Welcome to the Silicon Catalyst Curriculum for Success.

 

Silicon Catalyst has created a semiconductor focused curriculum for our portfolio company CEOs. This curriculum is meant to augment best-in-class material already available to entrepreneurs such as lean canvas, negotiating skills, and leadership and management, through many books and online classes. Our curriculum is taught by proven entrepreneurs who have also been semiconductor industry executives and subject matter experts.


Our portfolio CEOs go through the curriculum at their own pace and need as we do not have a cookie-cutter 3-4 month let's take all CEOs through a canned training program. Instead, we have a custom minimum two-year incubation for each startup that is admitted into the incubator. Finally, our CEOs tend to be quite experienced industry executives and technologists very different from what you see at a typical incubator.


Classes are regularly offered live with Q&A and pre-COVID our CEOs went through 2 days per year of face to face training and interaction. We expect to get back to face to face training in 2022!


Our semiconductor focused curriculum includes:

  • Problem Statement - Steve Lamont (see class here)

  • Market Opportunity - Paul Billig (see class here)

  • Go To Market Strategy - Dirk Franklin, Chuck Byers, Kevin Heney (see class here)

  • Building a Credible and Capable Team - Pete Rodriguez (see class here)

  • Legal Corporate - David Makerechian, O'Melveny (see class here)

  • Legal IP - Heather Meeker, O'Melveny (see class here)

  • University Licensing - Heather Meeker, O'Melveny (see class here)

  • Funding - Rick Lazansky, Laura Swan (see class here)

  • Financials/Cash Flow - Sandeep Shroff, MyStartupCFO (see class here)

  • Silicon Development Best Practices - Jim Sproch (see class here)

  • Leadership - VADM Winston Copeland

  • Board Meeting Training "my pet peeves after 3K board meetings" - Jim Hogan

  • Building For A Strong Exit - Alain Labat and Kyle Park, Harvest Management Partners

  • Using branding message to architect and implement sales strategy - John East

  • Elevator Pitch workshop - Portfolio CEOs, Silicon Catalyst Team and key advisors

  • VC Pitch workshop - Portfolio CEOs, Silicon Catalyst Team and key advisorsMaximizing

  • Exit Valuations for Technology Companies - Warren Lazarow, O'Melveny; Yvonne Lutsch, Bosch Ventures, James Pond, Lumerical (ANSYS); Roger Fawcett, OmniTek (Intel); Alain Labat, Harvest Management Partners; Pete Rodriguez

In addition to the curriculum, we have specific classes (e.g. how to mine Linkedin), regular financial topics (at Quaterly advisor meetings and Silicon Catalyst Angels meetings), and exciting panels on currently relevant topics (China, VCs, IP protection, DOD 5G ...).