Michael Moe, founder of Global Silicon Valley and a Silicon Valley veteran, is able to cast his net wider after unveiling an online MBA program for entrepreneurs.
Moe explains an idea he had on a sleepless night during the Covid-19 pandemic as “Live Aid for Entrepreneurs.”
“Right now, 40 million people are unemployed. This spring, several students received a “internet diploma” and are pursuing a work market that does not exist. On top of that, there’s all this ethnic and social unrest,” Moe said. “It occurred to me that America is on its back, and developers are fixing things.”
GSV and American City Business Journals, the parent organization of this newspaper and 43 others around the world, are collaborating on a free seven-week “Startup Bootcamp” to prepare a young entrepreneurial army to help restart the nation’s economy. The curriculum starts on July 20th and ends on August 31st (Register at the site gsvbootcamp.com).
It is based on the expertise Moe and GSV gained while building a $25,000 MBA programme at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, this year, and running accelerator programmes and corporate entrepreneurship training around the country in previous years.
“The majority of college students think they want to work for a startup, and there are people who have been laid off who have always wondered what it would be like to be their own boss,” Moe said. “That is the intended audience for this programme.”
Moe came up with the tagline “Live Aid for Entrepreneurs” after rewatching Queen’s Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
“It began and finished with the Live Aid festival, where Queen and other performers collected funds for hungry people,” Moe said, referring to the July 1985 musical event that brought attention to the Ethiopian famine. “So I thought, that’s just what we need to spark a new entrepreneurial movement.”
Startup Bootcamp is available to anybody who wants to sign up for six weeks of online lessons taught by professionals in key fields such as identifying a market, building a product, and building a brand. It will be done virtually, in both big and small communities, before resulting in a Demo Day in week seven, where survivors will pitch to investors.
“Our small groups will meet three days a week and will be organised by geography, business, and affinity,” Moe said. “You have the choice of participating in none of them or all three. You may be a part of one community from Silicon Valley, another involved in artificial intelligence, and even another made up of female entrepreneurs.”
