Go or No Go: Learning to Persuade in an Early-Stage Student Entrepreneurship Program

摘要

Early-stage accelerator programs teach new entrepreneurs how to identify and exploit venture opportunities. In doing so, they implicitly teach these new entrepreneurs how to develop and iterate claims. But since this function of teaching persuasion has been implicit and generally unsystematic, it’s unclear how well it works. In this study, we examine one such accelerator program. We ask: Does an entrepreneurship training program implicitly teach new entrepreneurs to make and iterate persuasive claims? How effectively does it do this, and how can it improve? We conclude with recommendations for improving how accelerator programs can teach new entrepreneurs to communicate and persuade.