Curriculum Details
At the heart of Leap Year is the desire to help you start your own business.
An alternative to more school.
PHASE 1
Weeks 1-4, Sept 2nd -Sept 26
PHASE 2
Weeks 5-12, Oct 6 -Dec 5
PHASE 3
Weeks 13-32, Jan 5th- May 25th
Find the Right Problem
Every great business starts with a great problem. This phase is all about figuring out if your idea is actually worth pursuing. Through hands-on workshops, real convos with potential customers, and creative problem-solving, you'll test your assumptions and fine-tune your startup concept. Be ready to challenge what you think you know—by the end, you’ll have a sharper, more focused idea that’s ready to be tested.
Founders will meet 9am-noon daily, with afternoon mentoring/small group work.
Field Trip: We'll travel to Milwaukee to visit Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Labs.
Cohort Community Building: We'll attend a Forward soccer game at Breese Stevens field, and take in some local music.
Mentorship Pairing: Once you have an idea, we'll pair you with a local mentor who can hold you accountable to your launch plan.
Prize Opportunity: Participants will present their Lean Canvas, and the founder with the most creative business plan will win $250.
Test and Build
Now it’s time to see if your idea really works. You’ll build a prototype, experiment with customer feedback, and tweak your business model based on what you learn. This phase is all about adapting, pivoting, and making your idea stronger. By the end, you’ll have a real, working business model and a clear understanding of who your customers are.
Founders will meet 9am-noon daily with afternoons spent conducting customer outreach and discovery interviews.
Field Trip: We'll travel to Platteville to visit the Huff Family Innovation Center.
Guest Speakers: Shelby Olstad (Miggy's Bakes) and Ben Miller (Kwik Drip) share their startup stories.
Monthly Challenges: Conducting customer interviews is paramount to building a successful business. But talking to people? SCARY. Let's do it together.
Prize Opportunity: Founders will pitch their business using a traditional pitch deck. Most compelling pitch deck wins $5,000.
Grow and Scale
Over the next five months, you’ll keep leveling up your business with weekly workshops, expert mentors, and a supportive founder community. Whether you're working on getting more customers, locking in funding, or perfecting your brand, this phase is all about staying on track and making real progress. You’ll have the guidance and accountability to keep pushing forward and turning your startup into something real.
Founders will meet weekly for accountability and workshops, but are expected to work based on their individualized goals. For serious founders, this may mean 40+ hours of building per week.
Field Trip: We'll travel to TitleTown Tech to hear about the businesses they're investing in.
Workshop: We'll deep dive into presentations, public speaking, and knowing your audience with expert public speakers.
Final Presentations: Choose between a pitch or a summary of learning. Invite your friends, and celebrate the launch of your new business.
Prize Opportunity: The cohort will vote on the 'winner', or who should receive the last $5,000.
The Curriculum
Ash Maurya’s LeanStack methodology is a structured approach to building successful businesses by focusing on rapid learning, customer validation, and minimizing waste. It’s grounded in Lean Startup principles and is designed to help entrepreneurs test ideas efficiently before investing significant time or money. Here’s why it’s a legit, proven method used by startups worldwide.
1. Start with a Problem, Not a Solution
Instead of jumping straight to an idea, LeanStack forces entrepreneurs to deeply understand the problem they’re solving. This ensures they’re addressing a real market need rather than just a cool concept. In Leap Year, we spend FOUR WEEKS finding the right problem to solve.
2. Use the Lean Canvas
Maurya created the Lean Canvas, a one-page business model tool that simplifies the traditional business plan. It helps founders quickly map out critical elements like their problem, target customers, and unique value proposition—without spending months writing a rigid business plan. Similar to a Business Model Canvas, a Lean Canvas approach breaks down a traditional business plan into bullet points and boxes, not paragraphs.
3. Test Before You Build
Rather than assuming a product will work, LeanStack emphasizes running small, low-cost experiments to validate key assumptions (do those people really want this feature?). This reduces the risk of failure and increases the chances of building something people actually want. We supplement Ash's work here with Testing Business Ideas by David Bland and Alex Osterwalder.
4. Traction Over Perfection
Many entrepreneurs get stuck perfecting their product before launching. LeanStack teaches that traction (customer interest and engagement) matters more than perfection. Early feedback is crucial for shaping a successful business. We'll practice giving and receiving feedback, so founders get the most out of it.
5. Continuous Learning & Iteration
Startups that succeed don’t get it right on the first try. LeanStack encourages rapid learning cycles—build, measure, learn—so businesses can adapt quickly based on real customer feedback. We'll figure out what to measure and how to keep track of it.
LeanStack isn’t just a trendy startup idea—it’s based on real-world evidence from thousands of successful companies. It’s used by accelerators, universities, and even corporations to teach responsible entrepreneurship—a method that minimizes risk while maximizing learning. In short, LeanStack is a smart, validated approach to starting a business, and it teaches young entrepreneurs the critical skills of problem-solving, resilience, and customer focus—all essential for success in any field. Which is why StartingBlock uses it for all our accelerators and programming.
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PROGRAM TOPICS
Focus on the Problem, not the Solution
Customer Discovery
Validation Tactics
Building and Prototyping
Design Thinking
Monetization Strategies
Financial Fundamentals
Building a Standout Brand
Social Media Marketing and Gen Z
Storytelling
Bootstrapping or Raising Money
Presentations of Learning
Demo Days
Resume Building and Marketing as a Solopreneur
By the end, you'll have...
A Founder's Playbook
A Lean Canvas, market analysis, and a validated business concept ready to launch.
Hands-On Startup Skills
Customer interviewing, rapid prototyping, pitching, and the ability to turn ideas into action.
A Powerful Network
Connections to mentors, investors, and a community of like-minded student founders.
A Certificate in Entrepreneurship
Proof that you didn't just study business-you built one.
Meet your instructor, Beth.
The Instructor
Beth joined the StartingBlock team last year, and bringing her on board has been one of the best decisions we've ever made (psst, she’s also the one writing this). Since then, we’ve been able to launch our own programming, including a variety of accelerators and workshops.
With a Master’s in Education and 17 years in the classroom, she knows how to design engaging, accessible sessions that make complex business concepts easy to grasp. Her ability to juggle all the moving pieces of our programs—while also keeping founders on track—has been a game changer.
Thanks to her, we’ve guided 75+ founders through our own programs, made countless strategic connections, and built a stronger, more impactful community. When she’s not running workshops or matching founders with the right resources, she’s probably brainstorming new ways to level up StartingBlock’s offerings (or sneaking in a coffee break).
Beth was an excellent teacher of this class. I really enjoyed the variety of class formats - instructional, workshops, mentoring, guest speakers, etc. It was 2 hours a week extremely well spent, and I loved the accountability it gave me to keep moving forward with building my business.
— Andrea R., Associated Bank Fellowship
The Level Set workshop gave us a lot of helpful information about starting our business and a modern approach to getting it off the ground. Beth was very supportive of our process.
— Rev R., Level Set