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.
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Explore entrepreneurship. Build your future. Join the Founder Minor.

The Founder Minor gives you a structured pathway into entrepreneurship through hands-on courses taught by experienced founders, operators, and educators. Whether you want to launch a startup, build a project, or develop skills that complement your future career, you'll gain practical tools you can apply across industries and disciplines.

You'll learn how to spot opportunities, test ideas, build products, reach customers, and navigate uncertainty—while developing the confidence to turn ideas into action.

Whatever you study, you can complete the full minor or take individual entrepreneurship courses as electives alongside your degree.

Along the way, you'll learn how to:

  • Turn problems and opportunities into ideas worth exploring
  • Build and test products with real users
  • Create startups and develop new ventures
  • Find customers and build go-to-market strategies
  • Understand venture financing and entrepreneurship law
  • Tell compelling stories and communicate ideas
  • Experiment, learn from failure, and navigate uncertainty

You don't need a startup idea, a business background, or a plan to get started. Just bring your curiosity.

The Founder Minor is basically the shortcut I wish I’d had all those years ago as a founder. I went in curious, and I came out sharper.

Payam Salarvand

Popular Founder Minor Courses

ADVENTURES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP LAW image composition with podcast authors KALLE AIRO, PETRA HIETANEN-KUNWALD, and MORITZ SCHERLEITNER
Audience watching three speakers on stage at Aalto Founder Talks in a dark auditorium with a large blue screen.
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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. 

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.

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Audience watching three speakers on stage at Aalto Founder Talks in a dark auditorium with a large blue screen.
Five people sitting around a table with mugs, having a discussion in a modern office setting.
Nordic Product Design students in class during a lecture at Aalto University Summer School.

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. You'll also learn how to use AI tools for market research, strategy development, and execution.

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Five people sitting around a table with mugs, having a discussion in a modern office setting.
Nordic Product Design students in class during a lecture at Aalto University Summer School.
Addcomposites startup photo Annamari Tolonen

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.

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.

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Nordic Product Design students in class during a lecture at Aalto University Summer School.
Addcomposites startup photo Annamari Tolonen
Discussion

Product Development in Startups

How do startups build products with limited time, money, and resources? In this course, you'll learn how successful founders and product teams transform ideas into products through rapid experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative development. 

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 ends in a final showcase where teams present the products and insights they have developed throughout the term.

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Addcomposites startup photo Annamari Tolonen
Discussion
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Foundations of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting a company—it’s about understanding why people build, take risks, collaborate, and create change. In Foundations of Entrepreneurship, you’ll explore the realities of entrepreneurship from the individual, team, and institutional level, including both its opportunities and its less glamorous sides. 

Through an intensive, hands-on boot camp, you’ll apply startup tools and methods to real challenges within Aalto’s entrepreneurial ecosystem while developing your own perspective on what entrepreneurship actually means.

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Discussion
A blurred image of a group of people sitting and discussing in a modern office space with glass walls.
ADVENTURES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP LAW image composition with podcast authors KALLE AIRO, PETRA HIETANEN-KUNWALD, and MORITZ SCHERLEITNER

Founder Sprint

What if you could turn emerging trends into your next big opportunity? Founder Sprint is an intensive, application-only program for students ready to move beyond learning about entrepreneurship and start practicing it. 

Working alongside experienced mentors and a cohort of ambitious peers, you’ll explore startup methodologies, sharpen your leadership skills, and conduct trend research to uncover opportunities for new ventures. This is the first of three Founder Sprint courses, and your starting point for turning signals of change into ideas worth building.

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A blurred image of a group of people sitting and discussing in a modern office space with glass walls.
ADVENTURES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP LAW image composition with podcast authors KALLE AIRO, PETRA HIETANEN-KUNWALD, and MORITZ SCHERLEITNER
Audience watching three speakers on stage at Aalto Founder Talks in a dark auditorium with a large blue screen.

Entrepreneurship Law

Starting a business means making legal decisions from day one, and the wrong ones can be costly. In Entrepreneurship Law, you’ll learn the legal building blocks every entrepreneur needs to navigate, from choosing the right business structure and protecting your intellectual property to negotiating contracts, managing taxes, hiring people, and planning an exit. 

Through practical examples, you’ll learn not only what the law requires, but when to make decisions yourself and when it’s time to bring in a legal expert.

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Inside the Founder Minor

From student journeys and founder stories to the latest news from Aalto Founder School, discover what’s happening across our entrepreneurship community.

See all
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Studies Published:

From Management Consulting to Startup Thinking: Julia Seppä on Finding an Entrepreneurial Path

What happens when 15 years of experience lead you to ask, “What’s next?”
Three speakers on stage at Aalto Founder Talks, facing a seated audience in a dimly lit hall.
Studies Published:

Discover Aalto Founder School

Aalto Founder School helps students develop the mindset and skills to create something new. Open to all Aalto students, it offers multiple ways to explore entrepreneurship through Founder Talks, the Founder Minor, and Founder Sprint.
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Studies Published:

Experience Isn't the Finish Line: Payam Salarvand on Learning to Build Better

Can experienced entrepreneurs still benefit from going back to the classroom?
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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?
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Hot New Courses Coming in Autumn II

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Founder Principles (MNGT-C3004)

Great companies begin with prepared founders. 

In Founder Principles, you'll build the mindset and skills to launch and lead an early-stage startup through founder case studies, hands-on exercises, and practical AI applications. You'll learn to identify opportunities, validate ideas, navigate uncertainty, and make key decisions—from experienced founders and startup operators.

Learn more →
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Founder Storytelling (MNGT-C3010)

Every venture needs a story worth backing. 

In Founder Storytelling, you'll learn to communicate your vision, credibility, and purpose to investors, customers, talent, and supporters through hands-on exercises and real-world examples.You'll also hear from entrepreneurs and industry experts and develop a founder narrative you can apply to your own ideas, projects, or ventures.

Learn more →

Meet the Minds Behind the Minor

Hear from the founders, educators, and experts shaping the Founder Minor. Discover how they think about entrepreneurship, what they want students to learn, and what it really takes to turn ideas into action.

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

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

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

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

Ready to think like a founder?

Whether you're exploring entrepreneurship for the first time or simply want to build something new, the Founder Minor gives you space to experiment, build, fail, and learn alongside students from different disciplines.

Explore the Founder Minor and discover how founder skills can strengthen your studies, career, and future ventures.
See the full curriculum →
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