Professor
Nathan Wilson
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2016 - The first half of this class you learn about the Business Model Canvas. Within the first week, you split up into groups of roughly 4 people. You create a startup idea and just run with it for the full 10 weeks. During that time, you try to create your business's version of the Business Model Canvas. During the last week of the course, you present it to the other students and to the professors. This term-long project is the focus of your discussion sections (which are mandatory). During the second half of the class (while you're working on the BMC for your startup idea) they bring in some guest lecturers and talk about other aspects of creating a startup (corporations v partnerships, term sheets, IP, patents, etc.). The readings give more detail on these projects. All of the readings are fair games for the exams. The final is cumulative. They post a review of the important slides, which you should definitely look over and memorize. Some of the short answers will ask you to draw the important diagrams from the review slides. If you skim through the readings and look over the slides, the exams are straightforward (a mixture of multiple choice and short answer). Overall: an interesting class, cool to run with a startup idea and see how it evolves while engaging in the lean startup process.
Winter 2016 - The first half of this class you learn about the Business Model Canvas. Within the first week, you split up into groups of roughly 4 people. You create a startup idea and just run with it for the full 10 weeks. During that time, you try to create your business's version of the Business Model Canvas. During the last week of the course, you present it to the other students and to the professors. This term-long project is the focus of your discussion sections (which are mandatory). During the second half of the class (while you're working on the BMC for your startup idea) they bring in some guest lecturers and talk about other aspects of creating a startup (corporations v partnerships, term sheets, IP, patents, etc.). The readings give more detail on these projects. All of the readings are fair games for the exams. The final is cumulative. They post a review of the important slides, which you should definitely look over and memorize. Some of the short answers will ask you to draw the important diagrams from the review slides. If you skim through the readings and look over the slides, the exams are straightforward (a mixture of multiple choice and short answer). Overall: an interesting class, cool to run with a startup idea and see how it evolves while engaging in the lean startup process.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2021 - IF YOU ARE TAKING THIS CLASS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO ENROLL IN THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP MINOR THEN PLEASE READ MY REVIEW. I have completed the minor and graduated, here is what I wish I knew. MGMT 160 is actually one of the easier if not the easiest MGMT class you will take. Yes, it is a weeder course but the bulk of your grade is determined by your scores on the exams, and the exams are identical to the weekly study lists questions that Nathan hands out. And the exams are open note so you can bring as many notes as you want to the class. All the other MGMT classes determine your grade based off the group project, which takes way more time than preparing for 160's exams. The group projects are shit shows and usually 2/3 people will have to do the heavy lifting for the group of 5/6, it's a disaster. Now the Entrepreneurship minor as a whole is the biggest waste of time, do not enroll in this minor. You will literally learn nothing about Entrepreneurship. For starters half of the Professors themselves are failed Entrepreneurs with not a single successful venture to their name, the other half of them that were successful have courses that demand too much and are assholes. Back to the main issue, none of these classes teach you HOW to do Entrepreneurship, they teach you what it is but not HOW to do it. Most of the time this is common sense. Like for instance, we were taught about the two types of revenue streams (recurring and one time) and the advantages of each. Well congrats if you have more than three braincells you already knew this or could easily find out what the two revenue streams are and why one is better than the other. Another example of this is the Value Proposition Canvas that says that your product / service has to either solve a pain for the customer or create them some sort of gains. Do you see my point about this, this is literally information for retards of course your stupid fucking product has to solve some sort of issue otherwise it won't be successful. These are not isolated incidents, everything you learn in this minor is complete bullshit. Instead of wasting your time listening to all these failures of Entrepreneurs, go out and try some ventures on your own. Enrolling in this minor was the worst decision that I ever made. I knew that I was not going to learn anything of value within the minor I just did not know that it was going to be THIS time consuming.
Fall 2021 - IF YOU ARE TAKING THIS CLASS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO ENROLL IN THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP MINOR THEN PLEASE READ MY REVIEW. I have completed the minor and graduated, here is what I wish I knew. MGMT 160 is actually one of the easier if not the easiest MGMT class you will take. Yes, it is a weeder course but the bulk of your grade is determined by your scores on the exams, and the exams are identical to the weekly study lists questions that Nathan hands out. And the exams are open note so you can bring as many notes as you want to the class. All the other MGMT classes determine your grade based off the group project, which takes way more time than preparing for 160's exams. The group projects are shit shows and usually 2/3 people will have to do the heavy lifting for the group of 5/6, it's a disaster. Now the Entrepreneurship minor as a whole is the biggest waste of time, do not enroll in this minor. You will literally learn nothing about Entrepreneurship. For starters half of the Professors themselves are failed Entrepreneurs with not a single successful venture to their name, the other half of them that were successful have courses that demand too much and are assholes. Back to the main issue, none of these classes teach you HOW to do Entrepreneurship, they teach you what it is but not HOW to do it. Most of the time this is common sense. Like for instance, we were taught about the two types of revenue streams (recurring and one time) and the advantages of each. Well congrats if you have more than three braincells you already knew this or could easily find out what the two revenue streams are and why one is better than the other. Another example of this is the Value Proposition Canvas that says that your product / service has to either solve a pain for the customer or create them some sort of gains. Do you see my point about this, this is literally information for retards of course your stupid fucking product has to solve some sort of issue otherwise it won't be successful. These are not isolated incidents, everything you learn in this minor is complete bullshit. Instead of wasting your time listening to all these failures of Entrepreneurs, go out and try some ventures on your own. Enrolling in this minor was the worst decision that I ever made. I knew that I was not going to learn anything of value within the minor I just did not know that it was going to be THIS time consuming.
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2021 - I would never ever take this class or another class with Wilson ever again. The entrepreneurship minor is a complete joke, they do not teach you anything relevant about how to be an entrepreneur: they just assign busy work assignments and slap on convoluted labels and definitions to business world stuff that is common sense. Wilson in particular is a horrible teacher, the guy took 6 weeks to upload a syllabus to the class page, grades hard for no reason and is very unclear. You can follow his directions exactly as he says them, mind you he is too stupid to upload them on canvas and only tells you about your assignments verbally, and then he’ll give you an 82% with no feedback, wondering what you messed up on. But guess what, he does not grade anything till midway through the quarter where you have already submitted a series of assignments. The group projects are disasters as well because at least 1 member of the team will not do anything which makes it much more difficult to compete with the rest of the class since you are graded on a curve. Nathan's solution to this is to mark the non-contributing group members down but if your team is getting B to begin with since it is hard for 3/5 of the members to compete and get A's, then who cares about the participators being marked down, you still get a bad grade. Horrible class, horrible teacher. I could have done way more useful things with my time then listen to Nathans tirades about how life is unfair and how he lost out millions from his failed business ventures. The only thing Nathan should be teaching is how NOT to do entrepreneurship. The guy has failed in every single one of his entrepreneurial endeavors until he got to UCLA. His only successful endeavor was becoming a professor, where he gets paid 300k a year to vent to a bunch of college students about how he was robbed back in his startup days.
Spring 2021 - I would never ever take this class or another class with Wilson ever again. The entrepreneurship minor is a complete joke, they do not teach you anything relevant about how to be an entrepreneur: they just assign busy work assignments and slap on convoluted labels and definitions to business world stuff that is common sense. Wilson in particular is a horrible teacher, the guy took 6 weeks to upload a syllabus to the class page, grades hard for no reason and is very unclear. You can follow his directions exactly as he says them, mind you he is too stupid to upload them on canvas and only tells you about your assignments verbally, and then he’ll give you an 82% with no feedback, wondering what you messed up on. But guess what, he does not grade anything till midway through the quarter where you have already submitted a series of assignments. The group projects are disasters as well because at least 1 member of the team will not do anything which makes it much more difficult to compete with the rest of the class since you are graded on a curve. Nathan's solution to this is to mark the non-contributing group members down but if your team is getting B to begin with since it is hard for 3/5 of the members to compete and get A's, then who cares about the participators being marked down, you still get a bad grade. Horrible class, horrible teacher. I could have done way more useful things with my time then listen to Nathans tirades about how life is unfair and how he lost out millions from his failed business ventures. The only thing Nathan should be teaching is how NOT to do entrepreneurship. The guy has failed in every single one of his entrepreneurial endeavors until he got to UCLA. His only successful endeavor was becoming a professor, where he gets paid 300k a year to vent to a bunch of college students about how he was robbed back in his startup days.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2024 - Has to be the worst professor at UCLA. He needs to read his reviews because I think most students would agree he is just a talentless professor who is terrible at his job. I have no idea how he even got a job here. His classes have a no electronics rule, so forget about taking notes on a laptop. His exams are just memorization and have nothing to do with concept. He is also just a completely rude, unlikeable, and nasty guy. Every minute in that class was a nightmare. Avoid this professor at all costs. Worst UCLA professor and class I have ever had.
Fall 2024 - Has to be the worst professor at UCLA. He needs to read his reviews because I think most students would agree he is just a talentless professor who is terrible at his job. I have no idea how he even got a job here. His classes have a no electronics rule, so forget about taking notes on a laptop. His exams are just memorization and have nothing to do with concept. He is also just a completely rude, unlikeable, and nasty guy. Every minute in that class was a nightmare. Avoid this professor at all costs. Worst UCLA professor and class I have ever had.