Navigating Entrepreneurship
Structuring entrepreneurial education at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Overview
Course stacking is an advising framework that helps Stanford GSB students navigate 50+ entrepreneurship electives and programs, organized into layers that build on each other, and map across three student pathways.
During my time at the Grousbeck-Holloway Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, I led the research, prototyping, and design behind the framework, from an early LLM chatbot prototype to the final advising presentation. I collaborated with the Center's director and advising staff throughout, and the framework is now shared with academic advisors across the GSB.
Stakeholder Interviews • Figma • Information Architecture • Journey Mapping • Rapid Prototyping
Role
Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Intern
Organization
Grousbeck-Holloway Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Stanford GSB
Timeline
Summer 2026
Tools
Figma, Google Sheets, Claude Code
Problem
The GSB offers 50+ entrepreneurship electives alongside multiple experiential programs and a full first-year curriculum. Outside of the GSB, there are countless other innovation-related courses and opportunities offered across all 7 Stanford schools.
50+
GSB Electives
13
Experiential Courses
150+
Entrepreneurship Opportunities Across Campus
For an MBA student who wants to start a company, there's a lot of opportunity and very little guidance. Every staff member I interviewed said the same thing: students didn't know a resource existed until someone happened to mention it.
Discovery
My first instinct was to build. I prototyped an LLM chatbot to personalize resource discovery for each student.
But building it revealed the real gap: to advise consistently, the chatbot needed a framework the Center didn't have. Advisors each had their own mental model of how courses fit together, and none of them were written down. So we set the chatbot aside and built the foundation first.
The Framework: Course Stacking
I co-designed "course stacking," a way of thinking about electives as layers that build on each other rather than a list to pick from:
5
Layers
Startup Fundamentals, Functional, Industry-Specific, Experiential, and Useful for Entrepreneurs, plus 2 impact tracks (Ecopreneurship and Social Innovation).
3
Student Pathways
The High-Conviction Entrepreneur, the Strategic Tester, and the Open-Minded Explorer, each mapped across both years of the MBA, the summer, and post-graduation.
13
Experiential Courses Codified
Organized across application process, team requirements, quarter, and workload, the details students ask about most.
Outcome
Course stacking now anchors the Center's student presentations and has been shared with academic advisors across the GSB. It also gives any future AI advising tool the shared framework it was missing.