Week 8: The Founder Schedule

Content creation at 10am. Financial modeling by 11.

At 10am on Wednesday, our student-founders were outside on the Wesleyan lawn in 70-degree sun, setting up cameras and freestyling content ideas. By 11, they were back inside the Patricelli Center learning what EBITDA is and how to build a proper P&L.

Sounds like a scheduling conflict, but this was all intentional. Welcome to the founder schedule — where nothing pairs well together and everything's due at the same time.

“I wear a lot of hats”
- Every startup founder ever

Early founders being the CEO, COO, CMO, & CFO, is not news. One of the hardest part of being a startup operator isn't any single discipline. It's the whiplash between all of them. Shooting a brand video and building a P&L require completely different parts of your brain, and usually there is no time in between. Week 8 put both on the schedule back to back — content creation first, then financial modeling with Charlie O'Connell.

Where We Are

We started with a mini workshop on founder-led content. Short-form, raw, personality-driven storytelling has the power to truly move the needle for companies. We covered the anatomy of what makes content work: a hook that earns someone’s attention in the first three seconds, the body that keeps them watching, and the call to action that converts a viewer into a follower or customer.

In today’s world, people want to see who’s behind the companies they support. Your product matters, but so does your personality, your voice, your story. For early-stage founders especially, you are the brand.

The lesson was kept short, because the whole point of this workshop was to get out of the classroom.

We gave everyone five minutes to brainstorm, and then sent them out into the wild with a simple mandate: come up with an idea, shoot it, and bring it back, in one hour.

It was a beautiful day for it. 70 degrees, campus alive, and suddenly we had ten founders scattered across Wesleyan doing completely different things: recording skits, running on-the-street interviews, shooting product demos on the baseball field, we had it all. There’s no single formula for founder content, and the exercise was about finding your own voice in it.

What matters most is that they started. Analysis paralysis kills more founder content than bad ideas ever will. Everyone has a list of video concepts they’ve been meaning to get to “when the time is right.” When in reality, you just have to press record (I say this as someone who has a running list of content ideas for Spacemilk that I still haven't touched).

Nick Dargel proved this point. He went from idea to script to filming to a fully edited video, all within the hour. Submitted the final cut before class was even over. Check it out:

When everyone regrouped, we watched what they’d shot, shared feedback, and the band-aid was off. These founders had gone from thinking about content to having content, and realizing it didn’t need to be perfect to be good.

Let’s Talk Money

We then took a total 180 with the next lesson. Charlie O’Connell joined us virtually to walk the class through building financial projections from scratch. Charlie came to last year’s cohort too, and his ability to make the financial side of startups feel accessible is why we keep bringing him back. P&L statements, EBITDA, burn rate, unit economics, the technical, unglamorous, absolutely essential side of building a business that nobody puts on their Instagram story.

A founder who can tell a compelling story but can’t walk through their numbers will hit a wall eventually. Charlie broke it down in a way that met students where they were and helped them through creating their foundational financials. Our founders are getting stronger at storytelling every week, but when they're sitting across from an investor in a few weeks, storytelling alone won't close the deal. Charlie gave them the language to back it up.

A Favor to Ask

We’re almost three weeks away from our final event where six founders from this cohort will be selected to pitch live in front of Wesleyan alumni angel investors. It’s the moment we’ve been building towards all semester and I wanted it to close out by asking you all for a favor.

The goal is to make this a flagship event for Wesleyan entrepreneurship, not only prove that Wesleyan Shark Tank is a successful medium for learning entrepreneurship through action, but also to demonstrate that we are capable of producing true problem solvers and capable, well-rounded leaders.

So, if you could take a minute to share our RSVP with someone — a friend you've been meaning to catch up with, an entrepreneur you think would enjoy it, anyone who should see what's happening here — it goes a long way. Filling that room is what makes this event work and what makes future ones possible.

Monday, May 4th | Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center | 129 W 67th St, NYC
6:00–6:45 PM — Networking Reception (Balcony Lobby)
6:45–8:15 PM — Live Pitch Event
8:15-9:30 PM — Post Event Networking

Thanks in advance! Feel free to message me if you have any ideas of getting the word out.

Watch the Recap

🎥 Episode 5 HERE

(Fisher, our talented videographer, had his camera break last week, so this episode was shot on an iPhone. Enjoy!)

If you’re curious, here are some of the videos our founders made this session too:

Get Involved

🦈 Shark: Join our investor panel at the NYC event
🤝 Mentor: Meet with a student founder (30 min, remote)
📈 Investor: Get connected with our founders


Until next time,

Michael