Dalhousie professors Mary Kilfoil and Ed Leach will launch their next lean startup initiative Jan. 30 when they host a meeting for Startup Next.

Kilfoil and Leach last fall shepherded nine teams during their Starting Lean course, which didn’t teach students entrepreneurship so much as made them start a business, with acute emphasis on the value proposition and customer validation. They also organized the Startup Weekend at Dalhousie in November, in which about 10 teams came together for an intense weekend and laid the groundwork for their businesses.

Kilfoil said this morning they are now looking for a select complement of teams and fewer than 10 are likely to go through Startup Next.

The two Dal profs will collaborate with academics and startup aficionados in San Francisco, Seattle, Washington and Europe. Startup Next courses will be held in Halifax and these other centres, using academic Steve Blank’s Lean Launch Pad curriculum.

The Dalhousie Startup Next course will be the first of its kind in Canada and will require the group to meet each Wednesday evening for five weeks. At the end, the teams will be eligible to enter the first Startup Next competition in Canada, which will be held in Halifax in March. The winner will travel to the Startup Next finals in New York.

The other people teaching Startup Next courses this winter include: Steve Blank in Silicon Valley; Andy Sack (TechStars Seattle founder) in Seattle; Alex Farcet (founder of Startupbootcamp) teaching in several European cities; and Eric Koester (founder of Zaarly) in Washington, D.C.

The inaugural meeting of the Dalhousie course will be held at 7 pm Wednesday, Jan. 30, in the Executive Training Room No. 3089 of the Rowe School of Business building.