Entrepreneurship Courses
The Jake Jabs Center offers several courses each semester that cover a wide variety of entrepreneurial topics. From developing a marketable idea to creating a business plan to securing capital for your startup, we make sure our students graduate with the skills needed to run a business successfully. View the available ENTP courses below!
IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT COURSE SCHEDULING: Registering for an entrepreneurship (ENTP) course is a little different than other courses on campus. Make sure to download our registration guide below to ensure that you’re signed up for the courses you want.
LOOKING FOR SCHOLARSHIP ASSISTANCE? Visit our Tuition & Scholarship page to learn more about how the Jake Jabs Center can help you!
Jump to:
Summer 2024
Undergraduate Courses
ENTP 3210 – Leadership for New and Innovative Ventures
Online
This course provides students with an overview of key leadership principles for creating strategy and managing teams in a startup environment. It introduces leadership concepts critical to gaining true organizational commitment and focuses on case studies relevant to common business issues. By exploring what entrepreneurial leaders do and how visionary leadership is required to grow a venture, students will learn how to execute these concepts through measurable goals.
Graduate Courses
ENTP 6822 – Legal and Ethical Issues of Entrepreneurship
Online
This course addresses the legal issues most frequently encountered by entrepreneurs and others involved in startups and small, closely held or family businesses. The focus is on how to avoid legal problems and how best to cope when they arise. Topics include choice of business form, legal aspects of raising capital, taxation, intellectual property law, employment law, product liability, e-commerce and the problems of managing lawyers and litigation. Note: Cannot receive credit for both BUSN 6540 and this course.
ENTP 6860 – Innovation in Blockchain
Online
This course teaches you about the fundamentals of Blockchain technology and its application in the digital entrepreneurial space. This practicum course not only focuses on the basics of the technology and how it works, but also its application across a variety of industries. Through the semester, students will be hearing from various top entrepreneurs who are active in this field. Students will work on an exciting project that will help operationalize this technology.
Fall 2024
Undergraduate Courses
ENTP 3200 – The Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship
Section 1 – In Person
Section 2 – Hybrid
Learn what it means to think like an entrepreneur and grow high-potential ideas in today’s ever-changing business landscape. Resilience, resourcefulness, and creative problem solving are not only essential skills for future founders but also for those looking to create change and drive growth in startups and large companies. By understanding the basic principles of entrepreneurship, students can learn how to find innovative solutions, sell their ideas, and create growth in any organization.
ENTP 3230 – Small Business Accounting and Finance
In Person
This course is an introduction to the financial life of an entrepreneur. Students will learn the basics of small business accounting and finance so that they can recognize the key financial challenges that come with owning a business; know the potential sources of capital for a small business; prepare basic financial statements; analyze a business’s liquidity, profitability, and capital structure; and understand a small business’s tax obligations. This course counts as a pre-req to ENTP 3299.
ENTP 3260 – High-Impact Sales for Entrepreneurs
Online
Selling one’s own concept to prospective customers and investors is very different from selling products in a corporate environment. In this course, students will learn how to get their message heard, get their ideal clients to want to work with them, and use their authentic brand to sell their small-business concept successfully.
ENTP 3900 – The Many Pathways to Entrepreneurship
In Person
There is no one clear path to become a successful entrepreneur. This course invites students to learn from Denver’s most innovative founders and C-suite executives by hearing their stories and visiting their businesses. Through group discussions, reflections, and experiential projects, students will identify both the similarities and variations across the different pathways to entrepreneurship as they develop their own entrepreneurial skillset and vision for their future career.
Graduate Courses
ENTP 6620 – New Venture Operations and Project Management
Online (First 8-Week Course)
Many viable businesses have failed due to cash flow problems, poor management, and poor execution. Utilizing both academic fundamentals and practical knowledge imparted by an experienced instructor, this course provides the project management knowledge and skills needed to build strong operation plans.
ENTP 6824 – Entrepreneurial Financial Management
Online (Second 8-Week Course)
This course provides a foundation for the financial management of an entrepreneurial business. Topics covered include differentiation from traditional corporate financial management assumptions, financial aspects of setting up a business, and how to create, evaluate, forecast, and analyze future financial statements. Students will examine theoretical and practical valuation techniques, considerations for buying versus starting a business and franchising. The course also discusses different choices for financing a new business, venture capital, angel financing, crowd funding, private equity and security laws, harvesting alternatives, and financial distress turnaround considerations. Cannot receive credit for both FNCE 6460 and this course.
ENTP 6826 – International Entrepreneurship
In Person (First 8-Week Course)
This course focuses on the intersection of international business and entrepreneurship. Topics addressed include international entrepreneurship theory and practice (opportunity identification, processes and route to market). This course also highlights new topics in international entrepreneurship such as digital globalization and new technologies driving international entrepreneurship (blockchain and the global supply chain). Leading practitioners and entrepreneurs will be facilitating these modules.
ENTP 6836 – High-Impact Sales for Entrepreneurs
Online (First 8-Week Course)
Selling one’s ideas, products, and services is critical to the success of any organization. This course explores the role and value of high impact selling in the success of the broader business and the many principles and methods of professional selling. Focus is given to sales methods, processes, best practices, and the frameworks used to organize sales efforts. By the end of this course, students will be able to effectively demonstrate their own sales process and go-to-market strategy.
ENTP 6842 – Idea Validation & Concept Development
Online (First 8-Week Course)
This course explores the data-driven tools and insights entrepreneurs can use to assess the viability of their ideas. Before drafting a full business plan, an entrepreneur must first determine if a new business concept is truly worthy of development. Students will learn how to identify market gaps and problem-solving products/services while maintaining a healthy level of skepticism regarding their ideas. Throughout this course, students will complete various experiential and theoretical learning exercises to investigate relevant topics, such as market and industry attractiveness; competitive and economic sustainability; and financial per-unit modeling.
ENTP 6848 – Leadership for New and Innovative Ventures
Online (Second 8-Week Course)
This course provides students with an overview of key leadership principles for creating strategy and managing teams in a startup environment. It introduces leadership concepts critical to gaining true organizational commitment and focuses on case studies relevant to common business issues. By exploring what entrepreneurial leaders do and how visionary leadership is required to develop an organization, students will learn how to execute these concepts through measurable goals.
Spring 2025
Undergraduate Courses
ENTP 3200 – The Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship
Section 1 – In Person
Section 2 – Hybrid
This introductory course overviews all of the concepts, skills, and practical information relevant to startup companies. The materials are designed to help students anticipate HR, financial, and marketing problems through proper planning. The primary objective of the course is to teach students the real-world aspects of entrepreneurship in order to improve the odds of success.
ENTP 3240 – Developing Dynamic Concepts
This course is designed to prepare entrepreneurial-minded students to critically and objectively evaluate the feasibility of their ideas. Entrepreneurs are motivated by a plethora of “the next big idea” and are often fatally optimistic about their ideas. The course work will demonstrate how to objectively test and validate the feasibility of an entrepreneurial idea through data-driven analytical and strategic planning. Additionally, this course will provide pragmatic applications of the course content by incorporating real-life case studies presented by practicing entrepreneurs as guest lecturers.
ENTP 3299 – Build Your Business: Plan, Pitch, Launch
At the heart of every great business is a well-thought-out business plan. This course teaches entrepreneurially-minded students how to create one, and students will tackle this project with a team or as an individual. Local entrepreneurs and investors will serve as guest speakers and share their experiences. Mentors and advisors associated with the Jake Jabs Center, as well as special Center-organized experiential events, will provide students with practical feedback. Prereq: ENTP 3230 or ACCT 2200 with a grade of C- or higher is required.
ENTP 4200 – Mission-Driven Entrepreneurial Mindset
The course is designed to teach students to rethink the common market-driven approach to innovation, with a mission-driven focus. In this course, students will learn that impact innovation exists in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Completing this course will dispel the idea that purpose-driven innovation only exists in the non-profit realm.
Graduate Courses
ENTP 6020 – Business Model Development & Planning
Jointly taught by an experienced professor, Dr. Madhavan Parthasarathy, Executive Director of the Jake Jabs Center, this course familiarizes students with the key steps for preparing a business plan for a new (or existing) business venture. This course provides real-world feedback and advice and integrates coursework with THE CLIMB | Startup Pitch Competition events to further enhance the quality of one’s business concept. Several past students have won prizes at THE CLIMB and launched successful businesses from concepts developed in the course.
ENTP 6110 – Innovation in Fintech
Fintech describes products and opportunities that accrue when synergies between finance and technology can be effectively operationalized. It is rapidly changing the way we think about money and finance as it impacts banks, global financial markets, transaction speed, and government regulations. The global fintech market is predicted to reach around $250 billion by 2027. This course overviews the leading topics and innovations in fintech, such as peer-to-peer lending, digital wealth management, insurance, consumer finance, real estate, blockchain, automation, and payment systems.
ENTP 6200 – Mission Driven Entrepreneurship
The course is designed to teach students to rethink the common market-driven approach to innovation with a mission-driven focus. In this course, students will learn that impact innovation exists in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Completing this course will dispel the idea that purpose-driven innovation only exists in the nonprofit realm.
ENTP 6801 – Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship
This hybrid course is intended for STEM and business majors who are interested in digital health entrepreneurship. After completing this course, students should be able to: understand and apply the principles and practice of digital health entrepreneurship, work in project teams to pursue a digital health opportunity and validate underlying business model canvas hypotheses, present their findings and decide whether and how to proceed.
ENTP 6834 – Lean Marketing
This course teaches students how to create successful marketing strategies in entrepreneurial environments where resources are often limited and negative outcomes can be unforgiving. The course work will demonstrate the imperative link between the fundamental marketing principles and entrepreneurial lean marketing guiding principles through real-life case studies, projects, videos, podcasts, and reading materials. Students will leave this course understanding how to develop an effective and pragmatic marketing plan for an entrepreneurial venture.