Module 5: Business Plan, then the Turn to Critique

Welcome to Week 5. This week has two moves that pull against each other on purpose. Monday consolidates the business plan: the logic your pitch already implied gets written down and given real runway. Wednesday turns the whole course a corner. Instead of rushing to solve your problem, you learn to interrogate it: to ask what your problem really is, where its value comes from, and whom it serves before you commit to an answer. Solving a problem and interrogating a problem are different acts, and this week you practice both.

Here is the Seminar's central question from this week's angle: do we find, unearth, or create value? Aimed at critique, it sharpens into this: before you accept that your solution creates value, ask where the value in your problem actually sits and who does the work of producing it. A founder who never interrogates their own problem builds fast in the wrong direction. This week you slow down enough to aim.

By Sunday you will have two things: your business-plan basics (the core pieces of your plan, consolidated and written down: customer, value proposition, how it sustains itself, key activities, and costs), and a short written response to the critique prompt, where you interrogate your own problem instead of defending it.

If you are joining this week, you have lost texture, not prerequisite knowledge. You need one thing to start: a rough idea and the problem it answers. The business-plan pieces below work for any venture, and the critique reading stands on its own. The "Ask Wren" panel on any page can point you to earlier work. Wren Calloway is your course concierge.