No, anyone with any idea and preferably a product can form or join a team.

The only condition is that you have to get the site up and deliver the minimum product feature set during the quarter.

Check out the link to Berkeley's Intellectual Property & Industry Research Alliances (IPIRA) here. You can work on your own idea, or if you like one of these ideas, you can work with the sponsor on one of these ideas. Alterntively, attend the mixers and find someone with an idea that you like, and then discuss joining their team. Finding a team you can work effectively with is far more important. An A-team with a B idea always trumps a B-team with an A idea.

Anything developed during the class is owned by each of the teammates. After the class, you can run the business on your own, without them; and they can run the business without you. If needed, come to office hours and we can figure out how best to help your position. In short, we want you to treat your teammates as equals. We recommend you work together during the class with the goal of learning; after the class, if you continue and they join you, you can negotiate a fair compensation arrangement. If you continue and they don’t, you can give them equity based on your view of how much they contributed. In general, part time work for 3 months isn’t worth very much. The full time work you put in over the next five years will be worth a lot. Another way of thinking about it is if you hired them and paid them their value in cash, would it be $10k? $20k? some other number? Then, if your company is worth $3 million pre-money (a ballpark value for a pure startup), $10k in value would be equivalent to 0.33% of equity.

Be warned that your slides, notes and findings will be publicly shared. Your team owns everything done in class. Discuss Intellectual Property rights with your team from the beginning. If you can’t come to agreement with the team, talk to us, or join another team, pick another project, or drop the class. Remember anything you do and learn in the class is public.

NO. This is an open class. There are no non-disclosures. All your presentations and Customer Discovery and Validation notes, business model canvas, blogs and slides can, and more likely will, be made public. This class is not an incubator. At times you will learn by seeing how previous classes solved the same class of problem by looking at their slides, notes and blogs. Keep in mind that successful companies are less about the original idea and more about the learning, discovery and execution. (That’s the purpose of this class.) Therefore you must be prepared to share your ideas openly with the class. It is a forum for you to “bounce” your ideas off your peers.

Don’t take this class. This class is not an incubator. At times you will learn by seeing how previous classes solved the same class of problem by looking at their slides, notes and blogs.

If you’re working with a Berkeley related-technology (i.e. either research from one of the team members or University IP), you must check with the Office of Technology Licensing to understand Berkeley's ownership rights in any resulting IP. You own what Intellectual Property (patents, hardware, algorithms, etc.) you brought to class with you. No one (other than Berkeley) has claim to anything you brought to class. You all own any intellectual property developed for the class (such as code for a web-based project) developed during class. You and your team members need to disclose to each other what IP/Licensing rights any company you’ve worked at has to inventions you make at school. If any or you decide to start a company based on the class, you own only what was written and completed in the class. You have no claim for work done before or after the class quarter. If a subset of the team decides to start a company they do NOT owe anything to any other team members for work done in and during the class. All team members are free to start the same company, without permission of the others. (We would hope that a modicum of common sense and fairness would apply.)

The teaching team consists of professors, GSIs, and a mentor per team. A mentor is an experienced entrepreneur, investor or consultant assigned to your team. They’ve volunteered to help with the class and your team because they love startups. Their job is to guide you as you get out of the building.

Your mentor is expecting to meet with you at least every two weeks face-to-face or by Zoom. You can email them or meet with them more often if they have time.

By all means, do so. All the mentors are happy to help. However they cannot support your team full time unless your mentor decides to swap places with them.

Mentors have day jobs. Asking them to meet or reply to you ASAP is not acceptable. So plan ahead to allow for a reasonable amount of time for a reply or meeting. Be concise with your request and be respectful of their time. We recommend agreeing a ways-of-working with your mentos at the start of the course, and scheduling in regular catch ups in advance.

You first stop is your GSI. Email or sit down with them during the week if you have a problem. Your professors have office hours every Wednesday, right before class. If you need something resolved sooner, email us.

Team members can be Berkeley Graduate students (all years) from any school or department. Berkeley Undergraduate students are not allowed to officially enroll.

If you are looking for a team to join, the best place to start is by attending the mixers and reaching out to people with ideas on the team formation spreadsheet (details on the Apply page) . Also, think through which industry you'd like to be in and think through what problems and/or needs this industry has. If you have an idea and are looking for people to join your team, start by pitching your idea to your Berkeley network. From there, get out of the building/your school (MBAs, you must leave the Haas campus) and head to other buildings on campus. You must overcome any fear you have about cold contacting, randomly walking up to strangers, and knocking on doors. Go to the Fung Institute to find MEng students.Go to South Hall and talk to ISchool students. Head over to Yali's and buy someone a cup of coffee in exchange for pitching your idea to them. Have every connection you make introduce you to someone else AND spread your idea to their school's Slack/WhatsApp/Discord/etc. Make a QR code to your part of the pitch deck and put up posters. Basically, get scrappy.

Traditionally, each team member is part of the customer development team. You have to figure out how to allocate the work.

Prepare to work through difficult issues. If the situation continues, approach the teaching team. Do not wait until the end of the quarter to raise the issue. Mentors, GSIs and faculty are there to help!

Try to resolve it within your team. If the situation continues longer than a week, please approach the teaching team. Final grades will also reflect individual participation and contribution.

Continual feedback weekly. Substandard quality work will be immediately brought to your attention. We grade everything you send us and show us, and we aim to provide constructive and honest feedback for it.