Hi all — the first lesson of Emerge Society, our free 12-lesson entrepreneurship course funded through Project Catalyst, is now live on the LMS.
Lesson 1 — The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Why Builders Win is a structured 60-minute hour: short produced videos, a curated open-source reading (OpenStax, CC BY-NC-SA), and a self-guided exercise where you write your “Founder Why.” It’s built for anyone in the community who wants to move from an idea to something they can launch on Cardano.
Feedback welcome — this is for the community, and we want it to be useful. More lessons rolling out.
3 Likes
Following Lesson 1, Lesson 2 — Spotting Opportunities: Problems Before Products is now live.
This 60-minute lesson moves from personal motivation to a practical opportunity-finding method: how to tell an idea from a real opportunity, the four sources opportunities come from, two generation techniques (problem journaling and trend mapping), and a three-question screen. It also uses the Catalyst funded-projects archive as a live opportunity map for the ecosystem — with the honest caveat that what got funded reflects what voters valued, not necessarily what the market needs.
Take the lesson at https://blocklaunchinstitute.com
Built for the community and free to all. Feedback welcome.
1 Like
Following Lesson 2, Lesson 3 — Know Your Customer: Discovery and Segments is now live.
This 60-minute lesson replaces assumptions with customer evidence: how to avoid the building trap, conduct useful discovery interviews without pitching or leading the participant, identify early adopters, and find interview candidates inside the Cardano community. The practical exercise has learners draft an interview script, identify candidates, and prepare to complete two customer conversations.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 3, Lesson 4 — Value Proposition: The Promise You Make is now live.
This 60-minute lesson turns customer insight into a clear promise. It explains why “built on Cardano” is not itself a value proposition, walks through the Value Proposition Canvas, uses an NFT ticketing example, and provides a one-sentence value proposition formula. Learners finish with a completed canvas and a focused statement connecting customer jobs, pains, and gains to a proposed solution.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 4, Lesson 5 — The Business Model Canvas, Part 1: Desirability is now live.
This 60-minute lesson introduces the Business Model Canvas as a faster way to make assumptions visible and testable. It covers all nine building blocks, then concentrates on the customer-facing side: customer segments, value propositions, channels, relationships, and revenue streams. A Cardano ticketing example shows how the blocks connect, and learners finish the desirability side of their own canvas.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 5, Lesson 6 — The Business Model Canvas, Part 2: Feasibility and Viability is now live.
This 60-minute lesson moves to the operational side of the canvas: key resources, activities, partners, and cost structure. It examines when to make, buy, or partner, identifies partnership opportunities in the Cardano ecosystem, and stress-tests the completed business model. Learners finish with a full canvas and the three riskiest assumptions they need to test next.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 6, Lesson 7 — Test Before You Build: Lean Startup and MVPs is now live.
This 60-minute lesson shows how to test a risky assumption before investing heavily in a finished product. It covers the Build–Measure–Learn loop, four useful MVP formats, and ways the Cardano ecosystem can function as a low-cost testing environment. Learners finish with an experiment card containing a hypothesis, metric, success threshold, audience, and next action.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Lesson 8
Following Lesson 7, Lesson 8 — Markets and Competition: Finding Your Position is now live.
This 60-minute lesson replaces inflated market claims with evidence. It explains TAM, SAM, and SOM using a bottom-up method, maps direct and indirect competitors, and discusses the extra care required when sizing markets in crypto. Learners finish with a competitor matrix and an evidence-backed market-size estimate they can defend.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 8, Lesson 9 — Money Basics: Revenue, Pricing, and Unit Economics is now live.
This 60-minute lesson treats pricing and revenue as testable business hypotheses. It covers five revenue models, value-based pricing, contribution margin, unit economics, and break-even, while distinguishing sustainable Web3 models from token incentives that can hide weak demand. Learners finish with a revenue model, price hypothesis, and simple break-even calculation.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 9, Lesson 10 — Funding Your Venture: From Bootstrapping to the Cardano Treasury is now live.
This 60-minute lesson asks what different forms of capital really cost in control, time, reporting, and expectations. It maps the funding ladder from customer revenue and bootstrapping through grants, crowdfunding, angels, and venture capital, then examines Cardano treasury funding and the evidence expected from applicants. Learners finish with a funding map containing three realistic sources across at least two categories.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 10, Lesson 11 — Telling Your Story: Pitching and Community is now live.
This 60-minute lesson treats a pitch as a story with evidence attached. It covers the five-part structure of a three-minute startup pitch, shows how to adapt the same truth for users, partners, investors, and governance funders, and explains how building in public can earn trust through honest progress updates. Learners finish with a recorded three-minute pitch and a one-page venture summary.
Built for the community and free to all through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback welcome.
Following Lesson 11, Lesson 12 — Launch: Your Roadmap as a Cardano Entrepreneur is now live.
This final 60-minute lesson brings the course together. Learners assemble their customer evidence, value proposition, business model, validation results, market position, economics, funding plan, and pitch into one venture snapshot. The lesson also covers light-touch operations and ethics, maps practical next steps in the Cardano ecosystem, and finishes with a focused 90-day roadmap and capstone package.
The complete 12-lesson course is now available to the community at no cost through Project Catalyst funding. Feedback is welcome, and we hope it helps more Cardano builders move from an idea to a venture they can test and launch.
Because the earlier Cardano Forum posts can no longer be edited, this reply provides the current and corrected links
for Lessons 1, 2, and 11 of Emerge Society, our free 12-lesson entrepreneurship course funded through Project
Catalyst.
Lesson 1 — The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Why Builders Win
This structured 60-minute lesson explores common entrepreneurship myths, three trainable entrepreneurial traits,
Cardano as an environment for builders, and the creation of a personal “Founder Why.”
Lesson 2 — Spotting Opportunities: Problems Before Products
This structured 60-minute lesson teaches learners how to distinguish ideas from genuine opportunities, find problems
worth solving, use repeatable opportunity-generation techniques, and screen possible ventures using customer and
market evidence.
Lesson 11 — Telling Your Story: Pitching and Community
Correction: the YouTube URL included in the earlier Lesson 11 reply was malformed. The links below are the correct
links for this lesson.
This structured 60-minute lesson covers the five-part structure of a three-minute startup pitch, adapting a venture
story for different audiences, building in public, and developing a one-page venture summary.
Useful resource—especially the focus on validating a real user problem before building more. In wallet support, the most important feedback is often about clarity and safety, not a long feature list. We’ll be following the course from the Gem Wallet perspective.
1 Like
Great initiative! I appreciate how these lessons connect the entrepreneurial mindset with practical tools for building on Cardano. In your experience, what is the biggest challenge for early-stage builders: identifying a real problem or testing their solution with the right community
1 Like
This is exciting
I really like the focus on moving from an idea to something that can actually be launched on Cardano.
Education around problem identification, validation and building could be a huge driver of ecosystem growth. Looking forward to going through the lessons.
2 Likes
Updated: Lessons 1 and 2 rebuilt as full-hour guided classes
Lessons 1 and 2 have been rebuilt. The countdown sections in each class now carry narrated instruction: a guided walkthrough of the reading, a step-by-step worked example of the workshop, and a review against the self-check rubric, all with on-screen notes.
Both are free and part of the Catalyst-funded Emerge Society course: Building on Cardano: Introduction to Entrepreneurship by: addr1qykr9n7w0z7fv9jazuer6guea6p6q3h9m3m2jdqtgmw44yuszun3pemamhxyjcw479z4stv2pj6g23vnjhkf5qynu85sjexnng on wisdom.courses learning platform
These links replace the earlier class videos in this thread.
1 Like