About Peter Thiel's CS183 Tech Startup Class

Peter Thiel is a successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is taking the time to teach his hard-won knowledge and ideas to students and the wider public. He is currently teaching a Stanford class in tech startups, CS 183. Here is more information on the class, including links to class notes and readings.

CS 183: Startup

Conception, launch, scaling, and growing of a successful tech company. Bridging the subjects of engineering, science, business, finance, and world history, topics will include: the technology revolution of the 20th century and prior eras; the economics of business; founding a startup; the importance of team vision and passion; long-term strategic planning; building a successful founding team; financing and the VC perspective; secrecy vs. openness; recruiting, managing growth, marketing, regulation and other operational topics. Assignments are designed to explore key concepts at greater depth, using real-world and hypothetical example companies. Inner accounts from the early days of startups including PayPal, Google and Facebook will be used as case studies. The class will be taught by entrepreneurs who have started companies worth over $1B and VCs who have invested in startups including Facebook and Spotify. Students can expect to be proficient in the core skills critical to the founding and growing of a tech company upon completion of this course. Prerequisites: Introductory calculus and statistics ( Math 41 and ENGR 155C, or equivalents); basic modeling skills in student's preferred coding language (e.g. C++, Java, Matlab, Excel).

Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | Grading: Letter or Credit/No Credit

Instructors: Nolan, S. (PI) ; Thiel, P. (PI)

Schedule for CS 183 2011-2012 Spring

CS 183 | 3 units

Notes: Enrollment limited to 250. Consent of instructor required. _Stanford Explore

Class readings

Class notes in essay form from Blake Masters

Startup Digest .... Peter Thiel video on his startup philosophy

It is much easier to destroy than to build and create something that works and lasts. It is not easy to understand the world well enough to build a consistent, long-standing, successful venture track record.