning as discipline, and the *anomaly notebook* habit of recording incongruities. The closing scenario asks the student to identify which of the seven sources a real new business is exploiting.
Outcome
The student can name Drucker Simulacrum's seven sources, distinguish invention from innovation, identify which of the seven sources a given new business is exploiting, and recognise the difference between an opportunity and an idea. (Foundational orientation)
Practice scenarios
Schumpeter Simulacrum asks you to spend one week as an entrepreneur-in-training: keep an anomaly notebook. Every time you encounter something that surprises you in the commercial world — an unexpectedly empty shop, an unexpectedly busy one, a product you can't find when you want it, a service that frustrates you, a process that seems unnecessarily slow — write it down. After the week, return and we will work through the entries to see which are merely irritations and which are *opportunities*.
Your goals
Led by Clayton Christensen Simulacrum
The question
Christensen Simulacrum's Jobs-to-Be-Done framework as alternative to demographic and attitudinal segmentation. The module covers the milkshake case, the three components (job, hiring criteria, competitors), the functional/emotional/social dimensions of a job, jobs as situational rather than demographic, how to discover jobs (interviews focused on the moment of switching, observation, the story-of-the-purchase), the contrast with conventional market research, and how JTBD interacts with disruption theory. The closing scenario runs a JTBD interview to find the job a real customer is actually hiring a product to do.
Outcome
The student can articulate the JTBD framework, run a JTBD interview on a real customer, distinguish a job from a product category, identify the functional, emotional, and social dimensions, and apply the framework to a hypothetical business. (Jobs to Be Done)
Practice scenarios
Christensen Simulacrum asks you to apply JTBD to a product or service you yourself have *recently* paid for — within the last week if possible. Not a habitual purchase; a specific instance where you switched from one alternative to another, or where you considered alternatives. Reconstruct the story of the purchase, identify the *job* you were hiring the product to do, name the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of "good enough", and identify what other things you were considering as competitors.
Your goals
Led by Clayton Christensen Simulacrum · with Schumpeter as foil
The question
The discipline of testing an opportunity before committing capital. The module covers the bundle-of-hypotheses framing of an opportunity, the lean-startup loop (build-measure-learn), customer-discovery interviews and Rob Fitzpatrick's *mom test* for talking to potential customers without leading them, smoke tests (landing pages, demo videos, pre-order pages, ad campaigns), MVPs as cheapest learning vehicles, the false-positive trap of stated vs revealed willingness, the conviction-vs-validation tension, and the cost-of-getting-it-wrong calibration. The closing scenario validates the student's best current idea.
Outcome
The student can decompose an opportunity into its constituent hypotheses, design a validation test for each, run a customer-discovery interview without leading the witness, and distinguish the cases where validation is sufficient from the cases where conviction must do the work. (Validation)
Practice scenarios
Take the strongest opportunity from your Module 1 anomaly notebook (or one you've been carrying for a while). Decompose it into its constituent hypotheses. Design the cheapest test for each. Run the most important test in the next week.
Your goals
Led by Joseph Schumpeter Simulacrum · with Christensen
The question
A business model as the system by which a firm captures a share of the value it creates. The module covers the Business Model Canvas (the nine boxes), the major patterns (platform, subscription, freemium, marketplace-take-rate, make-and-sell, advertising-supported, services-and-consulting, licensing) with the unit economics of each (LTV, CAC, payback, gross margin), platform-specific dynamics (network effects, multi-homing, cold-start), subscription dynamics (churn, NRR), freemium dynamics (free-to-paid conversion), and how to choose a model by working backwards from the customer's job and willingness-to-pay. The closing scenario applies three different models to the same opportunity.
Outcome
The student can complete the Business Model Canvas for an opportunity, name the major business-model patterns and their characteristic economics, calculate basic unit economics (LTV, CAC, payback) for a subscription model, and recognise when business-model innovation is itself the opportunity. (Business models)
Practice scenarios
Schumpeter Simulacrum and Christensen Simulacrum give you a single opportunity — a tool that helps small UK accountancy practices automate routine bookkeeping for their clients. There are roughly 30,000 small accountancy practices in the UK; each manages an average of 80 small-business clients; the average bookkeeping cost the accountant currently incurs per client is £600/year; the tool would automate roughly 60% of that work. Your job is to design *three different business models* for the same opportunity and identify which is most likely to win.
Your goals
Led by Joseph Schumpeter Simulacrum · with Schumpeter on the broader theory and a UK-specific guest on the modern landscape
The question
The funding stack a UK venture moves through and the consequences of each choice. The module covers the stages (founder, friends-and-family, SEIS, angel, seed VC, Series A, Series B, growth, IPO/exit), SEIS and EIS in detail (limits, eligibility, advance assurance, the investor's tax position), the UK angel landscape, UK VCs, the British Business Bank programmes, grants (Innovate UK, Horizon Europe), crowdfunding under FCA rules, R&D tax credits post-2024 reform, debt-vs-equity trade-offs, dilution arithmetic across rounds, convertible notes and SAFEs and the UK Advance Subscription Agreement, and term-sheet clauses (liquidation preferences, anti-dilution, board control, vesting). The closing scenario closes the first round.
Outcome
The student can name the major UK funding sources for a venture at each stage, calculate dilution across rounds, articulate the SEIS/EIS scheme and why it matters, recognise founder-unfriendly terms in a term sheet, and choose a funding strategy appropriate for a given venture. (UK funding · jurisdictional)
Practice scenarios
Your friend has built a working prototype of the accountancy-automation tool from Module 4 with £30k of their own savings. They have three paying pilot customers (small accountancy practices). They are now raising their first external round. They've had three offers: (a) £200k from an angel syndicate at a £1m pre-money valuation, SEIS/EIS structured, fairly standard terms; (b) £600k from a seed VC fund at a £2.5m pre-money valuation, with a 1x non-participating liquidation preference, a board seat, and 2-year monthly reporting; (c) £150k from a friends-and-family round at a £1.5m pre-money valuation, no liquidation preference, no board seat. They want your advice on which to take.
Your goals
Led by Joseph Schumpeter Simulacrum
The question
The discipline of bringing people into a venture without breaking it. The module covers the co-founder choice (complementarity, trust, resilience), founder equity splits with vesting, the first ten hires and how to choose them, founder roles and the technical-vs-commercial division, the equity pool for early hires and typical sizes, the role of advisors, culture as the cumulative effect of hiring/firing/promotion decisions, the founder-as-bottleneck problem, co-founder dispute resolution, and the founder-CEO transition that some companies eventually need. Wasserman's *The Founder's Dilemmas* runs through the module. The closing scenario examines a co-founder question.
Outcome
The student can articulate the co-founder choice criteria, design a founder equity split with vesting, identify the first hires for a hypothetical venture, calculate the equity pool for early hires, and recognise the warning signs of a co-founder dispute. (Team-building)
Practice scenarios
Your friend (still building the accountancy-automation tool) has been approached by an old university classmate who wants to join as co-founder and "head of growth". The classmate has impressive sales credentials at a SaaS company, has a strong network in the UK accountancy world, and is asking for a 30% equity stake — the friend currently owns 100%. Your friend is excited (the network alone could halve their customer-acquisition costs) but uneasy (30% feels like a lot, and they barely know this person at the level of "would-they-quit-when-things-get-hard"). Schumpeter Simulacrum has asked you to help them think it through.
Your goals
Led by Joseph Schumpeter Simulacrum · with Eliyahu Goldratt on bottlenecks
The question
The phase transition that defeats many growing companies. The module covers the typical revenue inflection points (£1m, £5m, £10m) and what stops working at each, the founder-as-bottleneck problem at scale, Goldratt Simulacrum's Theory of Constraints (identify, exploit, subordinate, elevate, repeat) applied to scaling, the three common binding constraints (operational, commercial, capital), the discipline of focus on the current binding constraint, hiring as the primary scaling lever, the build-vs-buy question, the *professionalisation* trap of over-investing in process before it's needed, and the link to Christensen Simulacrum's disruption framework as the scaling firm becomes the incumbent. The closing scenario identifies what is binding this quarter.
Outcome
The student can apply the Theory of Constraints to a scaling business, identify the most likely binding constraint at a given revenue stage, recommend the focal work for the next quarter based on the constraint, and recognise the founder-as-bottleneck pattern. (Scaling)
Practice scenarios
The accountancy-automation company is now eighteen months in. Revenue: £1.4m ARR, growing at 8%/month. Team: 14 people. Customers: 47 accountancy practices, NPS 67 (very strong). The founder is exhausted, working 75-hour weeks, doing customer support directly because "the team aren't yet trained to handle it". Two recent senior hires (a VP of Engineering and a Head of Customer Success) are still onboarding. The pipeline is healthy but not enormous (£600k of qualified opportunity for next quarter); the team is willing but stretched. The investors are pushing for "faster growth". The founder has asked you for a third-party view: where should the next quarter's effort go?
Your goals
Led by Joseph Schumpeter Simulacrum · with Clayton Christensen on the deeper question
The question
Most of the entrepreneurial literature focuses on the company; the closing module focuses on the founder. The module covers the loneliness of the decision-maker, volatility of belief and the discipline of acting through it, identity fusion and how to resist it, the founder's relationship with failure and pre-defined kill criteria, the founder mental-health epidemic (high rates of depression and anxiety), the importance of trusted external support (therapy, peer founder groups, mentors), Christensen Simulacrum's *How Will You Measure Your Life?* and the wider framing, and the question of *when to stop*. The closing scenario produces the student's own test.
Outcome
The student can articulate the specific psychological demands on a founder, recognise the failure modes (identity fusion, denial of failure, sustained over-work, neglect of personal relationships), commit to specific personal practices that mitigate them, and form their own view on whether the founder path is right for them.
Practice scenarios
Schumpeter Simulacrum and Christensen Simulacrum close the course with a personal scenario. There is no business case to solve. The question is for *you*: are you willing to put yourself through what this course has described, and on what terms?
Your goals