COURSE INFORMATION

Course description.  Course teaches engineering students about issues tackled by leading Chief Technology Officers: the technical visionaries and/or managers who innovate at the boundaries of technology and business by understanding both deeply, and who are true partners to the CEO, not just implementers of business goals. Focus will be on thinking like a CTO (of a startup and a large company) from technology and business perspectives, and on software and Internet-based businesses. Industry-leading guest speakers provide perspectives too.

Lectures.  Lectures meet on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:00am - 12:20pm in Friend Center 006

Required reading list. Students will be required to create a write-up for each book on the required reading list. Information on the book write-ups can be found on the write-ups page.

• In the Plex, Steven Levy
• The Everything Store, Brad Stone
• Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley, A. Garcia Martinez

Recommended reading list.

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Peter Thiel

Guest Lecturers. There will be a write-up due for each guest lecturer. Information on the guest lecturer write-ups can be found on the write-ups page.

Past speakers have included J. Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square; M. Whitman, CEO of Ebay and now HP; F. Wilson, of Union Square Ventures; P. Graham, of Y!Combinator; S. Altman, of Y!Combinator; J. Hennessy, President of Stanford University; J. Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!; D. Greene, co-founder and CEO of VMWare; J. Clark, co-founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics; T. Siebel, founder and CEO of Siebel Systems; and C. Dickerson, CEO of Etsy.

Grading.  The grading is structured as follows:

• Midterm paper — 33%
• Final paper — 33%
• Oral presentation — 12%
• Book write-ups — 12%
• Guest lecturer write-ups — 10%

Important due dates. 

• In the Plex write-up — due Monday March 6 at 5:00pm
• Midterm paper — due Wednesday March 15 at 5:00pm
• The Everything Store write-up — due Monday April 3 at 5:00pm
• Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley write-up — due Monday April 24 at 5:00pm
• Oral presentation — due on last day of class, Wednesday May 3 from 11:00am - 1:30pm (Note: class will run longer than usual, so plan accordingly)
• Final paper — due on Dean's Date, Tuesday May 16 at 5:00pm

Late Policy. You will not get any credit for late submissions. We will grant extensions only in the case of illness (with a doctor's note) or extraordinary circumstances. Extracurricular activities and heavy workloads in other classes don't count as "extraordinary", no matter how unexpected or important or time-consuming. Please let us know ahead of time if illness or an extraordinary circumstance will cause you to submit a writeup or paper late, then you should discuss the matter with your instructor as soon as possible.

Staff, Office Hours and Other Help. 

Instructor Jaswinder P. Singh - jps at cs dot princeton dot edu Office: Computer Science 423 Office Hours: TBD

Instructor Robert Fish - rfish at cs dot princeton dot edu Office: Computer Science 206 Office Hours: M after 1:30pm, W after 2:00pm

AI Claudia Roberts - claudiar at cs dot princeton dot edu Office: Friend 010 Office Hours: Th 6:00pm - 7:00pm

If you have general questions about the assignments, lectures, readings, or other course materials, please post via Piazza. Posts marked private are viewable only by instructors.