Give before you ask.
Jay Margalus · jaymargalus.com/foundations · The arcade cabinet my students built for Eugene Jarvis, who made Defender and Robotron · DePaul, May 2022
| 2:45 | Where we are | 3 min |
| 2:48 | This week's work: a check-in | 7 min |
| 2:55 | Syllabus: five questions, then yours | 15 min |
| 3:10 | Install clinic: Claude Code, running | 15 min |
| 3:25 | What is entrepreneurship and design? | 10 min |
| 3:35 | The gift-giving exercise, finished | 30 min |
| 4:05 | Studio norms | 5 min |
| 4:10 | Before Friday, before Monday | 5 min |
Monday was what you'll build.
Today is why, and for whom.
This week's work
Hands up.
Hands up if…
- Claude Code is installed and you've signed in.
- You have a
hello.md, and a screenshot of it. - You've got the two books, or they're on the way.
- You have at least one inefficiency past your index card.
- You know who's getting your gift.
No judgment on any of these. The numbers tell me how to spend the next hour.
Where it all goes
| What | When | Where |
|---|---|---|
Log 1 — gift plan under Key decisions, hello.md under Harness change | Fri Sep 11, 11:59pm | Venture Log form |
| Three inefficiencies, five lines each | Fri Sep 11, 11:59pm | Canvas |
| Co-Intelligence, intro and ch. 1–3 | Wed Sep 16 | Read before class |
| Three inefficiencies on paper | Wed Sep 16 | Bring them. Teams form. |
| The gift, given · Log 2: what happened, their words | Fri Sep 18, 11:59pm | Venture Log form |
Log 1 has no reading yet: book connection is "nothing yet." Touch-point status is "none." Write that; don't skip the field.
Syllabus
Five questions. Then yours.
Two numbers follow your team all term. What are they?
Conversations with real people so far. Touch points running on real inputs.
Harness + log page. Both go in every Venture Log, and I'll ask for them out loud.
You have two tokens. What does one buy?
One late submission (72 hours), one resubmission, or one absence forgiven.
Grading page. It does not buy Nov 19.
Name the four buckets an inefficiency can fall into.
A process. A decision. A discovery task. An outreach task.
Project page. Every one of your three inefficiencies names its bucket.
What's off limits as a design partner?
Campus organizations. Your household. Any problem you already know from the inside.
Hunt page. Your partner can be in Lexington. Your market can't be.
What's the one rule I said I'd repeat all term?
Nothing leaves the building without a hand on it.
Project page, under the rules. Until deploy week your harness drafts; a person clicks send.
Your questions
- Grading, bundles, tokens
- Teams, partners, the ten-more-customers test
- The Nov 19 competition
- Workload and the Friday log
- The books and the memos
- The harness: what "Satisfactory" means on a Monday
- Anything on the site that's unclear
If the answer isn't on the site, it goes on the site by Friday. Dated, under "What's new."
Install clinic
Everyone leaves with it running. If yours already runs, you're staff.
Install
macOS · Linux · WSL
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bashWindows PowerShell
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iexThen check
claude --version
claude doctorNeeds macOS 13+ or Windows 10+, 4 GB RAM, internet. Windows: install Git for Windows too so it gets a real shell.
Your access
- Monday's email invited you to my organization on the Claude Console. Accept it. Check spam. That's your account; it's paid for.
- Run
claude. Pick Anthropic Console account, then Sign in with your Console account. A browser opens. Sign in. Come back to the terminal. - If the browser doesn't open, press
cto copy the link. If it shows a code instead of sending you back, paste the code into the terminal.
No keys to copy, nothing to paste into files. If it asks you for an API key, you skipped step 1.
Prove it runs
- Make a folder. Put one file in it: anything.
- Run
claudeinside it. Ask: "What's in this folder?" - Ask it to write
hello.mdwith three sentences about you. - Screenshot it. It goes in Log 1 on Friday.
Done? Help the person next to you. Then type /help inside claude and read what it can do. Monday you build your first skill.
When it doesn't work
| You see | Do |
|---|---|
claude: command not found | Close the terminal, open a new one. Still nothing: run the installer again and read its last line; it says where it put the program. |
| Windows: it opens and dies | Install Git for Windows, restart, run from Git Bash or PowerShell. |
| Sign-in never comes back to the terminal | Press c for the link, paste it into a browser, paste the code back. |
| It asks for an API key, or shows no organization | You haven't accepted the invite. Find Monday's email, accept, run claude again, pick Console account. |
| Anything else | Hand up. Read the error out loud. Reading the error is the first skill. |
Still stuck at 3:25: Monday 1:45pm, Holekamp 109, bring the exact error text. Nobody falls behind for a setup problem.
What is entrepreneurship and design?
The two words in the course title. Three slides each is too many; one each.
Entrepreneurship isn't starting a company.
- It's noticing work people do badly, and taking on the risk of doing it better.
- The founder's first job: find the work nobody wants to do. The second: find the other ten people who'd pay to stop doing it.
- The habit underneath: decide with incomplete information, commit, change direction when the world says no.
Your index card from Monday was an entrepreneurial act. The ten-more-customers test is what turns it into a business.
Design isn't making it pretty.
- It's listening to one person until you know what they need better than they can say it.
- Then building the smallest thing that tests whether you're right.
- Then letting them tell you you're wrong, and building again.
Listen → define → build → test. You started that loop Monday with a gift. Three weeks from now you run it on a process owner.
Where they meet
Design asks
- Who does this work?
- What do their hands actually do?
- Where must a person stay in the loop?
Entrepreneurship asks
- Who else does this the same way?
- What is it worth to stop?
- What would they pay?
Design finds the inefficiency and the touch point. Entrepreneurship finds the ten more and the money. The harness is where both get written down. Rules are your judgment. Hooks are when your judgment is needed.
The seven skills
Seven teachable skills of entrepreneurial thinking. Your Final Reflection maps your term against them.
- Problem solving. Define, test, learn, iterate. A process, not a one-time fix.
- Tolerance for ambiguity. Deciding with incomplete information.
- Failing forward. Fast experiments; failure is data.
- Empathy. Interviews and observation before solutions.
- Creativity with limited resources. Scrappy prototypes first.
- Responding to critical feedback. Iterate on what peers, advisors, and customers say.
- Teamwork. Roles, accountability, productive disagreement.
The three habits are 2, 3, and 6. The gift exercise is 4 and 5. Critique and the alumni panel are 6. Teams are 7.
The gift-giving exercise, finished
You're not designing a gift. You're designing a moment of meaning.
Read your notes back to your partner.
- What did you write down that they actually said?
- What did you get wrong? Fix it on the card.
- One more "why?"
Then go to the first part you haven't done.
Round 1: A interviews B. Round 2: switch.
Start with: "Tell me about the last time you gave someone a gift."
- Who was it for? Why did it matter? How did you come up with it?
- What was hard about finding it, or giving it?
- Ask "why?" at least twice. Write down what surprises you.
No solutioning. Quotes verbatim. Five minutes each; reset the timer for round two.
Step away and write two lines.
- One insight that isn't obvious. Something you inferred, not something they said.
- One intent: "How might I ___ so that ___?"
Example. Insight: they feel calm when a routine feels chosen. Intent: how might I make a morning feel chosen, not rushed?
Make something your partner can hold or act out.
- Symbolic: stands for the idea
- Instructional: shows how it works
- Performative: you act the experience out
If it looks nice, you're overbuilding.
Three minutes each.
Giver says
- The insight
- The intent
- The thing
Receiver says
- What feels accurate?
- What feels off?
- What surprised me?
No defending. Write down what they said.
Debrief
- Where did listening change what you built?
- Which assumption was wrong?
- What did the time limit do for you?
- What changed between Monday and today, if you started Monday?
You just ran the loop: listen → define → build → test. That's design. Doing it for someone who'd pay is the other word in the title.
The gift, for real
Between now and Friday Sep 18, give someone a gift. Not a purchase. A thing you made or did, for a specific person, for a specific reason.
- Log 1 (Fri Sep 11): who, and why them. Your plan.
- Log 2 (Fri Sep 18): what happened when you gave it. Their words.
It's the first deliverable. It's also how a founder starts: give before you ask.
Studio norms
Four starters. Add two of yours.
The rules of the room
- "Listen to understand, not to respond."
- "Feedback: be kind, not nice."
- "Test, don't debate."
- "Show the agent doing the work. The work argues for itself."
Two more, from you.
What did the gift exercise need that these don't say? Shout them out; I'll write them up.
Phones down and off. Laptops open during demos. Things will break in front of the class. That's the curriculum. Final list goes on the policies page by Friday.
Before Friday. Before Monday.
Where this ends up: Entrepreneurship Summit, April 2025.
What goes in Log 1 (1 of 2)
Week 1 · Sep 7–11 · Log 1 · Fri 11:59pm · 500–800 words · the form, not Canvas
| Field | This week, that means |
|---|---|
| Evidence | Your partner's tedious-task story from Monday. The gift interview: their quotes, verbatim. Anyone you talked to while hunting your three inefficiencies. |
| Experiments | The gift prototype, and what your partner said about it in the share round. |
| Key decisions | Which three inefficiencies you're posting to Canvas, and why those. Who the gift is for. |
| Assumptions tested | The insight you inferred about your gift partner, and whether the share round confirmed it. |
| Harness change | Claude Code installed, signed in, hello.md run. No upload on the form: paste a link to the screenshot, or describe what it printed. Not installed yet? Write that. It's the honest entry, and it tells me who to see Monday at 1:45. |
What goes in Log 1 (2 of 2)
| Field | This week, that means |
|---|---|
| Touch-point status | None yet. Saying so is fine. Don't skip the field. |
| Working / not working / differently | About the install, the interview, or the class. Specific beats polite. |
| Book connection | Nothing is assigned until Sep 16. "Started Co-Intelligence" or "nothing yet" both pass this week. |
| AI audit trail | What you asked Claude Code to do, and what you checked. |
| Gift plan (no field of its own — put it in Key decisions, and why) | Who. Why that person. What you'll make or do. By when. Fri Sep 18 is the outside date. |
The three inefficiencies themselves go to the Canvas assignment, not the log. One sentence in Key decisions about which ones you chose is the cross-reference.
Coming up
- Fri Sep 11, 11:59pm. Log 1 in the Venture Log form: your gift plan, your
hello.mdscreenshot. Three inefficiencies in Canvas, five lines each, one from a person you talked to, none from a campus org. - Mon Sep 14. Build day: your first skill. Laptop, Claude Code running. If it still isn't, 1:45pm in Holekamp 109 first.
- Wed Sep 16. Co-Intelligence, intro and ch. 1–3, read. Three inefficiencies on paper, on the wall. Teams form.
- Fri Sep 18. The gift, given. Log 2: what happened, in their words.
jaymargalus.com/foundations · the schedule shows this week and the next due date
Questions.
jaymargalus.com/foundations · jmargalus@wlu.edu · Holekamp 109 · Mon + Wed 1:45–2:30
