NSLC Business & Entrepreneurship · University of Michigan

The Leap
An Introduction to Entrepreneurship

Lecture 1 · Professor Danny Ellis

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Before we do introductions…

🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

The cold open: the single most dramatic moment of your founder journey.

  • Drop them into the middle of the action — no context yet
  • Candidates: hanging a drone off a 300-ft wind turbine, the day you almost ran out of money, the first big customer call
  • End on a cliffhanger: “…and to explain how I got there, I have to take you back to when I was sitting exactly where you are.”
🖼️ IMAGE SLOT Photo from the story moment — turbine, drone, team, or early prototype

Who is this guy?

From student to startup CEO — click the timeline

StudentU-M & the drone team
FoundingStarting SkySpecs
The GrindPivots & survival
ScaleGoing global
TodayWhy I'm here
👆 Click any milestone to reveal that chapter.

Today's roadmap

Five building blocks of every new business

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1 · The Mindset

Traits & motivations of entrepreneurs

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2 · The Plan

What a business plan is (and isn't)

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3 · The Idea

Where opportunities come from

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4 · The Industry

Analyzing the playing field

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5 · The Research

Market research fundamentals

By Friday your team pitches a real business to a panel of judges. Everything today feeds slide 2–5 of that pitch.

Live poll — shout it out, I'll click

Why do people become entrepreneurs?

🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

Your honest answer: which one was it for you — and which one turned out to matter?

  • The myth vs. the reality (e.g., “be your own boss” → you answer to everyone)
  • One sentence on what actually kept you going in year 6

Building block 1 · The Mindset

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

A blend of characteristics, attitudes, and skills that describe how successful entrepreneurs think and act.

The secret: it's useful even if you never start a company. This is an operating system for your life and career.

The Mindset · Interactive

8 traits — flip each card. Count how many you already have.

⚡Initiative
You start things without being told. You did the extra credit nobody asked for.
🌊Flexibility & Adaptability
Plans change; you don't break. The pivot is a feature, not a failure.
🗣️Communication & Collaboration
Ideas are worthless if you can't sell them to teammates, customers, and investors.
🎨Creativity & Innovation
Seeing a new combination of existing pieces — not magic, just recombination.
🔭Future Orientation
You play the long game: where is this industry in 5 years, and how do I get there first?
🧩Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
Break big scary problems into small solvable ones. Then solve the first one today.
👀Opportunity Recognition
Everyone sees problems. Entrepreneurs see problems and think “someone would pay for a fix.”
🎢Comfort with Risk
Not recklessness — calculated bets where the downside is survivable and the upside is huge.

Deeper dive · The Mindset

One trait, one moment it saved the company

🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

Pick ONE trait and tell the story of the day it mattered most at SkySpecs.

  • Good candidates: Adaptability (the pivot to wind), Comfort with Risk (a bet-the-company decision), Communication (a make-or-break investor or customer meeting)
  • Structure: the situation → the trait in action → what would have happened without it
🎬 VIDEO SLOT Optional: 30–60s clip — drone footage, news segment, or team photo montage

The Mindset

These skills are not just for startups

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School

Group projects, applications, advocating for yourself

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Day-to-day life

Solving problems nobody else will touch

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Jobs & careers

“Intrapreneurs” get promoted — they act like owners

❤️

Relationships

Communication, adaptability, initiative — sound familiar?

Whatever you do after this week, you'll use this mindset everywhere.

Building block 2 · The Plan

What is a business plan?

A document that details a company's goals, the strategies for achieving them, and the projected financial outcomes.

It's a roadmap: the problem you solve → how you'll market it → what it costs → how it makes money.

Reality check: the plan will be wrong. Planning is still priceless — it forces you to find the wrong parts before they cost you money.

🗺️ IMAGE SLOT Roadmap graphic — or a photo of an actual early SkySpecs plan/whiteboard

The Plan · This is your final pitch structure

Seven elements — tap any one to go deeper

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= Your Pitch

These seven ARE the slides your team presents Friday.

Plan element 1 of 7

🎯 Problem / Opportunity

Every business starts as someone's pain. No pain, no pay.

  • ✅ Strong: “Wind companies send humans on ropes up 300-ft turbines to look for cracks. It's slow, dangerous, and expensive.”
  • ❌ Weak: “We think drones are cool and want to build one.”
  • Judges score this on empathy, trends, and data — prove the need is real.
🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

The moment you truly understood your customer's pain (not just the tech).

  • e.g., first time watching a rope-access inspection team, or a customer's cost numbers

Plan element 2 of 7

📊 Market & Competitive Analysis

Prove people already spend money on this problem — and show you know exactly who else is fighting for it.

Market size

How big is the pool of spend? Growing or shrinking?

Competitors

Direct + indirect. “We have no competition” = you haven't looked. (Full toolkit in Lecture 2.)

Trends

What change (tech, law, culture) opens the door for you right now?

Plan element 3 of 7

💎 Unique Value Proposition

One sentence: why a customer picks you over every alternative — including doing nothing.

Value = Benefits − Costs

Full workshop on this in Lecture 2 — for now, just know your pitch lives or dies on this slide.

Plan element 4 of 7

👥 Target Market

“Everyone” is not a market. Who buys first, and what do they have in common?

Demographics

Age, income, occupation

Psychographics

Attitudes, interests, lifestyle

Geographics

Where they live & work

Buying patterns

How and when they spend

Plan element 5 of 7

📣 Marketing Plan

How your target market discovers you, decides to buy, and comes back.

Plan element 6 of 7

🧾 Cost Structure

What it costs to start, and what it costs to keep the lights on every month.

Startup expenses

One-time costs to open the doors

Fixed expenses

Bills that arrive whether you sell or not

Variable expenses

Costs that grow with each sale

Lecture 3 is entirely about this — with calculators.

Plan element 7 of 7

💵 Revenue Streams

Every way money flows in: one-time sales, subscriptions, services, licensing…

🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

How SkySpecs' revenue model evolved (hardware? service? software subscription?)

  • Great lesson: the product you build ≠ the thing customers pay for

Building block 3 · The Idea

Where do business ideas come from?

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Internal motivation

An idea from your own direct experience — a problem you personally hit.

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External motivation

An idea from the experience of others — a problem you watched someone else suffer.

🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

Which was SkySpecs? Walk the origin: drone team → what problem you chased first → how the real opportunity found you.

  • The lesson: your first idea is a door, not a destination

The Idea · Interactive

Six places opportunities hide

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Interests & skills

Hobbies, talents, things you're already great at

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Problems

Pain points people would pay to make disappear

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Changes

New trends, laws, customs → new needs

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New discoveries

Totally new products from innovative thinking

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Existing products

Improve something that already sells

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Unique knowledge

Expertise or experience few others have

Pop quiz

“A new law requires every restaurant to compost food waste.”
What kind of opportunity is that?

“Your barber complains he loses track of appointments.”

Building block 4 · The Industry

Zoom out: what industry are you standing in?

Industry: the production of goods or services within an economy — farming to furniture to healthcare.

The question that matters: is this industry bigger or smaller in 5 years? A great boat in a draining lake still ends up on the rocks.

🌐 IBISWorld 🌐 Bureau of Labor Statistics
🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

Why wind energy passed your 5-year test — the industry trend data that made SkySpecs' market irresistible.

  • Turbine install curves, aging fleets needing inspection, ESG money — pick your favorite chart
  • Media slot: drop that chart in here

Building block 5 · The Research

Market research = organized listening

An organized way to gather and analyze information needed to make business decisions.

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Customers

What they want, like, and need

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Competition

What similar businesses are doing

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Business environment

What's popular, what's selling, what's changing

The Research

Three reasons research pays for itself

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Avoid costly mistakes

Wrong guesses about the market → wrong decisions. Learn from what's already been tried.

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Get funding

Investors and banks fund evidence, not enthusiasm. Facts = credibility.

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Design better products

Build for what customers actually want — not what you assume they want.

🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

A mistake research would have prevented — or a time research changed your mind before it cost you.

  • Investor-meeting angle works too: the diligence question you couldn't answer, once

The Research · Interactive

Primary or secondary? Click a card, then click its bucket.

🎤 Primary

You collect it yourself, straight from potential customers

📚 Secondary

Already collected & organized by governments or companies

Your mission

What happens next

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TA Workshop

Idea generation — opportunity vs. idea, with AI as your brainstorm partner

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Breakout 1

Lock your team's idea + research your industry (workbook p. 6: customers, competition, environment)

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The finish line

Friday: full business pitch, judged on the 7 plan elements + delivery

Tonight's bar: leave Breakout 1 with one sentence — “We help [who] solve [what problem].”

One thing to remember

Entrepreneurs aren't born. They're built — by reps.

This week is your first rep. See you in Breakout 1.

🎤 Danny's story — to fill in

Close the loop on the cold open — finish the cliffhanger story from slide 2, now that they have the context.