AVP Startup Minor

Basic information of the minor 

Students from all six schools of Aalto University are welcome to take Aalto Ventures Program Startup Minor or take entrepreneurship courses as electives. The AVP Startup Minor provides you with insight and experience needed to build bold startups, do venturing within existing companies, or join entrepreneurial teams. During the courses you’ll learn by doing together with people from various backgrounds and nationalities. This will teach you practical ‘street smarts’ for starting new ventures, which is one of the best ways to making an impact in real life.

The minor consists of two types of courses: project courses and topic courses. The project courses provide you with skills on the process of starting up and getting going. These are indispensable skills for an entrepreneur and there’s no replacement for the experience. The topic courses cover important and integral skills of entrepreneurship: leadership, design thinking, finance, innovation, start-ups, prototyping and much more. These are more specific courses and great for both providing an overview as well as way to start accumulating expertise in specific skill.

The project course Startup Experience is required for the minor. This can, however, be replaced by any project course addressing venture creation and building, such as Venture Ideation and Venture Formation courses together. Product design focused project courses cannot be used to replace Startup Experience. For topic courses, you can also suggest to the teacher in charge alternative entrepreneurship related courses available elsewhere in Aalto University. Work with the Kiuas accelerator can be credited as part of the AVP Startup Minor on a case-by-case basis.