Activity1 hr
Marketing Diagnosis Activity
Students analyze a real business or pitch page to judge what a first-time visitor actually understands from it.
Marketing
KANU CLASSROOM
Learning by doing, without doing it all yourself.
Ready-to-run venture experiences that drop into the course you already teach. Your students launch real businesses, the platform guides every step and tracks every outcome. No curriculum to build. No grading pile.
Backed by Reach Capital and JFF Ventures
- 0+active schools
- $0K+real student revenue
- 0+student ventures launched
THE PROBLEM
Experiential learning is the best way to teach entrepreneurship. It's also the most work.
The prep
Designing a real project from scratch eats your weekends. A textbook chapter takes ten minutes to assign, which is exactly why textbooks keep winning.
The logistics of "real"
Real customers mean storefronts, payments, and accountability. That's infrastructure, not a lesson plan, and no syllabus provides it.
The grading pile
Open-ended, real-world work is the hardest thing on your desk to assess fairly, and the first reason courses quietly retreat to multiple choice.
Prepping a new course, or updating one?
Prepping a new course
Anchor it on a pre-built syllabus that has already run at real schools: structure, student flow, and outcome tracking included.
Updating an existing course
Drop a ready-to-teach lesson plan into the syllabus you already have — one class session, prep to debrief, with a real KANU activity built in.
Not a textbook. Not a simulation. The real thing, packaged for class.
A KANU Experience is a ready-to-run classroom experience where students do real entrepreneurial work: pitch a real idea, talk to real customers, sell through a real storefront, or launch a full venture, depending on the experience. Every step is guided in the platform by KAI, and every outcome is verified. "Real" never means "unsupervised."
Textbook
Students read about entrepreneurship. Knowledge in, nothing out.
Simulation
Students practice in a fake market. Risk-free, and stakes-free. Nothing survives the last day of class.
Internship / placement
Real, but one employer per student and a mountain of coordination that doesn't fit inside a course.
The real thing
KANU Experience
Real work, run inside your class, verified by the platform. Students keep what they build.
Ready-to-run experiences, from a single class period to a multi-week venture.
Quick activities
One class period. Plug-and-play warm-ups and skill reps students start and finish in a single session.
Multi-week projects
Multi-week venture builds. Students take a real idea to launch and gather the evidence along the way.
HOW IT WORKS
Every experience runs on the same loop: Learn, Do, Verify.
The pedagogy under the hood. Students learn a concept, do it for real with a named tool, and the result is verified as evidence, and every verified result feeds the next lesson.
PitchLink
Learn
Lesson: shaping an idea worth testing.
Do
Put your pitch in front of real people with PitchLink.
Verify
Responses are recorded as the venture's evidence.
Responses tracked
every verified result feeds the next lesson
Meet KAI, your students' guide.
Real entrepreneurship is hard to navigate. KAI is the compass built into every KANU experience, guiding students from first idea to verified outcome, working alongside the teacher every step. You teach; KAI keeps thirty ventures moving.
TEACHES
Lessons that stick.
Concepts land and stay landed.
ReadingsVideosReal casesExamplesGraphics
From the library to a live class in four steps.
KANU Classroom
Real experiences, ready to run
- Experiential entrepreneurship students do, not read about
- Drops into the courses you already teach
- Completion tracked, no grading pile
A library of hands-on entrepreneurship experiences, from one class period to a multi-week venture, that drop into your existing course.
Implementation
Real experiences, ready to run
- 1
Pick from the experience library
Choose a project or activity. Each comes with pre, during, and post class prep, teaching notes, and add-ons like worksheets and slides.
- 2
Complete your training
Short digital training on running the experience well, before students ever join.
- 3
Invite students
Invite via QR code, invite link, or bookstore digital access. Students join on the web, tablet, or the iOS and Android apps.
- 4
Run and manage
Run live in one class period, or set due dates along the way. Progress and completion are tracked automatically, so there's no grading pile.
The evidence isn't hypothetical. It's published.
Browse InsightsPEER-REVIEWED
Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy · University of Rhode Island
Stimulation Versus Simulation: The Student Side Hustle as a Learning Innovation
By Nancy Forster-Holt. The published research behind KANU's approach: students learn entrepreneurship by running real ventures that solve real problems for real customers. A "stimulation," not a simulation.
COMMENTARY
Four Reasons Why Your Next Hire Should Have a Side Hustle
Steve Blank & Nancy Forster-Holt · Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange. Blank and Forster-Holt on why student side hustlers make standout hires, citing the URI course where students run real businesses on KANU, winner of USASBE's top prize in experiential learning.
Read moreNEWS
KANU wins first place in USASBE's 2022 national competition for experiential entrepreneurship education
A classroom exercise built on KANU, students launching real ventures instead of writing hypothetical plans, took first place among 13 national finalists.
Read moreSchools like yours, on the record.
Teachers and professors, in their own words.
Showing 13 testimonials.
View case study
Breeann Gibbons
CTE Director, Destinations Career Academy of Colorado
“KANU is easy for our students to navigate without feeling overwhelmed, and it still offers a fantastic experience. Working with the team has been a joy. We're already planning to include KANU in our next Perkins grant.”
Jeff Meade
Entrepreneurship Program Director, Paul Quinn College
“Learning happens when you actually do something, and KANU captures venture-based learning in a nutshell. It's incredible to see.”
View case studyTeri Cady
Head of School
“Engagement was high, and that was just year one. Students respond at a much higher rate when there's a teacher behind it.”
Shorouq Almallah
Entrepreneurship Program Lead, Grand Valley State University
“KANU is very intuitive, and I love the simplicity of it. In the learning module, I see a lot of potential.”
View case studyGalen Harkness
Business Teacher, Destinations Career Academy of Colorado
“KANU helped me bring real-world content into the classroom. It's clever and packed with powerful content, and it made a real difference in how my students engaged.”
Teresa
Professor, University of the Incarnate Word
“Students experience entrepreneurship firsthand, launching their own online storefronts to take an idea from concept to customer. The best part is guiding students as they discover what works and when they need to pivot as they are also making connections to course concepts.”
View case study
Dr. Nancy Forster-Holt
Professor, University of Rhode Island
“I was so tired of the hypothetical business idea. When they explained KANU, I said, you nailed it.”
Andrew Illnicki
Entrepreneurship Faculty, University of Richmond
“I love the look and feel you've developed. The features and benefits are really intuitive, which is great.”
View case study
Regina Thompson
Wave Program, Florida Atlantic University
“It's a fun, gamified way to run our program, and it's customizable. For student entrepreneurship, it's worth trying.”
Dr. Colleen Robb
Professor, Florida Gulf Coast University
“Every class we showed the dashboard, students would come on time because they wanted to see how they stacked against their teammates.”
View case study
Justin Heacock
Executive Director, Florida Southern College
“KANU took our incubation program from 25 students to over 400 in a single academic year. With one full-time employee, we run a full incubation program without adding staff.”
Dr. John Wilson
Drexel University
“KANU connects experience with pedagogy.”
View case study
Dr. David Tomczyk
Professor, Quinnipiac University
“In the two years we've used KANU, the number of teams who failed to launch a business has approached zero. Our teams are more motivated to sell, on and off platform.”
Trust & safety, built in
- Student data encrypted in transit and at rest
- School-controlled accounts: your school sets visibility and sharing
- No student data sold or used for advertising
- Verifiable school or parental consent for students under 13
- Student data deleted at your school's request
- Built to support your district's FERPA and COPPA obligations
Questions educators actually ask.
No. Every experience ships ready to run, with pre-, during-, and post-class prep, teaching notes, and add-ons like worksheets and slides.
Via QR code, invite link, or bookstore digital access. Students work on the web, tablet, or the iOS and Android apps, no rosters to upload.
Progress and completion are tracked automatically as students complete real steps, so there's no grading pile. You can review anything, but nothing requires subjective grading.
No. Students build and operate real ventures with real customers, and the platform records verified outcomes. Nothing is simulated.
No, it drops into the course you already teach. Use one activity as a single unit or run a full project across the term.
Your first activity is free with a free account. Paid options are scoped to your course or program, request a demo and we'll walk you through it.
KANU is used across K-12 and higher ed, with school-controlled accounts, and is built to support your district's FERPA and COPPA obligations.
GET STARTED
Your students' first real venture starts with one free activity.
Your first activity is free with a free account. See how a real venture runs inside your class.