Reading Time: 8 minutesAll entrepreneurs can benefit from continuing their education all the time. No matter if you are just forming your company and handling several jobs in the organization on your own, or are a highly experienced business owner, taking online business courses for entrepreneurs has never been easier. You can now take many classes online, at home, and for minimal or no cost.
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So why wait taking your education to the next level? Some amazing free online courses await.
Below are 30 awesome online business courses that will benefit entrepreneurs just like you:
This is a two hour video course by Docstoc CEO Jason Nazar. It takes his real world business experience and breaks it down into several lessons on video that discuss the important aspects of running a successful business. Topics range from betting an idea and raising capital from investors to growth and scaling methods. Keep in mind there are many training and coaching programs for entrepreneurs online from people with minimal business experience.
Some entrepreneurs prefer to not look for outside funding and try to do it on their own. But most startup companies would rather get funding if they knew how to get it done. That is what this online business course from the University of Maryland goes over. Professor Michael R. Pratt explains what is needed to be done in the early stages of your company to look for funding, how to source it, how to make a pitch to investors and venture capitalists, as well as how to close the deal. There is much more to securing capital than assembling a business plan and sending it out to investors. Part of success is being well prepared, and this course will prepare you before you start to hit up investors.
Every business is online today, so most businesses have a websitee. Some startup founders are extremely computer savvy and can easily write computer code in several languages. Others, such as retailers, may not have that knowledge or experience. So what should you do as an entrepreneur if you do not have a coder on your team yet? You will often end up paying crazy charges to a contractor to make changes to your website.
This is a great entrepreneur course from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. It is a five week lesson that will show you how to properly build an operation that is scalable and stable. There is not one entrepreneur in the world that starts off hoping to stay small. The two professors teaching this course will cover everything from proper framework, outsourcing, marketing and strategy that are needed to scale your company successfully.
Being able to negotiate is a much needed skill that all entrepreneurs should master. Vendor contracts, lease agreements, business contracts and employee contracts all require you to have strong negotiation skills.
Do you think you can gain a competitive advantage if you understand how to position your company to increase your value creation. This course from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business has made a seven hour video course that is designed to help entrepreneurs understand the nature of competitive markets, analyze capabilities and structure, and how to determine competitive positioning.
If you look back at the last project you did in your business, did it go as well as you would have preferred? You may have the best plan, but if it is not done right, you might miss a deadline or fail all the way. This course assembled by the University of Virginia explains how to properly plan your project and it also shows you what to do when things go off the rails. Understanding what to do when things go wrong is just as critical as understanding how to do a project that is working as planned.
If you are just beginning a business or are thinking about being an entrepeneur, this is a good course for you. With almost 40,000 people who have completed the class, Dr. Jeff Cornwall tells you the practical steps you need to take your idea and make it a successful business. This class is a solid introduction to entrepreneurship that is taught by an expert who has actually been there and done that.
All good businesses large and small need to have a digital footprint these days. There are no exceptions to that rule. While it is possible to hire a digital marketing team to deal with this, it is smart to understand yourself what a good digital marketing campaign is.
This free course walks you through the steps to find the right business concept, how much demand there is in the marketplace for it, and the process of building an audience around the idea. You are provided the tools, tactics and templates to validate your business and start making money from the first day.
This online business course takes you step by step through what makes a business naturally attractive to customers, and it also develops a clear action plan for how to stand out from the crowd. Teaching topics in this course include setting goals, community building, social media and creating a content marketing strategy.
This course details the steps you need to turn your business knowledge and expertise into an online class that will provide substantial value to your customers, and big profits to you during the process. One bonus about this course is being on Udemy, it is always available, and its active online community of entrepreneurs can be a big help to you as you get started.
This course shows you how to price yourself, bring in more, higher paying customers, and promote your brand to a bigger audience of potential clients. It also discusses how to turn personal hurdles into your advantage and be more positive about where you are in the marketplace. The teachers also look at the unconscious ways that you push money away and give you a clearer look into unlocking your dreams.
This course teaches you how to build a successful startup and shows you the key steps. The main idea of the class is to learn how to quickly develop and test new ideas by collecting large amounts of customer and marketplace feedback. It shows you that building a startup is not just about building a plan of execution for a business model that you think will work but to look for a business model based upon consumer needs.
This is a five module course that will equip you with the skills and mindset you need to access capital to support the growth of your company. You will learn to interpret financial statements so that you understand the need for capital to grow, the sorts of capital available and the process you need to follow to connect you to capital.
Success in business can be increased markedly by understanding key entrepreneurial characteristics and competency solutions. This course will give potential entrepreneurs the knowledge to succeed in a new company or startup. You will have the skills and confidence at the end of this course to be able to evaluate critical factors to start a successful business.
This course outlines strategies and tactics for financing, forming and launching a new company. Topics that will be addressed include building the initial management team for a new venture, identifying and reaching out to customers, developing successful financial plans and raising startup capital.
Games are about business and not just art and entertainment. No matter if you want to work in a gaming company, start your own gaming company or make games for a hobby, this course is appropriate. You will learn about game production basics, project management, teamwork and how to postion a new game idea in the broaders consumer marketplace.
This course will increase your understanding of how an internal entrepreneurial venture is organized, and how to overcome resistance to your new venture concept inside the company. This course is valuable for employees who have innovative ideas that are important to their company, and for managers who want to assemble a team of creative people and resources.
At the end of this class, students will be able to complete a new business model that summarizes assumptions about the value they will offer and to whom, and how they will make a profit. You also will learn how to systematically test and validate these assumptions inside the constraints of available resources, and will use the validated assumptions to generate accurate financial projections.
This introductory course covers the process of how to identify and quantify market opportunities and then how to plan, conceptualize and start a new tech based enterprise. Students will develop their own business plans for their startup. It is intended for the student who wants to start their own business in the technology space.
New companies need to learn how to develop major products and innovations to prosper and grow, but many do not know how to do so. But recent research into the process of innovation makes it possible to develop innovative breakthroughs in a more systematic way. This course will teach you how to implement these methodologies.
Students in this course will work in a seminar environment to learn how to improve their leadership skills. This course will help you to learn how to build trust, communications and teamwork. Discussions during the course help the student to explore how to improve and probe their leadership development.
This course provides you with the ins and outs of how to sell new, entrepreneurial products to a highly competitive and sophisticated marketplace. You also will learn how to manage and build your sales force, as well as how to construct a compensation system for your sales force and how to assign territories and fix disputes on your team.
This free course provides clarification of marketing methods, concepts and strategic matters that are important for start up and early stage businesspeople and entrepreneurs. This course will first ask what you are selling and to whom, and then how do you best spend your limited resources on marketing?
This free course from MIT is suitable for any entrepreneur who wants to found a software company or work for a software firm that is using software technology often as a senior level manager. It also is a good course for people who are working as industry analysts.
The nuts and bolts of assembling a new venture plan and launching the company successfully is closely explored in this class. It is open to anyone in the MIT community as well as others who want to become entrepreneurs. It is a good class for those who are involved in any new venture or business.
This course is concerned with building, running and growing a company. It will teach you how to think analytically about designing an organizational system; how leaders and founders of companies play a vital role in shaping the culture of the company; and what really needs to be done to build a successful company.
This free course from EdX.org will teach you the business skills and the startup mindset that you need to start your own successful business. This course will provide you with the inspiration to explore a path of entrepeneurship and the tools that you need to overcome the challenges of growing a company from the ground up.
This free class offers you a general introduction to effective operations management. It will make you more familiar with major operational issues that typically confront managers and new business owners. You also will learn the concepts, language, tools and insights you need to deal with these issues for your company to become successful.
References
- 10 Free Online Courses That Can Benefit Every Entrepreneur. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/308005
- 101 Best Online Business Courses for Entrepreneurs, Creatives and Professionals in 2018. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.ryrob.com/online-business-courses/#1
