2. Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page i of 19
Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1
How to use this document ............................................................................................. 1
Pre-class ............................................................................................................................. 1
Step 1: Reflect, gather feedback, and strategize ............................................................ 1
Hacking for Defense Schedule .................................................................................... 2
Step 2: Recruit students ................................................................................................. 4
Planning ...................................................................................................................... 4
Website ...................................................................................................................... 4
10 weeks before class starts: Creating Interest for Brown Bag Lunches and Info
Sessions ...................................................................................................................... 4
10 weeks before class starts: Brown Bag Lunches ..................................................... 5
8 weeks before class starts: information sessions / mixers ........................................ 5
7-8 weeks before class starts: informational office hours .......................................... 6
6 weeks before class starts: Team Interview Process ................................................ 6
Step 3: Coordinate DOD/IC Mentors and Recruit Local mentors & advisors ................. 7
DOD/IC Mentor Role .................................................................................................. 7
10 weeks before the class starts ................................................................................ 7
4 weeks before the class starts .................................................................................. 8
Local Mentor Role ..................................................................................................... 8
6 weeks before the class starts .................................................................................. 8
2 weeks before the class starts .................................................................................. 8
Local Mentor Selection criteria .................................................................................. 8
Local Mentor Briefing ................................................................................................. 9
Step 4: Other class logistics ............................................................................................ 9
10 weeks before class starts: LaunchPad Central (LPC) setup ................................... 9
1 week before class starts: Schedule office hours for the semester .......................... 9
Week 1 of class: Schedule LaunchPad Central student training workshop .............. 10
Week 1 of Class: Schedule and set up Customer Discovery workshop .................... 10
Week 1 of Class: Schedule and set up How to Work with the DOD/IC workshop .... 10
During class ...................................................................................................................... 11
Before each weekly class session ................................................................................. 11
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page ii of 19
Communicate with students: ................................................................................... 11
Preflight classroom logistics: .................................................................................... 11
Collect team presentations ...................................................................................... 11
Check on student homework ................................................................................... 11
During each weekly class session ................................................................................. 11
After each class session ................................................................................................ 12
Team management – throughout the semester .......................................................... 12
Send the mentors/advisors weekly email ................................................................ 13
Post classes ...................................................................................................................... 14
Appendix A- Setting up a Mailing List ............................................................................... 16
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 1 of 19
Introduction
Welcome to the role of a CA for Hacking for Defense at Stanford! As a CA, you are the
backbone of the class. Your role is to ensure that the course runs smoothly for the
teaching team, students, DOD/IC mentors, local mentors, and advisors. Your role (like
this document) is split into 3 main stages:
1) Pre-class (this is where the majority of your work will be)
2) During class
3) Post-class
How to use this document
You should print out this document, and use the table of contents as a checklist for
items to complete throughout your journey as a CA. There are a lot of items, and it is
easy to miss something. The best way to prevent this is to use the Table of Contents as a
checklist, and mark each item as you complete it.
Pre-class
Goal: recruit the best teams with the most talented, entrepreneurial students for our
class. We typically receive submissions from 25-35 teams each year. We winnow that
down to 8 teams for the class.
Step 1: Reflect, gather feedback, and strategize
• If you are the head CA, recruit others to join you
o Ideally, your other CAs are from different departments and schools across
campus so that our marketing efforts are more expansive.
o Students who have taken the class before have an advantage in knowing
what to expect as a CA
• Review the class schedule summary below
• Read:
o Hacking for Defense Educators Guide
o Read this handbook thoroughly
o Read and understand the detailed class syllabus
• Set up the faculty shared folder on Google docs
o Copy the last years. See here:
o https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B277neKGutC9fkJVems2VUNGWno
2RG9pSFp6ZzZmT25kTnpfRTZsVjV5NzdwSXhuZ1padDA?ths=true
• View: the class lectures on Udacity
o https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245
• talk to past Lean LaunchPad CA’s
• Get feedback from students of past years
o Organize an informal coffee/lunch.
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 2 of 19
o Ask students: how they learned about the class, what the biggest challenges
were in applying for the class, how we could have better marketed the class,
what the pros/cons of the class were and how we can best redesign class
time, what they felt regarding engagement with mentors/advisors, and
interaction with the teaching team and other students.
• Gather feedback from the teaching team (and if possible mentors)
o The teaching team often writes up a “Lessons Learned Document” as a class
post mortem. Ask if one exists
• Create an action plan based on all feedback gathered – things to change & things to
keep the same. Use this to plan the course ahead.
Hacking for Defense Schedule
Week Lecture Topic
10 weeks prior Brown-bag lunch
#1
Innovation at speed on tough, big national security
problems. Why and how.
9 weeks prior Brown-bag lunch
#2
Innovation at speed on tough, big national security
problems. Why and how
8 weeks prior Info session/Mixer Course Q/A, students form teams
7 weeks prior Info session/Mixer Course Q/A, students form teams
6 weeks prior Interview Interview top 24 teams – down-select to 8
5 weeks prior Admit teams Offer 8 teams slots, wait-list 2 teams
5 weeks prior Begin MVP
development
Teams start working on problem solutions. Present 1st
in MVP day 1 of class
N days prior Workshop 1 Intro to working with the DOD/IC
Week 1 Lecture 1 Intro, Mission Model, Customer Development
Week 1 Workshop 2 Customer Discovery practice for DOD/IC
Week 2 Lecture 2 Value Proposition
Week 3 Lecture 3 Customer Segments
Week 4 Lecture 4 Deployment
Week 4 Workshop 3 Requirements/ Acquisition
Week 5 Lecture 5 Getting Buy-In / Creating an Insurgency
Week 6 Lecture 6 Mission Value
Week 7 Lecture 7 Activities/Resources
Week 8 Lecture 8 Partners and Costs
Week 8 Workshop 3 Presentation Skills Training
Week 9 Lessons Learned Lessons Learned Presentations
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Step 2: Recruit students
Planning
• Scan the Stanford calendar and set up dates for the following deadlines:
o A minimum of:
§ 2 Brown Bag lunches
§ 2 Information Sessions / mixers (see below for more details)
§ Instructor Information Office Hours
o Team applications submission date
o Team final interviews date
• Create a “MS&E 297 Launchpad-staff” email list with this years CAs and instructors.
This allows easy communication amongst the teaching team. It also allows anyone to
contact all the CAs easily, and allows all CAs to stay up to date on communication
simultaneously. (See Appendix A for how to set up a mailing list at Stanford)
Website
• Create a class website with all relevant details, including:
o Course and teaching team overview
o Application process & important dates
o Team application for
o Spreadsheet shared publicly to assist with team formation. Students can add
to this spreadsheet to look for other members with specific skills/interests to
join their team
o DOD/IC Problem Spreadsheet shared publicly to assist with idea formation.
Teams select and sign up for one of these ideas. Multiple teams can choose
the same idea.
• Current website is built using Weebly
10 weeks before class starts: Creating Interest for Brown Bag Lunches
and Info Sessions
• Create your marketing materials (poster, email, etc) a week before the first Brown
Bag Lunch and info sessions. The materials should introduce the class, teaching
team, and all necessary details for both the brown bag lunches and the information
session, office hours, & link to website. Engage the entire teaching team for history
of previous marketing materials and feedback.
• Create an organized spreadsheet to track all groups/lists that you market the class
out to, like this one :
https://docs.google.com/a/stanford.edu/spreadsheets/d/1jbXGy75vfKzLsy43Kw2-
lZ3hXHD0kps30tRL-xtuX1g/edit#gid=0
• Have all TAs update this document periodically. If any groups are missing, reach out
to them. Target other entrepreneurship clubs & groups, including but not limited to:
o All of MS&E:
§ Lori Cottle lcottle@stanford.edu
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 5 of 19
o All of CISAC
§ ??
o All of CS:
§ Meredith Hutchin mhutchin@stanford.edu
o All of CEE
§ Jill Filice jill.filice@stanford.edu
o PhDs in any engineering field.
§ Ken Hsu: kyhsu@stanford.edu
§ Cindy Ng: cindy.ng@stanford.edu
§ phdcs@cs.stanford.edu
o Business Association for Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES)
o Alpha Kappa Psi Business Fraternity (AKPsi)
o Graduate School of Business (GSB)
§ Reach out to the entrepreneurship club and high tech club at the GSB,
ask them to blast out the marketing email to their respective mailing
lists, as well as on “Blast” to reach all GSB students
§ Ask a GSB student to post it on the GSB Facebook Group (ideally for
both MBA1s & MBA2s)
o Entrepreneurship Club
o Venture Capital Club
o All GSB students
o Stanford Medical School
o Stanford Law School
o Stanford Education School
o Other entrepreneurship classes/programs such as: Stanford Venture Studio,
Startup Garage, MS&E 273
• Be sure to target these mailing lists/groups in advance, as well as send out a
reminder the day of the event to maximize attendance
10 weeks before class starts: Brown Bag Lunches
• Schedule instructors for two brown bag lunches
o Informal conversations about Innovation at speed on tough, big national
security problems. Why and how
• Organize food & drinks for all attendees
8 weeks before class starts: information sessions / mixers
• Organize 2 info sessions. Each should last 2 hours (ideally in the early evening), and
they should be held on different days of the week.
o Host one at the GSB and the other in Y2E2.
• Insure the rooms have AV Support
• Create an agenda for the information session. Agenda should include:
o Introduction to class
o Introduction to teaching team
o Overview of class
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 6 of 19
o Alumni Panel – invite students from past Lean LaunchPad classes to talk about
their experiences (as early as you can, preferably 2-3 weeks before the info
session.)
o Overview of the DOD/IC Problems
o Overview of the application process
§ Show google doc to assist with team formation process
§ Show google doc to to assist with DOD/IC problem selection
o Team matchmaking
o First, have the DOD/IC folks who are Skyping in give 3 minute summaries of:
§ Their problems
§ Why is it important to solve
§ Resources they will provide to the team (customer access,
technology, etc.)
o go around the room and have each student introduce him/herself by pitching
background + interests + idea + team member skills/expertise needed
o Second, have students freely mix!
o A slide deck exists in the Dropbox folder that can be modified for these events.
• Organize food & drinks for all attendees of information session. Last year, we had
around 60-70 students at each information session. Book rooms accordingly.
• Send the schedule to the teaching team with details on location and time of the info
session as a reminder the night before to the teaching team
7-8 weeks before class starts: informational office hours
• Before team applications are due, organize office hours for students to meet with
the teaching team to bounce ideas off of them. This past year, we organized 3 full
afternoons of office hours. Each instructor runs individual office hours.
• Book rooms for office hours accordingly. Plan for a max of 8 people per office hour
session.
• Schedule sessions to be 10 minutes long, 5 minutes apart. Create a spreadsheet to
share publicly on the website, to have students sign up for an office hour slot.
• Send the schedule to the teaching team with details on location and time of the
office hours as a reminder the night before to the teaching team
• Send students a reminder e-mail about their appointment with the teaching team
(including specific time and location) the day before
6 weeks before class starts: Team Interview Process
• Downselect to the top 24 teams. Schedule them for 15-minute interviews. In the
interviews the teams:
o briefly describe their idea
o each describe who they are
o teaching team asks questions
• Create a shared evaluation spreadsheet for the teaching team. Check your
document list or dropbox for the old template
o Ask instructors how they want the evaluations scored.
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 7 of 19
o In the past we’ve used:
§ Team commitment to the class (only startup being worked on)
§ The idea’s scalability and market opportunity
o Because it’s hard to remember 25+ teams we would stack rank the teams
after every 6 interviews
o Then we would select the top two or three teams from each group
• Provide the teaching team with a schedule of teams being interviewed and their
applications.
• Create a single PDF with all every teams application (team summary, canvas,
competition) and distribute it to all teaching team members
• Remind all teams that the entire teams need to attend the interview (Skype is OK
if they’re out of town.)
• Ensure all team members make their schedule times by providing clear
instructions to find the rooms and personal phone number in a reminder email
• Provide food and drinks to the teaching team. A short restroom break and
stretch between the interviews session is required
Step 3: Coordinate DOD/IC Mentors and Recruit Local
mentors & advisors
Each team will be assigned two mentors:
• a DOD/IC community mentor as described above, who owns the proposed problem.
• an additional mentor from the local community that understands the problem and
customer
DOD/IC Mentor Role
The teaching team has found DOD/IC Mentors from the sponsoring organizations. These
mentors have committed to:
• Provide student access to their Concept developers, Requirement writers, Buyers
(Acquisition PM's) and Users (the tactical folks)
• Pitch their topic (via Skype is ok) for 3-minutes at the two student info sessions
• Participate in the team interview process
• Attend a 1-hour mentor onboarding and orientation session (via Skype or in-person.)
• Provide mentoring and customer access:
o Mentor the teams via Skype at least 1 hour/week
o Brief teams after they’ve been accepted to the class and help them talk to their
first 10 customers before class starts
o Provide access to 100 users/stakeholders for interviews
o Watch the online video and become familiar with the Lean Startup methodology
10 weeks before the class starts: Introduce yourself to the DOD/IC Mentors
• Send an email to the mentors introducing yourself and the teaching team
o (During the class you will be sending them weekly class updates and getting
weekly updates from them)
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 8 of 19
• Send the DOD/IC mentor guide to the mentor
• Create a spreadsheet to keep track of the DOD/IC Mentors (name, email, phone,
team assigned, problem set, etc.)
4 weeks before the class starts
• Set up DOD/IC mentors up on LaunchPad Central
o Have them watch the short mentor tutorial here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Y8ZkF1Wk0
Local Mentor Role
The local mentor supplements and complements the DOD/IC mentor. Optimally they
add additional perspective about the overall business model, potential dual-use of the
product/service, potential commercial off-the-shelf solutions to the problem, additional
contacts in other branches of the DOD/IC community for customer discovery
6 weeks before the class starts: recruit local mentors and advisors
• After the teams are selected teaching team and CA’s recruit local mentors and
advisors.
o one local mentor per team. 8 mentors for the 8 teams
• Send an email to the local mentors introducing yourself and the teaching team
o provide background on each of the teams accepted to class.
o Add names of team members, mission of team, industry/sector of
mission, emails of team members, etc. Send this information to all
mentors of the class, and have them privately provide you their
preferences on which teams to mentor.
o (During the class you will be sending them weekly class updates and
getting weekly updates from them)
• Send the Local mentor guide to the mentor
• Send the Syllabus to the mentor
• Update the DOD/IC mentor spreadsheet to keep track of those interested to be a
mentor or advisor.
2 weeks before the class starts
• Set up local mentors up on LaunchPad Central (LPC)
o Have them watch the short mentor tutorial here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Y8ZkF1Wk0
• Get Parking passes for mentors from xxx office.
Local Mentor Selection criteria
• First choice: Mentors who are excited about contributing, can unequivocally devote
an hour a week to the team, and get or will invest the time in learning the process.
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 9 of 19
• Second choice: Relevant DOD/IC domain experience
• Close Second choice: Relevant domain experience or entrepreneurial experience
who get Lean and are relentless at Customer Discovery
• Last choice: Mentors who feel like they were doing you a favor.
Local Mentor Briefing
• Book a room for the mentor briefing (to orient new mentors about their role), an
hour before the first day of class. Location should be near the location of the class.
• Ask a representative of LaunchPad Central to lead the workshop and help
mentors/advisors become familiar with the workflows on the LPC platform.
Step 4: Other class logistics
10 weeks before class starts: LaunchPad Central (LPC) setup
• Contact LaunchPad Central to sign up faculty, mentors, advisors and students
o You need to watch the LPC CA/TA training video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-bB1QQmq_E
• Updated syllabus
o Ask lead instructor to update the syllabus with changes for this year’s class.
o Check to see that dates are correct
o Poll instructors on any dates they will miss the class
1 week before class starts: Schedule office hours for the semester
The teaching team has mandatory office hours for teams every week (except the first
and last weeks) to provide course corrections and uncover the inevitable team dynamics
issues.
• Book office hours rooms through ??.
• Use the google doc template (found in the template repository) or this url:
o https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kk-
F9MI6wte5tMAw3yPS0OC32_AW5nlBSDx5pgVv4hs/edit#gid=0
• You assign the teams to their time slots and instructors for the entire semester.
Ensure that:
o Teams do not see the same instructor on consecutive weeks
o Teams see all of the instructors throughout the 10 weeks
• Remember that remote office hours can be extremely effective for teams,
mentors, and faculty. Lots of mentors prefer weekend times for their mentor-
team meetings, and in some cases this alternative may be worth considering for
faculty-team meetings as well. This is especially true toward the end of the class,
when there is a mad scramble to pull it all together for the final presentations
and videos.
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 10 of 19
Week 1 of class: Schedule LaunchPad Central student training
workshop
Timeline: either before or immediately after Class 1
Description / contents:
• Mandatory hands-on team training by the CA on key features.
• Creating team profiles and opportunity descriptions/assessments, including
preliminary market type and market size assumptions.
• Creating/updating discovery narrative posts.
• Creating/updating preliminary business model canvas.
• Posting their initial customer segment and value propositions first, which allow
teams to “color-code” linkages.
• Learning how to post audio recordings, videos, pictures in interviews, and
relevant .xls and .doc files.
• Exporting Learning how to export slides, canvas elements, scorecards, and
contacts.
• Making Learning how to make an “Ask” of mentors, faculty, CA, or other teams.
• Turning on automatic notifications
• Have the teams watch the following LPC tutorials
• Team Welcome Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m1hwK2-Ajs
• Team Tutorial videos
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?feature=edit_ok&list=PLamwGWYhWKtwg_
Mq6DxZRPUOjOSk_0bEJ
Week 1 of Class: Schedule and set up Customer Discovery workshop
For student teams that have no experience talking to customers (undergrads, engineers,
etc.) we’ve found it helpful to offer a two-to-three hour workshop in the first week of
class on the basics of Customer Discovery. Typically hosted by steve blank (ask him
about his schedule, as it fills up very quickly)
Week 1 of Class: Schedule and set up How to Work with the DOD/IC
workshop
For student teams that have no experience working with the DOD/IC Community we’ve
found it helpful to offer a two-to-three hour workshop in the first week of class on the
basics of Customer Discovery. Typically hosted by Joe Felter and Pete Newell (ask them
about their schedule)
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 11 of 19
During class
Your workload going forward will be much easier than before. The first few weeks of
class may will be busier, but as long as you stay on top of week-to-week logistics, the
class will operate very smoothly
Before each weekly class session
Communicate with students:
• Check the e-mail template repository and use the weekly e-mail template
• Topic to be addressed for class
• Presentation assignment
o Reminder of what needs to be on their cover slides (team summary,
number of interviews this week, total number of interviews, number of
mentor interactions, total number of mentor interactions.)
• Ask how they are progressing on their MVP’s
• When presentations should be uploaded to Dropbox
• Team presentation order
• Allotted time for presentation
• Location of presentation
Preflight classroom logistics:
• Ensure that projectors, screens, wifi, break rooms, presentation laptop (can
borrow from AV Services at Haas), etc. are in place and are in working order
Collect team presentations
• Email teams the presentation order
• Collect student weekly team presentations before class beforehand - so no
individual computer setup is necessary.
• Deadline has ranged from 15 minutes before the beginning of class to 3pm on
the day of the presentation. You set the deadline.
• Load all presentations onto a single presentation computer.
Check on student homework
• Using LaunchPad Central ensure that each student has watched the videos for
homework. Email them and put them on notice if not. Inform instructors if it
continues past one week. Presentations cannot be modified after the deadline.
During each weekly class session
• Manage the order of presentations and keep the teams on their allotted
presentation time (8 minutes of presentation, 2 minutes of Q&A - if an instructor
jumps in during their presentation with a comment/question, pause their
presentation clock)
• Keep the clock on team presentation time – announce 2 minutes & 1 minute to go
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 12 of 19
• Capture the verbal teaching team critiques (“Teaching Moments”) in a separate
Google Doc – this should be shared with all the teams.
• Remind teams that they need to be providing the teams presenting with their
critiques on LaunchPad Central (this is part of their grade, and you will be using it
when you total up their grades.)
After each class session
• Update grading syllabus
• Send out briefing email to mentors and advisors.
• Send out debrief email to students with recap of what is due for coming week
(videos / reading), lecture slides, and any logistical reminders.
• Follow up with students who are behind on video progress that they need to catch
up by next week
Team management – throughout the semester
During the semester each team needs one CA to monitor each team’s progress and
facilitate them solving any issues. These include team member discord, team member
slacking off, and mentor unavailability. CA’s should just divvy up the teams after or
around class 1.
A team’s CA should spend about 10-20 minutes a week by talking to or meeting up with
the team or partial teams to make sure that they are getting the most out of the class.
They should bring any issues forward to the teaching team or directly to the mentors for
the various issues.
Things you should be asking:
• Customer discovery progress – how are they doing? Do they need help with
contacts? Are they all participating? Are they just talking to Stanford students or
really getting out of the building?
• Minimal Viable Product (MVP) progress – teams need to do discovery + build an
MVP. Are they doing both? With enough progress?
• Team dynamics – are their individuals not pulling their weight? Team conflicts? How
do they make decisions? Note if the MBA’s are dominating the teams.
• Mentor Interaction- are they talking to their mentors at least once a week? Is the
mentor helpful? Any issues?
Safety/Culture
• Immediately alert the instructors to any student reports of abuse or harassment
• Let instructors know about team issues – business or interpersonal
Mentor management – throughout the semester
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 13 of 19
Coordinate with teaching team to manage the weekly mentor email. Include a weekly
slide deck of what they can expect in the week ahead, gleaned from this Educator’s
Guide. The basic outlines for these decks are available from LaunchPad Central. Copies
are also stored in Dropbox folder.
Send the mentors/advisors weekly email
After each class, CA’s send mentors a weekly email summarizing what their teams
should be doing. The emails are accompanied by a short set of already-made
PowerPoint slides summarizing the weeks learning for the class. (The weekly mentor
update slides can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/sblank/tagged/syllabus)
Personalize the email by including 1-2 sentences for each team around key learnings or
feedback that teaching team provided about each team so that mentors can stay “in
sync” if they were not able to attend class.
Below is an example of a CA email that would be sent out right after class 2:
Hi Mentors,
Welcome to the kick-off of the Lean Launchpad! We hope you've all had a chance to meet your teams and
are looking forward to a fantastic quarter.
This week the teams are doing discovery on Value Proposition. Please watch the on-line lectures
Lesson 2: Value Proposition and Lesson 3: Customer Segments (in preparation for next week).
Your role this week is to offer them a critique on LaunchPad Central and find a time to chat in person or
via Skype to offer them your advice/counsel and wisdom.
I've attached two documents to this email:
1) A cheat-sheet of the responsibilities/best practices for mentors.
2) A short deck (6 slides) that summarizes teaching objectives and common student errors. As a reminder,
teams need to be focusing on the right half of the canvas focusing on understanding their value
proposition, whether they have a multi-sided market, the archetypes of each of the segments and
whether they have product-market fit.
All of these Mentor Update slides will be posted on LaunchPad Central in the Resource Hub section.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks for all your help,
Stephanie
• The mentors are your “deputies” and keeping them up to speed is your best defense
against excessive train wrecks. To do that, the mentors have to keep up (ideally
ahead) in the readings and the Course video lectures as well. Repeat for all classes.
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 14 of 19
Post classes
• CA’s are responsible for putting together the final grading sheet for the instructors.
• Goal is to normalize to a class average of 3.45
• After the final class session, send the email below to all students. Put the responses
in the grading spreadsheet
Hacking for DefenseClass - One last assignment:
As part of your grade you get to confidentially rank yourself and your team members on how you all
contributed to your team this semester.
Starting with 1,000 shares, how would you allocate those shares among all team members (including
yourself)?
For example, in a 4-person team where you felt everyone contributed equally you would allocate 250
shares to yourself and your other three team members. If you feel otherwise, allocate the shares by your
view of each team members contribution.
Thanks,
Teaching Team
Final Individual Student Grades are a sum of:
Peer Comments (5 possible points)
• track these starting in week 1 in LPC - allocate 1-5 points accordingly.
Videos Viewed (5 possible points)
• track this starting in week 1 in LPC - allocate 1-5 points accordingly.
Attendance (5 possible points):
• Track unexcused absences starting in week 1 - allocate 1-5 points accordingly.
Canvas (10 possible points)
• All teams get 20 points for weekly updates to canvas unless there’s a meltdown
Narrative Quality (20 possible points)
• Use total interviews and mentor engagements. Multiply mentor engagements as 5
times a customer interview. Then allocate points up to 20 accordingly.
Weekly Presentations (25 possible points)
• Look at weeks 1-9 teaching team scores. Take the average and improvement
(average of weeks 6-9 minus average of weeks 1-3). Add overall average and
improvement. Allocate 25 points accordingly based on the team score.
Final Presentation (30 possible points): Take the teaching team scores from LPC (on 10
points scale) and multiply by 3.
Total Score: Sum out individual and team scores, out of 100 total points.
Peer Grading Multiplier:
Take peer grades for all team members. (Normalize to 4 for a 4-member team,
normalize to 5 for a 5-member team).
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Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 15 of 19
Take the average of the normalized scores for each team member. The multiplier is this
normalized average divided by 25 for a 4-member team, divided by 20 for a 5-member
team.
Those who had outsized contributions were rewarded by a multiplier effect; and free
riders had their points cut down substantially.
Final adjusted Grade: Take their total score and multiply it by their peer grading
multiplier. eBased on this multiplied score, assign letter grades to average out class GPA
at 3.45
19. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License
Stanford MS&E 297 CA Handbook Revision 1 2015 page 16 of 19
Appendix A- Setting up a Mailing List
• Edit the existing “Launchpad-staff” email list with this years TA and instructors. This
allows easy communication amongst the teaching team. It also allows anyone to
contact all TAs easily, and allows all TAs to stay up to date on communication
simultaneously.
o To edit the mailing list, please e-mail the previous year’s LLP TA asking them
to add you to the mailing list (launchpad-staff@lists.stanford.edu) and
appointing you a List Administrator. Remind them that they can do so on the
Stanford mailing list website: www.mailman.stanford.edu
o Once added to the list, log in on the mailing list website to add/edit members
subscribed to this list. Begin by clicking the “Manage the Lists You Own” link
and logging in using your SUID
o After clicking into the “Basic Options” link for the “launchpad-staff” mailing
list, you will be greeted by the following screen:
Use the top textbox to add members and the bottom textbox to bulk-remove
members (e-mail addresses separated by commas).
Note: this mailing list is to be used for class members to communicate with
the TA team. Please do not add anyone to this list apart from the TA team for
that year (and the professors, if they wish).