Founder School

Founder Minor

Entrepreneurship is about more than starting a company. It's about learning how to spot opportunities, solve meaningful problems, test ideas and create value.

The Founder Minor gives students a structured pathway into entrepreneurship through practice-oriented courses taught by experienced founders, operators and educators. Whether you're interested in launching a startup, building a project or developing skills that complement your future career, the minor provides practical tools that can be applied across industries and disciplines. Most importantly, you'll develop the confidence to navigate uncertainty and turn ideas into action.
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The best way to learn entrepreneurship is by doing it.

In the Founder Minor, you'll move beyond theory and gain hands-on experience developing ideas, testing assumptions, building products, and bringing them to market. Through practical courses, real startup cases, and collaborative projects, you'll learn how founders identify opportunities, solve problems, and create value.

Along the way, you'll explore topics such as:

  • Product development and product management
  • Startup creation and venture building
  • Sales, marketing, and go-to-market strategy
  • Venture financing and entrepreneurship law
  • Founder storytelling and communication
  • Innovation, experimentation, and opportunity discovery

The Founder Minor consists of 20–25 ECTS credits and combines required and elective courses. Students can complete the full minor or take individual entrepreneurship courses as electives alongside their degree.

Explore the full curriculum and course requirements →

New Courses Coming this Fall

Founder Principles course

Founder Principles

Great companies begin with prepared founders. In Founder Principles, you'll build the mindset, knowledge, and skills needed to launch and lead an early-stage startup. Through real founder case studies, hands-on exercises, and practical applications of AI, you'll learn how to identify opportunities, validate ideas, navigate uncertainty, and make the critical decisions that shape new ventures.

The course also features guest founders and startup operators who share lessons from their own entrepreneurial journeys. Whether you're exploring entrepreneurship for the first time or already working on an idea, Founder Principles provides a practical foundation for turning ideas into action.

→ View course details in SISU
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Founder Storytelling

Every venture needs a story worth backing. In Storytelling for Founders, you'll learn how entrepreneurs use narratives to attract investors, customers, talent, and supporters. Through real-world examples, hands-on exercises, and iterative feedback, you'll develop the skills to communicate vision, credibility, and purpose at every stage of a venture's growth.

Alongside practical coursework, students will hear from entrepreneurs and industry experts who have used storytelling to build companies, communities, and movements. By the end of the course, you'll have crafted a founder narrative you can apply to your own ideas, projects, or ventures.

→ View course details in SISU

Student Stories

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Studies Published:

Beyond Startups: Karla Still on Rethinking Entrepreneurship

Can entrepreneurship look different from the startup stories we hear most often?
Smiling young man speaking into a microphone, holding blue papers, standing by brick wall indoors
Studies Published:

From Quantum to Entrepreneurship: Sreekrishna Praveen on Expanding His Perspective

How do you turn breakthrough technologies into real-world impact?
Person with blond hair and black glasses beside a yellow panel showing a quote about entrepreneurship by Emma Seisto.
Studies Published:

Founder Stories That Stay With You: Emma Seisto on Discovering Entrepreneurship

The course that made Emma rethink her future.
Andy Du Ly
Studies Published:

From assumptions to evidence: Andy Du Ly on testing ideas before building

What happens when a founder puts assumptions to the test?

Explore the Founder Minor

Founder Insights

What does it really take to build a company? Founder Insights offers an honest look into the realities of entrepreneurship through conversations with experienced founders who share their successes, setbacks, and lessons learned along the way. Through founder talks and entrepreneurial stories, you'll gain insight into how opportunities are identified, ideas are turned into ventures, and challenges are navigated in uncertain environments.

Designed for students from all disciplines, this self-paced course is an accessible introduction to entrepreneurship—whether you're considering starting a company one day or simply curious about how founders think and operate. Along the way, you'll reflect on your own interests, strengths, and aspirations while exploring entrepreneurship as a potential path for creating impact.

Go to Market for Founders

Building a great product is only half the challenge—getting it into the hands of customers is what drives growth. In Go-to-Market Strategy for Founders, you'll learn how startups turn ideas into products that people actually buy. Through real startup case studies and hands-on projects, you'll develop a complete go-to-market strategy, from defining your value proposition and business model to building sales and marketing plans.

Along the way, you'll explore how successful startups enter new markets, attract customers, and scale globally. You'll also learn how to use AI tools for market research, strategy development, and execution. By the end of the course, you'll have practical frameworks and tools to launch new products and evaluate their potential for growth in competitive markets.

From Zero to Product

Most startup ideas fail not because they are built poorly, but because they solve the wrong problem. From Zero to Product teaches students how to validate ideas before investing significant time and resources into building them. Through interviews, experiments, prototypes, and real-world testing, you'll learn how to uncover genuine customer needs and determine whether a problem is worth solving.

Working on your own idea—or one developed during the course—you'll apply the same evidence-based methods used by successful startups to move from uncertainty to insight. By the end of the course, you'll know how to test assumptions, identify product-market fit, and make informed decisions about what to build next. Rather than relying on guesswork, you'll learn a repeatable process for turning ideas into products that people actually want.

Product Development in Startups

How do startups build products with limited time, money, and resources? In Product Development in Startups, you'll learn how successful founders and product teams transform ideas into products through rapid experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative development. Working both independently and in interdisciplinary teams, you'll explore the realities of building products in fast-moving startup environments.

Through real startup cases and hands-on exercises, you'll learn how to uncover customer needs, test assumptions, develop prototypes, and create minimum viable products (MVPs). The course emphasizes learning by doing, giving students practical experience with the tools and methods used by startups to build products that solve real problems. The course culminates in a final showcase where teams present the products and insights they have developed throughout the term.

Faculty Perspectives

Smiling person with short blond hair and glasses in a zigzag blue-white jacket, standing indoors by a window

Aalto Didn’t Even Exist When I Left for the US: An Interview with Maija Renko (external link)

An “As Told To” interview by Kristaps Kovalonoks, Research Coordinator at Aalto University School of Business.

This interview is part of a first-person storytelling series highlighting the personal journeys, ideas, and insights of members of Aalto University’s Entrepreneurship Unit (ENTU). Real stories, told in their own words.

What leads someone to pursue two separate PhDs, one in Finland and another in the United States, and then return nearly two decades later to help shape the future of entrepreneurship education in Finland? In this interview, Maija Renko, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Aalto University, shares her international academic journey, her role in launching Aalto Founder School, and how she hopes to inspire students to take action, whether today or many years from now.

Man in dark coat on rooftop terrace with New York skyline and cloudy blue sky behind

It Was Never the Plan, But It Made Perfect Sense: An Interview with Apurva Ganoo (external link)

How does someone with a background in engineering, business, and design find themselves shaping entrepreneurship education at Aalto? In this conversation, Lecturer Apurva Ganoo shares how an early move to Finland and a curiosity for learning turned into a full-time calling in academia. He reflects on his evolving path from student to lecturer, the value of critical perspectives in entrepreneurship, and how a part-time student role opened unexpected doors in research and teaching.

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Building Founder School from the Start: An Interview with Kasper Suomalainen (external link)

What does it mean to build entrepreneurial education as a small, startup-like team inside a large university, and to do it in a way that serves students across all six schools? For Kasper Suomalainen, the answer connects directly to his own journey at Aalto: learning by doing, strong community, and an environment where people actively help one another move forward. Now managing the newly launched Aalto Founder School, he reflects on how his relationship with the ecosystem began, what makes Aalto and Finland distinct, and what he hopes the Founder School will achieve in the years ahead.

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Why Founders Need to Think Like Teachers: An Interview with Antti Lähtevänoja (external link)

What if being a good entrepreneur starts with being a good teacher? For Antti Lähtevänoja, the answer lies in combining hands-on experience with a clear educational approach. With a background spanning special education, startup building, sales, and research, he brings a practical and strongly interdisciplinary perspective to entrepreneurship education. Now working as a Lecturer at Aalto University’s Entrepreneurship Unit, he reflects on his journey from early business experiments to startup exits, and how he helps students turn ideas into something concrete.

Founder Minor
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About Founder School
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