[abromberg]

I've mentioned this in a couple comments below, but I think that this class teaches you a lot more than that. I took the class when it was offered at Stanford and one of the most valuable things I took out of the class was how to build APIs for different business functions. Being able to automate huge parts of your business, regardless of what industry you're in, is a huge advantage. Think about an energy company building APIs to monitor consumption and efficiency at client sites and adjusting their work accordingly -- that's huge. This class does a lot more than teach you how to build webapps; it teaches you to think in an automation mindset and happens to teach you a lot of useful skills along the way.

[hasenj]

Sure, but my main point was about the types of things taught in the class: mostly technical things.

Most developers are already good at these things (or can learn them fairly quickly). The hard part of building a startup, at least for developers, is actually learning how to run a business and grow it. How to acquire users/customers, how to market, how to take care of all the "nasty but necessary" paperwork.

[wilfra]

The class is the sequel to the class by Peter Thiel that covered those things. Unfortunately that class isn't available online, to my knowledge - but the Stanford students who first took that and then this would be learning both.

As somebody who is already reasonably good at the soft skills, I have really been looking forward to this class as a primer and entry point (though clearly not a silver bullet) to learn the technical skills.

[dncrane]

There are some good notes for Peter Thiel's class here: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup