COURSE INFORMATION

Course description.  Course teaches engineering students about issues tackled by leading Chief Technology Officers: the technical visionaries and/or managers who innovate at the boundaries of technology and business by understanding both deeply, and who are true partners to the CEO, not just implementers of business goals. Focus will be on thinking like a CTO (of a startup and a large company) from technology and business perspectives, and on software and Internet-based businesses. Industry-leading guest speakers provide perspectives too.

Lectures.  Lectures meet on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:00am - 12:20pm in Peyton 145

Required reading list. Students will be required to create a write-up for each book on the required reading list. Information on the book write-ups can be found on the write-ups page.

• In the Plex, Steven Levy (Book Report)
• The Everything Store, Brad Stone (Book Report)
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, Ben Horowitz (Final Project)

Recommended reading list.

• Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
• The Airbnb Story, Leigh Gallagher

Guest Lecturers. There will be a write-up due for each guest lecturer. Information on the guest lecturer write-ups can be found on the write-ups page.

Past speakers have included J. Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square; M. Whitman, CEO of Ebay and now HP; F. Wilson, of Union Square Ventures; P. Graham, of Y!Combinator; S. Altman, of Y!Combinator; J. Hennessy, President of Stanford University; J. Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!; D. Greene, co-founder and CEO of VMWare; J. Clark, co-founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics; T. Siebel, founder and CEO of Siebel Systems; and C. Dickerson, CEO of Etsy.

Grading.  The grading is structured as follows:

• 40% — Projects — This includes the five assignments that students produce to describe their projects.
• 30% — Papers/Writing Assignments — This includes the speaker reflections (10%) and the book reports (20%).
• 10% — Attendance — This includes showing up for class and class participation points (if any).
• 20% — Final Paper or project — This includes the combined final report on their project including their thoughts about how the final book they read impacts their evaluation of their project.

Important due dates. 

• Assignment 1 — due 09/20
• Book Report 1 (The Everything Store) — due 10/04
• Assignment 2 — due 10/09
• Assignment 3 — due 10/25
• Book Report 2 (In the Plex) — due 11/01
• Assignment 4 — due 11/08
• Assignment 5 — due 11/20
• Final Report — due 12/15

All write-ups and papers should be submitted via Canvas by the deadline.

Skip Policy. Two guest speaker write-ups are allowed to be skipped.

Late Assignment Policy. 10% of your final grade will be docked per day up to 5 days, after which the assignment is not accepted.

Staff, Office Hours and Other Help. 

Instructor Jaswinder P. Singh Email: jps@cs.princeton.edu Office: Computer Science 423 Office Hours: TBD, email to schedule.		Instructor Robert Fish Email: rfish@cs.princeton.edu Office: Corwin Hall 37 Office Hours: Wednesday 4:30pm or email to schedule		AI Beining Han Email: bh7032@princeton.edu Office: Friend Center Graduate Space Office Hours: Thursday 4:00-5:00 pm
AI Yihan Wang Email: yw7685@princeton.edu Office: Zoom Office Hours: TBD, email to schedule.		AI Byron Zhang Email: zishuoz@princeton.edu Office: Friend Center Graduate Space Office Hours: Tuesday 8:00-9:00 pm

If you have general questions about the assignments, lectures, readings, or other course materials, please post via Ed. Posts marked private are viewable only by instructors.