Skip to content
ENTR

ENTR 5000 · Fall 2026 syllabus

Fall 2026

Class: Tuesday/Thursday 1:15–2:35pm, Studio 225 (225 W. Broad Street)

Instructor: John Weatherford - [email protected] / Studio 225, #007

Office Hours: By appointment

🌎 Overview

Description

A special-topics studio for students who want to build with AI. Generative AI has collapsed the cost of trying things—drafting, designing, prototyping, and testing ideas that once took teams and months now takes a founder a focused afternoon. This course explores what that shift means for entrepreneurs and puts it into practice: working in iterative cycles of inquiry, building, and measuring/learning, you’ll use frontier AI tools to find opportunities, ship experiments, gather real feedback, and decide what to do next.

Why take this course?

Two things are true at once: AI is the biggest shift in how ventures get built since the internet, and nobody—not Y Combinator, not Stanford, not your instructor—has a settled playbook for it. The tools change monthly. That’s exactly why this course runs as a studio instead of a lecture: rather than studying a fixed body of knowledge, we’ll practice the durable skill underneath—directing intelligent tools at real opportunities, testing what they produce against real people, and learning faster than the landscape changes. You’ll leave with a portfolio of shipped experiments, a personal playbook of AI workflows that actually work for you, and the confidence that comes from having built real things for real users.

Prerequisites

None—this studio is open to students from all majors, and no programming background is assumed. Curiosity required.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

  • Wield frontier AI tools fluently across the entrepreneurial workflow—research, ideation, prototyping, marketing, and analysis
  • Practice hypothesis-driven venture experimentation: frame a question, build the smallest thing that tests it, measure real responses, and decide what to do next
  • Translate ambiguous opportunities into scoped, testable product experiments
  • Conduct customer discovery with real people, using AI to accelerate—but never replace—learning from the market
  • Give and take constructive critique of work-in-progress, and incorporate it into the next iteration
  • Evaluate where AI creates durable entrepreneurial advantage—and where it doesn’t—across economic, ethical, and competitive dimensions

Course Format

In person—attendance required. This class is an in-person course—attendance is taken daily, starting on day 1 of the course! Active participation is required for success in the class. Please note that the delivery method may change as necessary in accordance with university policies and procedures.

Learning method: the studio. Most days, we make things. A typical week: Tuesdays open with a short briefing on a tool, technique, or concept, then move into working sessions where I circulate for desk crits—one-on-one coaching on whatever you’re building. Thursdays are for pin-ups: showing work-in-progress and reporting on four questions—What did we think? What did we do? What did we learn? What will we do next?—while the class critiques constructively. Expect to show your screen often. Nothing needs to be finished to be shown; working in the open on unfinished things is the whole point of a studio.

Instructor Philosophy

More than being here to help you learn the subject material, I’m here to help you figure out how what we’re learning applies to your academic and professional goals. I think the things we’re talking about in class are incredibly cool, exciting, and worthy of your time, thought, and energy. When you finish the class, you’ll have developed a really solid working knowledge of the field and know where and how to further your own knowledge and expertise. We’re going to have a lot of fun, but I also expect you to work hard. Work hard at the assignments, sure, but more than that, work hard at understanding the stuff we’re talking about, why it matters, and what you can do with it—that’s what really matters.

Class Culture

We’ll continually discuss the attitudes and practices that each of you, individually, will need to cultivate to succeed in this class. However, it’s also worth taking some time at the outset to talk about what we all should expect from each other.

In short, we’ll work to cultivate an atmosphere of curiosity, fun, and professionalism. That means that you can expect me to:

  • Create an atmosphere of curiosity and inclusion where everyone feels welcome to bring their authentic selves to class
  • Communicate a clear direction for the course as a whole and for each class gathering, activity, and assignment
  • Work diligently to make all assignments and activities of this class worthwhile

Similarly, I expect each of you to approach each component of the class as a future professional—with an open mind, a diligent work ethic, and respect for your peers and instructor.

One more note: this syllabus is a critical resource for your success in this class—think of it as a “user’s manual” for the course, and make good use of it. It’s where all logistical information about the course is housed: policies, grading schemes, expectations, due dates, and a detailed schedule of what we’ll be doing in class each day. It is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with it, and I expect you to review it before reaching out with a logistical question about the course. (I am always happy to provide clarifying information or support!)

📖 Texts + Tools

Your AI Toolkit

There is no textbook and no course packet. In their place, you’re required to carry a paid subscription to a frontier AI model for the duration of the semester—ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro (~$20/month, ~$80 total for the term—less than most textbooks). Free tiers won’t cut it: they route you to smaller models with lower limits, and this studio depends on frontier capabilities. Your subscription must be active by our second class meeting; you’ll verify it with a screenshot submitted to eLC.

Two notes. First, UGA provides every student free access to Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini with data protection, and some students hold ChatGPT Edu or Gemini Pro licenses through UGA’s Student Premium AI License Pilot—those premium licenses count toward the requirement (just show me), and the free tools make excellent supplements. Second, if the subscription cost is a genuine hardship, come see me during the first week and we’ll figure it out together—cost will not keep anyone out of this studio.

eLC

ELC (elc.uga.edu) will be used for class slides, assignment submission folders, rubrics, quizzes, and viewing your grades.

Messaging Platform

We’re going to use a messaging platform for all class discussion and communication, including important updates from me. You’ll receive an invite via your UGA email address; after you’ve created your account, please complete your profile with your full name and a profile image. After you’ve joined the class messaging platform, use only it—not email—to contact me. Checking the messaging platform regularly (ideally daily) is required for the course, so you must install the app on your device(s).

🔗 Messaging Platform Details

Video Tools

You’ll occasionally submit short video responses for discussion prep and participation (see details in Assignments + Grading - no special equipment needed).

Summary

  • Your paid AI subscription (ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro) is the course material—no textbook or packet
  • The messaging platform will be our course communication hub
  • eLC is our assignment hub: slides, submissions, rubrics, and grades
  • You’ll regularly show work-in-progress—in class and in short videos

📝 Assignments + Grading

Class Participation and Attendance (20 points)

As you will with much in life, you’ll get out of this class what you put into it—and active participation and attendance are critical to success in this course. Participation grades will be based on attendance and the overall quality of discussion contributions related to studio work—crits, pin-ups, and working sessions—and guest speaker interaction.

🔗Class Participation + Attendance details

Build Journal (10 points)

The studio’s lab notebook. For every cycle you run, your build journal captures the loop: what you hypothesized, what you built (including the prompts and AI workflows that actually mattered), what you measured when your work met real people, and what you decided to do next. This is also where you disclose and reflect on your AI use—the journal documents how the work got made. Entries can be written or video, and the best ones read like a founder’s field notes: honest about what flopped, specific about what you’d try next. Journals are submitted for grading three times over the semester (see schedule).

🔗 Build Journal details

External Engagement Papers (10 points)

In addition to classroom attendance, you will be required to attend at least 3 Speaker Series or other events hosted by the Entrepreneurship Program, UGA Innovation District, or other entities within the UGA and/or Athens entrepreneurial ecosystem—or, alternatively, to engage with outside content on entrepreneurship (that passes the litmus test outlined below) through books, podcasts, Ted Talks, movies, etc. Due to the rich networking opportunities that in-person events provide, events are strongly preferred and recommended over media.

🔗 External Engagement Papers details

Sprint Cycles (25 points)

The heart of the studio. In teams, you’ll run three multi-week build-measure-learn cycles—each framed by an inquiry the class directs, and each ending in a pin-up where your team demos its artifact and reports on the four questions: What did we think? What did we do? What did we learn? What will we do next? Sprints are graded on the quality of your process, not the polish of your product—sharp hypotheses, real evidence from real people, honest iteration. Each sprint counts as one-third of this component; see the schedule for pin-up dates and the rubric in each sprint’s eLC folder.

🔗 Sprint Cycles details

Collaborative Product Build (20 points)

Here’s the wild part. As a class, we’re going to build one real software product together—a single shared product, iterated all semester through ongoing customer feedback and iterative development. You’ll work in rotating squads (product, research, design, build, growth), and roughly one class day in five is a dedicated build day. No coding experience is required: between frontier AI tools and squad roles spanning customer discovery, user testing, design, documentation, and go-to-market, there is meaningful work for every skill set. Your grade reflects your shipped contributions, your responsiveness to real user feedback, and your squad’s peer evaluations.

🔗 Collaborative Product Build details

Demo Day + Field Guide (15 points)

Everything converges here. On Demo Day (Tuesday 11/17), teams present the semester’s work to the class and invited guests from the UGA and Athens entrepreneurial ecosystem: a working demo—never just a deck—plus a tight narrative of what you thought, what you did, and what you learned. Then, as your final individual deliverable, you’ll submit a Field Guide: your personal playbook for building with AI—your best prompts and workflows, your tool judgments, and the five biggest lessons you’re taking with you, connected to your experience across the semester. Format is flexible (document, site, or video—creativity encouraged!). The Field Guide is due Tuesday 12/1 at 11:59pm—no class meeting that day.

🔗 Demo Day + Field Guide details

Graduate Credit / Honors Credit

All graduate students, as well as any students wishing to honors-opt the course, will complete one additional, individual experiment cycle: identify a venture hypothesis of your own, run it through a full build-measure-learn loop using your AI toolkit, and write a short case-style retrospective on what you tested, what the evidence showed, and what you’d do next. Graduate and honors projects are due on Demo Day.

Grading Scale

Final course grades will be determined according to the following scale. Please note that grades will not be rounded.

A 93–100

A- 90–92.99

B+ 87–89.99

B 83–86.99

B- 80–82.99

C+ 77–79.99

C 73–76.99

C- 70–72.99

D 60–69.99

F 0–59.99

🗓️ Schedule

The schedule below serves as the topical outline for the course: each class meeting’s topic is listed alongside the assignments due that day.

View the Fall 2026 schedule.

🤝 Policies

Class Participation and Attendance

Attendance is taken daily and is woven directly into your participation grade—see Class Participation and Attendance under Assignments + Grading for the full details, including how excused and unexcused absences, tardies, and the dropped lowest day work. The official attendance policy of the university states: “It is the responsibility of each instructor to enforce his or her attendance policy and to decide whether to excuse an absence.” For more information, please see the UGA attendance policy. Absences arising from military service commitments (UGA Policy 01.09.010) or required professional duties are excused in accordance with University policy—please let me know as soon as you’re aware of a conflict.

Late/Make-Up Work

Except in the case of extenuating circumstances, assignments submitted after the posted due date (as indicated by the schedule above and the respective submission folder in eLC) will incur a penalty of 10% grade reduction per day late. No late work will be accepted beyond 5 days after the original due date without prior arrangement.

Exams + Quizzes

This course has no exams and no final exam—all graded work consists of the deliverables described in Assignments + Grading, due as shown in the schedule. Any graded quiz or assessment will be administered through eLC, which authenticates you with your UGA ID; this serves as verification of student identity for assessment purposes. Make-up arrangements for missed deliverables follow the Late/Make-Up Work policy above.

Classroom Etiquette

A studio only works if everyone is present—in both senses. Your laptop is your workbench here, and you’ll use it constantly for the work at hand; that’s expected and encouraged. What I ask in return: when a classmate is presenting or we’re in a crit, screens down and full attention—showing unfinished work takes nerve, and the room owes the presenter its eyes. Keep messaging apps closed during class, keep phones away unless you’re testing on mobile, and stay off anything that isn’t our work. Distraction costs participation points. All class slides will be posted to eLC.

Email + Direct Messages

So that I can most quickly help those in need of assistance, take the following steps before messaging me:

  • Check the syllabus, eLC, previous conversations, etc. to see if the answer’s posted there.
  • Spend 5–15 minutes (but not any more time than that) trying to solve the problem on your own (via Google, asking a classmate, etc.).
  • Ask yourself if the question might be one other students are having, and if so, ask it somewhere the whole class can benefit from the answer.

If you do all of those and still have a question just for me, then by all means reach out! I’ll respond to your questions as quickly as possible, but please allow a reasonable amount of time (generally under 24 hours; 2 business days max) for a response. Communication can be informal and fun, which is great! But don’t forget to communicate professionally, even while having fun.

Office Hours

I’ll frequently (though not always!) be in my office during regular business hours. You’re welcome to come by and see me with any questions, concerns, or just to say hi. I sometimes work with my door closed, but you’re always welcome to come in! The best way to meet with me is to make an appointment.

Access Policy

If you have a disability or health-related issue and require reasonable classroom accommodations, please see me after class or make an appointment during office hours as soon as possible. If you plan to request accommodations for a disability, please register with Accessibility and Testing at Clark Howell Hall (706-542-8719).

Service Animals in Class

Students who train or use service animals should be aware of UGA policy. More info is available here.

Non-Discrimination Policy

I do not engage in or tolerate discrimination or harassment on the basis of race/ethnicity, religion, national origin, sex/gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, or veteran status. In addition, we do not discriminate on the basis of class, income, or political views. If there is something I can do to make the class more hospitable, please let me know.

Inclusive Excellence

The Terry College of Business is committed to promoting an inclusive learning and working environment among its students, faculty, and staff. This class welcomes the open exchange of ideas and values freedom of thought and expression and provides a professional environment that recognizes the inherent worth of every person. It aims to foster dignity, understanding, and mutual respect among all individuals in the class.

UGA Honor Code

UGA Student Honor Code: “I will be academically honest in all of my academic work and will not tolerate academic dishonesty of others.” A Culture of Honesty, the University’s policy and procedures for handling cases of suspected dishonesty, can be found at honesty.uga.edu.

Academic Honesty

As a University of Georgia Student, you have agreed to abide by the University’s academic honesty policy, “A Culture of Honesty”, and the Student Honor Code. All academic work must meet the standards described in “A Culture of Honesty” found at honesty.uga.edu. You can find the Academic Honesty policy at honesty.uga.edu/Academic-Honesty-Policy. Lack of knowledge of the academic honesty policy is not a reasonable explanation for a violation.

Read the entire policy online, but in short: don’t cheat—the punishments for violations of the Academic Honesty Policy are severe. You are expected to do your own work and to report individuals who do not do their own work. Questions related to course assignments and the academic honesty policy should be directed to the instructor.

In this course specifically, examples of academically dishonest behavior include: fabricating or falsifying evidence, data, or customer feedback; presenting AI-generated work without the disclosure required by the AI Use Policy below; completing another student’s deliverables; and misrepresenting your contributions to team or class projects.

AI Use Policy

This course inverts the usual policy: you are expected—and often required—to use AI in this class. Building fluently with frontier AI tools is the point, not a shortcut.

Three rules make that work. First, you are responsible for everything you submit. AI output is a draft, not an answer—models produce confident nonsense, and submitting unverified AI work means putting your name on someone else’s mistake. Second, disclose meaningfully: your Build Journal documents the prompts and workflows behind your work, and any significant AI contribution should be traceable there. Third, AI augments your thinking—it doesn’t replace your integrity. Using AI to disguise someone else’s work as your own, to fabricate evidence or customer feedback, or to complete another student’s deliverables remains academic dishonesty under UGA’s Culture of Honesty.

When in doubt about a use, ask—the answer will usually be “yes, and log it.”

These expectations follow UGA’s Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Academic and Operational Contexts, and we will discuss them together at the start of the semester; assignment-level guidance will be noted in eLC.

Mental Health and Wellness Resources

UGA Well-being Resources promote student success by cultivating a culture that supports a more active, healthy, and engaged student community.

Anyone needing assistance is encouraged to contact Student Care & Outreach (SCO) in the Division of Student Affairs at 706-542-8479 or visit sco.uga.edu. Student Care & Outreach helps students navigate difficult circumstances by connecting them with the most appropriate resources or services. They also administer the Embark@UGA program which supports students experiencing, or who have experienced, homelessness, foster care, or housing insecurity.

UGA provides both clinical and non-clinical options to support student well-being and mental health, any time, any place. Whether on campus, or studying from home or abroad, UGA Well-being Resources are here to help.

Additional information, including free digital well-being resources, can be accessed through the UGA app or by visiting well-being.uga.edu.

Emergency Preparedness

Verify that your emergency contact information is correct at ugaalert.uga.edu and add 706-542-0111 as “UGAAlert” in your contacts. We will discuss emergency exit routes on the first day of class.

If the fire alarm sounds, we will evacuate the building and reassemble outside Studio 225 on W. Broad Street to make sure that everyone exited safely. Quickly move away from the entrances so as not to hinder first responders.

If there is a tornado warning, we will move to the first floor and account for everyone.

In the event of a medical emergency, we will ask one of you to meet EMS responders and bring them to our classroom.

If you have concerns about other emergencies or if you have special circumstances that I need to know about in case of an emergency, please speak to me after class.

Schedule Changes to Course Syllabus

The course syllabus is a general plan for the course; deviations announced to the class by the instructor may be necessary and should be expected. Course announcements will be made via eLC, and it is the responsibility of the student to check for updates regularly.

Source: Fall 2026 course syllabus — Syllabus, copied October 6, 2026.