Hello, I'm Shlomo Metal. I'd like to welcome you to the Capstone Project, the fourth of four start up entrepreneurship courses, under the heading cracking the creativity code. Thanks a lot to all our learners who have stuck it out, have made it to this the fourth course. And are preparing to finish successfully the specialization on startup entrepreneurship. Before you begin any project, I think it's a good idea always to ask yourself. When I finish the project, how will I know whether I succeeded? If you ask that question, it requires you think about setting goals and targets, and milestones, and kind of organize yourself for actually measuring success. And then you know how to achieve that success better. So our goal for you in this project, is to take all that you've learned in the three entrepreneurship courses. And then integrate what you've learned into a viable, successful, sustainable, growing business. Of course, along with your common sense and intelligence and creativity and all your great qualities [COUGH]. We do this by shaping a winning business plan and things related to the business plan. So in this project, we're going to walk you through the main steps of creating a business out of an idea. Now, you can do this project as a simulation, as a dry run, practice. Or you can do it for real. You can take your idea and you can build a real business around it. And I'd like to encourage you to treat this project as for real. Even if you might not start your business tomorrow. So I'd like to share a small story with you and the story has a heading. Stories that inspire, so that people will aspire to achieving. July 1993, a sweltering hot apartment in Tel Aviv, no air conditioning. Three young men, friends gather together. They have an ambitious goal. [COUGH] They want to write a strong business plan, strong enough to raise some initial funding. This was before the days of massive venture capital. And then right away launch a business. By the end of the summer, the business plan was done, all the pieces were in place for launching the business. Thanks in part to the business plan, they did succeed in raising a small amount of money. $125,000 from an angel investor. This angel investor himself had done a successful startup. And then sold it. And then offered not only financial support, but managerial wisdom. So the angel investor was name Nir Barkat and he is today the mayor of Jerusalem. Fast forward to July 2016, the three young men, their names? Mario Snecht, Gil Sched and Shlomo Kramer. The company these three young men founded and launched in the fall of 1993, 23 years ago, the company is called Check Point Software Technologies. It has a market value as I speak of about $14 billion. It's a market leader in firewall protection for internal networks. These young men identified a need in the market in 1993 for firewall protection before there was really that much hacking going on. So the issue here is timing. Can you come to market just at the right time when the market is realizing they really need this. So in an age today where hacking has become a major problem and cybersecurity is crucial. The product of Check Point Technologies creates significant value for organizations. Who want to provide easy network access for their members, but keep out unwanted hackers. In this project, we'll use the business plan the three entrepreneurs created as a kind of a template, a framework for you. And we'll challenge you to fill in the blanks. Always think of the business plan, first and foremost, as your own road map. Telling you where you want to go and how you're going to get there. Also of course, a business plan is useful for presenting your ideas, for pitching your ideas to possible investors. People you want to hire, people you want to be part of your team. But first and foremost, it is a road map, a clear guide about where you're going and how to get there.
