If you ever thought that entrepreneuprrship is easy, you're fooling yourself; it is hard. The venture involves several challenges. And the sad truth is that many young entrepreneurs learn this reality the hard way. While it is fine to learn from your mistakes, it would be better not to, as you would save a lot of time and resources.
To avoid the countless problems you might experience, you need to consider an online entrepreneurship course. This course has the skills and knowledge you need to identify the gap existing in the market, establish ways to fill it, and stay as long as it takes; to build an enterprise from business opportunities.
However, with the multiple options available, you might find it challenging to choose the best online entrepreneurship course that suits you. Worry not, for this article provides the ultimate guide for selecting the best online entrepreneurship courses. Such courses balance aspiration, applicable business skills, and available resources to establish a business. They should also provide you with the correct entrepreneurial mindset you need to start your own business.
Read through to learn more about online entrepreneurship courses and the best platforms to learn them from.
3 Top Entrepreneurship Courses
[Best Overall]
1. How to Come Up With Killer Business Ideas
This course has all the skills it takes to develop a business idea. Starting from creativity to the advanced science of generating and implementing business ideas.
4.9/5
[Best for the Money]
2. Entrepreneurship Specialization
The course instructors are Wharton's practicing professors with years of experience in entrepreneurship and business management. This privilege allows you to get the right skills required to develop a business.
4.8/5
[Best for Beginners]
3. E-Commerce Essentials: How to Start a Successful Online Business
This online learning platform divides this course into nine lessons. The total time it takes to complete the nine lessons for the entire course is one hour.
4.7/5
What Are the Best Online Entrepreneurship Courses?
There are several online entrepreneurship courses on different online learning platforms. With the revolutionized market industry, taking an online entrepreneurship course with the old, outdated entrepreneurial mindset would be a waste of time. We have done enough research to develop suitable courses for your business. These courses will ensure you successfully execute your entrepreneurship goals and establish a strong business out of ideas.
The list below shows the best online entrepreneurship courses.
How to Come up With Killer Business Ideas - Udemy
Entrepreneurship Specialization - Coursera
E-Commerce Essentials: How to Start a Successful Online Business - Skillshare
Become a Small Business Owner - Linkedin
How to Build a Startup - Udacity
Entrepreneurship 101: Who Is Your Customer? - edX
Postgraduate Diploma in Business in Entrepreneurship - Springboard
Best Entrepreneurship Courses Reviews
4.9/5
The business world and the entrepreneurship concept are competitive—turf for the average you. Before you venture into any business, you must come up with a killer business idea that will position you strategically in the market. Doing so will allow you to start up the business and ensure the prosperity of the enterprise.
It is okay if you're creative; even the most prominent companies and platforms like Facebook began from scratch. With the digital world, you can enroll in an online entrepreneurship course to light the way. For this sector, in particular, you'll need to enroll in the How to Come up With Killer Business Ideas online course.
This course has all the skills it takes to develop a business idea. Starting from creativity to the advanced science of generating and implementing business ideas.
Udemy is one platform that offers this course online. It will cost you $12.99 if you enroll in the course. The course has on-demand lecture videos that take seven hours to complete. It also has a flexible schedule which allows you to choose the time you have the lessons. Your subscription to the course will grant you unlimited access to several features and benefits. Upon completing the course, you're entitled to a verified participation certificate. You can access the course and other learning resources on TV or mobile.
The course instructors teach this course in such a straightforward way. It utilizes courses videos, articles, ad downloadable learning resources to teach learners. You'll learn the skills listed below.
- How to generate ideas from problems and pain points
- How to come up with insightful business ideas.
- How to integrate business idea generation and business dynamics
- Understanding and application of core innovation models
- How to identify the suitable business type
- How to analyze the value chain sectors for potential opportunities
- How to apply advanced techniques such as market enablers and disintermediation in generating business ideas
- Application of different business models such as Saas and Sharing economy
- How to prioritize business ideas
- How to use the contextual concept to mitigate distraction
Pros
Cons
4.8/5
Entrepreneurship Specialization is an online entrepreneurship course covering new businesses' design, concept, organization, and management. It is a series of five courses that teaches you how to identify opportunities and establish a business from this idea. The course seeks to equip its learners with an elite entrepreneurial mindset to help you start and grow your business.
Various online learning platforms offer the course. However, Coursera has stood out as the best platform offering Entrepreneurship Specialization. The platform partners with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, accrediting the course. The course instructors are Wharton's practicing professors with years of experience in entrepreneurship and business management.
This privilege allows you to get the right skills required to develop a business.
The five study courses of Entrepreneurship Specialization are:
- Developing the business opportunity
- Launching your startup
- Strategies for business growth
- Financing and profitability
- Capstone entrepreneurship project
You can choose to learn all five courses or just a few options. When you enroll in a course, you'll automatically be inaugurated to the Entrepreneurship Specialization bundle, which allows you to return later to finish up your pending course.
The course takes about six months to complete, with 2 hours of study every week. The fee charged for the course is $79 per month. Besides the class learning resources, there are hands-on class projects that ensure learners apply what they have learned in the course to real-life applications. After completing the course, you will receive a shareable completion certificate, which you can share on the Linkedin learning platform. Its flexible schedule makes it ideal for beginner learners.
What's impressive about this course is that it is available in nine different languages, including English, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Italian, German, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Russian.
The course has eight instructors, namely:
- Lori RosenKopf - Vice Dean and Director, Wharton Undergraduate Division. She is a professor of management and handles five courses.
- Ethan Mollic - Associate Professor. He is the Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School and handles six courses.
- Karl T. Ulrich - Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He handles six courses.
- Kartik Hosanagar - Professor at Wharton School and handles eight courses online.
- David Hsu - Professor of Management at The Wharton School. He handles five courses.
Pros
Cons
4.7/5
E-Commerce Essentials: How to Start a Successful Online Business is an online entrepreneurship course you should consider if you wish to start an online business. Online business is the ultimate way to execute an entrepreneurship idea into a live reality. This course will teach you the fundamental skills you need to set up a successful business in the digital marketing era.
The best platform to enroll for this course is Skillshare. This online learning platform divides this course into nine lessons.
The total time it takes to complete the nine lessons for the entire course is one hour. These lessons are listed below.
- Introduction
- The State of E-Commerce
- Finding Your Product Niche
- Market Viability Evaluation
- Conducting Competitive Analysis
- Store set up process
- Making Your Business Profitable
- Final Thoughts
- Exploring other Classes on Skillshare
The course has attracted more than 48,000 learners, with the numbers expected to continue growing. The classes will equip you with all business essentials and exploit ways to identify marketable products. The course instructor, Tracey Wallace, an Editor-in-Chief at BigCommerce, will take you through the course in a step-to-step procedure. With the help of the course guide, she will help you learn:
- How to choose the right products for your business.
- How to evaluate market viability to ensure you sell off your products.
- How to analyze the competition for better understanding.
- Identify the best trading platforms where you will sell your products.
- How to develop a viable marketing strategy to ensure you get a profit.
The course is taught using course videos throughout the sessions. At the end of the course, learners engage in projects to ensure they apply their acquired skills. So far, there are 31 completed projects done by qualified learners. Your subscription to the course earns you access to unlimited learning resources, features, and other benefits. The simple class structure and content make it ideal for beginner learners.
Pros
Cons
4.6/5
Small businesses are worth the attention, just as big businesses do. You need a workable plan and a well-planned strategy before starting your small business. Other than the business plan, you need the management skill to organize all the factors in action for the business to succeed. You also need to learn what responsibilities you have as an entrepreneur and the role you'll play in executing your business idea.
You need to enroll in an entrepreneurship course to acquire these skills, preferably an online course. One such course is "Become a Small Business Owner."
The course will take you through all the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and how to establish yourself as a successful entrepreneur. Linkedin is the online learning platform you can rely on for the course.
It will help you learn the required skills, develop your business idea, build the business, and devise strategies to ensure the success of the business.
The course is taught through 11 sub-courses. The courses will take you at least 10 hours to complete. Below is a list of the sub-courses covered.
- Entrepreneurship. The instructor for this course is Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist. The course covers prediction technics for new markets and social media applications in small business marketing.
- Finding and Testing Your Business Idea. This course teaches entrepreneurship and business strategy skills and is under Dave Crenshaw.
- Understanding business - Eddie Davilla. The course teaches about supply chain, accounting, and marketing.
- Creating a business plan - Mike Figliuolo. The course teaches how to understand your business, sales approach, and the market.
Other topics include:
- Business law for managers - Jo-Na Williams
- Foundation of raising capital - Jay Clouse
- Finance essentials for small business - Jim Stice
- Balancing work and life - Dave Crenshaw
- Finance foundation: Income tax - Jim Stice
Pros
Cons
4.5/5
Starting a business from an idea needs some skills if you want the business to be successful. How to Build a Startup is an online entrepreneurship course that gives you the right skills you need to start a business. The course seeks to build a business around customer and marketplace feedback.
The course also seeks to mitigate the tendency of Startups failure, which most aspiring entrepreneurs experience more often.
The course will teach learners how to identify the actual pain points of customers and devise ways to meet their needs.
By the end of the course, the learners will, after applying these skills, be able to establish the most suitable businesses that will face off competition and have significant customer traffic.
Lucky for you, several online learning platforms offer How to Build a Startup online courses for free. However, Udacity is the best online learning platform as far as the How to Build a Startup online course is concerned. The platform offers the course at zero subscription fee. And despite the course being free, it’s still quality.
The platform uses different learning paths to teach its learners. Among them are interactive quizzes, self-paced learning, and hands-on projects. Besides, the course instructors, Steve Blank and Kathleen Mullaney, are practicing industry professionals with years of experience.
The course has nine classes, as shown below.
- What We Now Know. This class teaches about the history of corporations, startups, and large companies comparisons, how to develop your customers and products, and lastly, entrepreneurial skills.
- Business Models and Customer Development. This class teaches about the value proposition. It also gives more details about revenues, analysis of market opportunities, and the essential resources to consider for your startup.
- Value Proposition. The class will teach you about Customer Archetype, common mistakes when propositioning value, and minimum viable products.
- Customer Segments. The class talks about the importance of understanding the market and customers. With it, you'll also learn more about market types.
- Channels. The class focuses on the overview of different distribution channels, including web, physical, direct channel, and indirect channel distributions.
- Customer Relationships. This class will focus more on how you relate to your customers. You'll learn about Earned Demand Creation and Web Customer Acquisition Costs, among other features.
- Partners. The course teaches more about partners and business partnerships. Its definition, different partnership types, and the benefits and downsides of partnership.
- Resources, Activities, and Costs. Business is a relationship between ideas, strategies, products, and the market. This course teaches how you can best integrate all the features to come up with a strong startup in the competitive market.
The platform implements its learning in a simple, well-structured way. The course will take you one month to finish. It features self-paced learning with flexible schedules for your convenience. There are also interactive quizzes that allow learners to interact with their colleagues while determining the effectiveness of the course. Many students love the course as it is free and taught by Practicing professionals instructors.
Pros
Cons
4.4/5
Who is a customer? A customer is a person who purchases goods and services from your business. For any business to thrive, it needs customers. Knowing how to get customers and keep them is a significant challenge to many entrepreneurs today. So, it would be wise to acquire skills that will appreciate the value of customers and provide ways to acquire more customers. And where is the best place to turn to learn these skills?
Enrolling in an online course would be a wise idea to learn these entrepreneurship skills.
Several courses are offered in various Universities, learning institutions, and online learning platforms. The best course to enroll in is probably Entrepreneurship 101: Who is your customer.
This course is an online entrepreneurship course that will teach you all about customers, including their importance and how to acquire and keep them. The course will also teach you how to grow your customers, ensuring you acquire more and more of them.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in partnership with the edX online learning platform, offers this online entrepreneurship course. What's impressive is that the platform offers the course for free, 100% online. It takes ten weeks to complete the course when you dedicate at least three hours every week to the course. The course, which is a step-by-step guide, will teach you how to implement strategies that will ensure the success of your enterprise through the customers. You'll also go through case studies of Massachusetts Institute of Technology startup companies.
More than 58,000 learners have already enrolled in this course. This number is expected to rise as we move on. Note that the free online course will start on March 23 and end on August 25. The course instructors are Bill Aulet, the Managing Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, and Erdin Beshimov, a Lecturer and Director of the MIT Bootcamps Program
Skills the Course Teaches
- How to do market segmentation
- How to find your beachhead market
- How to create end-users profiles
- How to calculate your market size
- How to read your customers
- How to apply the bottom-up market analysis and business model
Pros
Cons
4.3/5
Postgraduate Diploma in Business in Entrepreneurship is an online entrepreneurship course you can enroll in to boost your entrepreneurship skills. The course teaches learners about creativity in coming up with business ideas, innovative motives, and how to manage your business. It digs deeper into the culture associated with entrepreneurship and its players.
The course is a blended entrepreneurship course offered by the National College of Ireland. It partners with the Springboard online learning platform to offer the course online.
The online site of the course aims to teach learners how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset that will help their ideas and strategies to develop businesses out of ideas. After completing the course, you will acquire business management skills to help sustain the business. You'll also learn how you can use technology, innovative management, and social media to promote your business.
The course has the right tools for both beginners and advanced business owners. Besides, it has the necessary resources that help to transition fresh graduates into business management gurus. You will also benefit from its learning tools that teach more about management theory and practices analysis and evaluation.
The course instructors for this course are the National College of Ireland lecturers, who have rich experience in entrepreneurship and business courses. They use a straightforward approach as stipulated by the course guide. They use lecture notes, articles, and downloadable course materials to teach learners.
This course will cost you $715.
Pros
Cons
How to Choose the Best Online Entrepreneurship Courses
Online entrepreneurship courses are essential for business startups. However, not all courses suit you. Below we have listed the factors to consider when selecting the best online entrepreneurship courses.
The Time It Takes to Complete the Course
You should choose an online entrepreneurship course that takes the shortest time possible to complete. Also, duration scheduling of the course weekly is crucial. Choose a course that has a few hours to study weekly. Also, take a course that allows for flexibility. The course needs to avail its learning resources for learners to access anytime.
Finishing the course earlier allows applying the skills you've learned in starting a business. If you already have one, the skills you've learned will help you devise strategies to improve your enterprise.
Cost
There are several free online entrepreneurship courses. Others have affordable subscription fees.
Always consider a course with affordable charges.
Convenience
You should always go for an online entrepreneurship course with flexible schedules for your convenience. The classes should have all the learning resources available in an easily accessible place. They should also have records of the live events, which you can access in the future.
Professional Certificate
You need a professional certificate in your resume to land a job in your career path. Therefore, the online entrepreneurship course you choose should have a completion certificate. The course needs to be accredited by a well-known university or learning institution.
Skill Levels
The online entrepreneurship course you choose should cater to all entrepreneurship skill levels. It should be ideal for beginners, intermediaries, and advanced learners who are professionals and existing business owners.
The course should also have experienced instructors who are entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Other advanced factors specific to entrepreneurship include:
The course should have a high success rate. The majority of its previous learners should have started their own enterprises and have a successful career path.
The online entrepreneurship course you choose should be interactive. It should have an interactive platform with interactive quizzes and programs that allow students to discuss with their colleagues.
The course should have hands-on project activities at the end of the course and case studies that enable them to apply the skills they have learned in the real-world industry.
The course should be available in different languages to eliminate language barriers. This feature also helps the course gain more learners, who enrich the course with diverse experiences from different parts of the world.
FAQs
What Is the Best Online Course for Entrepreneurs?
The best overall course for entrepreneurs is the Entrepreneurship specialization offered by Coursera's online learning platform. The course is 100% online, allowing you to access it anywhere. The course utilizes hands-on class projects that ensure students put the skills they have learned into practice in the real-world industry.
Besides, the course has flexible schedules that allow for your convenience and is available in nine different languages. This feature allows learners from all over the world to access it, enriching it with diverse experiences in the long run.
The course costs a $79 monthly fee and takes six months to complete. Upon completing the course, you'll get a completion certificate, which you can use on your resume.
Which Course Is Best for Entrepreneurship?
The best courses, which successful entrepreneurs learn, are listed below.
Entrepreneurship Specialization
Entrepreneurship 101: Who Is Your Customer?
E-Commerce Essentials: How to Start a Successful Online Business
Become a Small Business Owner
How to Come up With Killer Business Ideas
How to Build a Startup
Entrepreneurial Operations: Launching a Startup
Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action
Postgraduate Diploma in Business in Entrepreneurship
Where Can I Learn Entrepreneurship for Free?
Several online learning platforms offer entrepreneurship courses for free. Such platforms include:
edX online learning platform. Courses offered for free are Entrepreneurship 101: Who Is Your Customer? and Entrepreneurial Operations: Launching a Startup.
Coursera online learning platform. This platform's course for free is Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action.
Udacity online learning platform. This platform's course for free is Entrepreneurship 101: Who Is Your Customer?
What Do You Get When You Take an Online Entrepreneurship Course?
When you learn online entrepreneurship courses, you gain essential entrepreneurship skills. These skills help you identify opportunities, devise ideas and strategies then establish your enterprise. Below is a list of the skills you'll gain by learning online entrepreneurship courses.
Principles of starting an enterprise
How to identify and overcome challenges that come with entrepreneurship
How to develop viable and actionable business ideas
How to incorporate technology into your business growth
How to validate your products
The business startup process
How to manage your new business
