Perspectives of Entrepreneurial Cybersecurity

Objectives

This lecture series gives comprehensive insights and hands-on experience into the founders' activities in the vicinity of cybersecurity and the entrepreneurial world. 

This lecture series covers talks by international and successful founders, sharing their journey as entrepreneurs and founders with you, including their take and the lessons learned. At the same time, this lecture series features guest lecturers, each covering a different aspect of the entrepreneurial world, such as venture capitalists, marketing experts, and consultants for entrepreneurs.

Finally, this lecture series entails developing and presenting concrete, marketable and innovative ideas, where students, organized in teams, identify a new solution, do the necessary background research, and pitch it in front of an audience.
 

Schedule of the Presentations

This lecture takes place every Thursday from 14:15 to 16:00 on Zoom. Instructions to access the lecture are provided here.

Note: To allow invited guests from the US to join this lecture series, we will use to-be-communicated exceptional slots at 18:15 – 20:00 (marked in yellow).

Lecture Organization

1. Weekly presentations and Q&A

Roughly every week will be a presentation either by a founder, a venture capitalist, or experts, e.g., in the area of marketing, business, or customer acquisition. A Q&A follows each talk with the presenter. 

Students task (mandatory for CP): In preparation for the Q&A session, every student has to prepare by checking the startup and supplemental material (URLs are in the schedule) and submit via the CMS 2-3 questions they would ask in the Q&A. Questions could be related to the niche in the market that the company occupies, the target group they aim at, pitfalls and challenges, etc.

2. Development of a Project Idea

Each team/student will develop a project idea or new product.

Ideas/products can be entrepreneurial ideas you plan to pursue or potential/hypothetical (yet based on actual research, more below). ECS students are strongly encouraged to present the project idea they plan to develop or use this lecture series to create one. 

When developing the project idea, we expect each team/student to:

• Define the problem and new idea/product intends to solve, e.g., who will use the proposed idea and for doing what? Is there a market already? Who are the competitors? Will the new idea create a new market?
• Identify the unique selling point of the proposed solution
• Cover similar ideas and elaborate on how the new idea differentiates from previous solutions
• Prepare a plan covering requirements analysis, funding, and team description, e.g., what are the technical requirements to realize the idea? How does the team plan to fulfill those requirements? What skills are necessary, and how does the current team fit the project and cover necessary/required skills?

Developing the idea requires extensive research. Students must document their effort and report them in a final report and prepare a pitch of their ideas (a short presentation).

Students task (mandatory for CP): Each team must submit the following artifacts

1. (mid-term requirement) A link to a video recording of the first pitch draft
2. (mid-term requirement) Comments to other teams' pitch draft
3. (end-term requirement) The slide deck PDF file of the final version of the pitch, integrating comments and feedback
4. (end-term requirement) The final report PDF file

3. Final Joint Event

At the end of the semester, we will have a joint 1-day event where every student/team delivers the pitch of their ideas in front of an audience. 

To this end, the CISPA faculty will provide a short list of recent research results with potential for tech transfer into a product, and students/teams should derive their product idea and pitch from this list. This list avoids the need to reveal any real business idea that students already have in mind. At the same time, this day also provides an opportunity to exchange ideas and thoughts with the CISPA faculty.

To prepare for this event, in the introduction, you'll get to know

• General guidelines for entrepreneurial pitches
• A typical pitch structure
• How to motivate your topic

Students' task (mandatory for CP): Each team must participate and deliver the final version of the pitch in front of a jury. 

Requirements and Grading

See this page.

Important dates

• Kickoff: Oct 27, 14:15, on Zoom
• Mid-term requirements deadlines:
  • Submit link of video recording: Jan 19, 2023
  • Submit comments of teams' video recording: Feb 2, 2023
• End-term requirements deadlines:
  • Submit PDF slide deck: TBD 
  • Submit PDF report: TBD
  • Participate to the final event and deliver the pitch

Registration

To get a seat to this lecture series, register using our CMS