• Assembling a founding team. (2, 3 or 4 IESE MBA students)
• Strong leadership, crisp vision and effective communication.
• Being able to prioritize and take feedback.
• Gain a deep understanding of customer needs, and then must build on that understanding through rapid iteration and testing to confirm or reject hypotheses and prove product-market fit.
• Sell, Sell, Sell. As a founder, you are always selling: to yourself, to potential cofounders, employees, customers, strategic partners, and investors.
• Grit! Building a startup is hard. Being successful depends more about grit than about raw talent.
• Self driven.

1. To be ale to apply you have to be an IESE MBA student. The SAL is a real work experience. It is not a project-based course; not a short bootcamp; not a start-up incubator. SEE is a simulation of what startups and entrepreneurship are in the real world: chaos, uncertainty, impossible deadlines with insufficient time, conflicting inputs, etc.

2. The learning occurs outside the classroom through conversations with customers, partners, suppliers, competitors. You will have to do them yourself. You cannot delegate customer discovery.

3. You have to prepare and present a progress report every week.

4. We, the organizers of the SEE, plus some guests, will be like a Board of Directors for you, entrepreneurs. This sometimes pushes many people past their comfort zone. If you believe that the role of your instructors is to praise in public and criticize in private, do not participate in the SEE.  You will be receiving critiques in front of your peers every week. We will be direct, open, and tough – just like the real world.

5. You should have a proactive approach towards potential customers, suppliers and business partners. Do not say “People are slow to reply to our emails” Pick up the phone. Learn about cold calling. Go out in the field. Hustle.

6. SAL is hands-on and in-person. Do not schedule calls or visits that may overlap with SEE sessions. Each team member must be in-person at least 8 of the 10 sessions and ideally in the 10 sessions. At least 1 team member must be in-person for every single session. If every single team member fails to show up for 1 session, that team will not be able to continue in the program.

7. We expect all SEE participants to be attentive and be active listeners when other teams are presenting. Feedback from students to students is encouraged and expected.

8. Taking part in the SEE does not entitle anyone to ownership over an idea or a company. The SEE is for learning together, not for allocating equity.

→Weekly sessions by IESE faculty.

→Weekly sessions by sector experts such as entrepreneurs, investors and innovators.

→Regular working sessions with other participants in IESE’s Venture Hub on its Barcelona campus.

→Weekly presentations to share your hard-earned knowledge with other participants.