I went to an IdeaMensch talk by Mike McGee (co-founder), and it was actually surprisingly little. They knew what they wanted to build (a physical school, great space, excellent teachers, etc) but one of their funding opportunities fell through right as they were running out of money.
They decided to see if they could bootstrap it by getting 30 students who were crazy enough to enroll when there wasn't any of the stuff promised in place yet.
There were way more than 30, and had to reject a number of applicants. They rented their first space (at Groupon I think) less than a week before classes started, and bought the iMacs just days before it started.
They decided to see if they could bootstrap it by getting 30 students who were crazy enough to enroll when there wasn't any of the stuff promised in place yet.
There were way more than 30, and had to reject a number of applicants. They rented their first space (at Groupon I think) less than a week before classes started, and bought the iMacs just days before it started.
Long story short, they shipped, and it worked.