Online entrepreneurship courses provide you with the skills and know-how to spot gaps in the market, devise unique ways to fulfill unmet needs, and build a business around your product or service. But there are tons of options out there, and it can be difficult to sift through the available courses and figure out what’s actually worth your time and money. To help you narrow down your choices, we’ve reviewed the 10 best online entrepreneurship courses below.
- Coursera — Entrepreneurship Specialization — Top Pick
- Coursera —Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship Specialization — Best for Entrepreneurial Mindset
- Coursera — — Most Flexible Schedule
- Udacity — How to Build a Startup — Most Affordable
- Harvard University — Technology Entrepreneurship: Lab to Market — Best for the Tech Sector
- Harvard Business School — Entrepreneurship Essentials — Most User-Friendly Platform
- Udemy — How to Come up With Killer Business Ideas — Best for Generating Ideas
- edX — Becoming an Entrepreneur — Best for Beginners
- edX —Entrepreneurial Operations: Launching a Startup — Best for Launching
- Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania— Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program — Best Advanced Course
Our Ranking Criteria
The top online entrepreneurship courses provide you with a balance of inspiration, practical tips and tools, and real-world skills needed to launch your own business. We researched 40 online entrepreneurship courses before narrowing down the top 10 to include in this guide. When deciding which programs to include and leave out, we used the following criteria.
Basic Ranking Criteria
Before committing to an online course, you should have a sense of the time required to complete the course, whether any prerequisites are required, how flexible the schedule is, and what sort of certificate you can expect to earn upon completion. That’s why for each online entrepreneurship course covered in this guide, we looked at four basic factors:
Time to complete. You should be able to complete your online entrepreneurship course relatively quickly in order to put your new skills to use starting a business and adjusting as necessary. The courses covered in this guide take anywhere from a few hours to eight months to complete.
Prerequisites required. None of the courses covered in this guide require you to have completed any prerequisites. This means you can dive straight into the courses and immediately start learning.
Flexible schedule. If you’re a current or future entrepreneur, you’re likely very busy. That’s why we selected part-time courses with flexible schedules to best suit your needs.
Certificate of completion. Most of the courses in this guide offer a certificate of completion, which is a valuable addition to your resume.
Advanced Ranking Criteria
The basic criteria mentioned above are relevant to nearly all online courses. However, we also looked at some key factors specific to entrepreneurship. These factors include:
- The course covers a variety of entrepreneurship skills, from brainstorming to securing venture capital funds to scaling a business.
- The instructors are skilled teachers with first-hand experience as entrepreneurs and business leaders.
- The course’s effectiveness has been proven by former graduates successfully starting their own businesses or improving their career path within their industry.
- To build a sense of camaraderie and personal connection through the online platform, the course includes interactions (for instance, online discussion boards) with fellow students.
- The course utilizes project-based exercises that help students take action toward turning their idea into an actual business.
- The course involves mastering the step-by-step process of identifying an unmet need, building the best team, creating a high-impact, scalable business model, and choosing the best financial approach.
- The course acquaints students with important techniques, vocabulary, and norms within the world of entrepreneurship and startups.
10 Best Online Entrepreneurship Courses
Coursera
Entrepreneurship Specialization
Intelligent Award: Top Pick
Coursera’s Entrepreneurship Specialization is offered by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It’s a bundle of five courses on the following topics: developing the business opportunity, launching your start-up, strategies for business growth, financing and profitability, and a capstone entrepreneurship project coordinated by UPenn’s Wharton School of Business. Students can choose to take all five courses or just one or two that meet their specific needs. Whether you take one course or all five, you’re automatically enrolled in the Entrepreneurship Specialization bundle and can return to the courses at a later date. The courses are all taught by professors at Wharton, the top-ranked business school in the country. The material is self-paced, and Coursera provides financial aid opportunities to students who cannot afford the course fee.
- Price: $79 per month
- Time to complete: Approximately 6 months (2 hours per week)
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes
Who should take this course? The comprehensiveness of this course coupled with the flexible scheduling, top-notch instructors, and reasonable price-point, make this a great option for anyone interested in learning what it takes to start a business.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Flexible scheduling and pricing. | No live interactions with faculty or fellow students. |
| Top-notch instructors. | |
| Option to enroll in all courses, or just a few. |
Coursera
Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship Specialization
Intelligent Award: Best for Entrepreneurial Mindset
Coursera’s Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship Specialization is offered by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne and contains seven separate courses that center on building a firm foundation in innovation and creativity for aspiring entrepreneurs. Participants learn to think like an entrepreneur, harnessing the power of innovation strategy and creativity. The seven courses are best taken as a sequence building towards the final capstone project, but they can also be taken a la carte. Scheduling is flexible; if necessary, students can move due dates around in order to work with their existing obligations. Unlike other similar courses on our list, this specialization devotes an entire course to creative collaboration — a key component of successful entrepreneurial endeavors that is sometimes overlooked.
- Price: $49 per month
- Time to complete: Approximately 8 months (4 hours per week)
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes
Who should take this course? This introductory course sequence is great for students who want to immerse in the mindset of an entrepreneur, generate innovative and creative ideas, and learn the fundamentals of bringing those ideas to life in the form of a business.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Flexible scheduling. | No live interactions with fellow students. |
| Beginner-friendly. | The time commitment may be daunting to some students. |
| Very comprehensive. |
Coursera
Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action
Intelligent Award: Most Flexible Schedule
Coursera’s Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking and Action is a relatively short, highly flexible course with potentially big benefits. In fact, according to Coursera, 25% of participants started a new career after completing business courses such as this one, and 41% of participants got a tangible career benefit from this course. Deadlines for the course are very flexible and can be moved depending on your availability and needs. The course content centers on teaching you to understand and manage the entrepreneurial process, apply entrepreneurial approaches to a new business or your current job, spot new business opportunities, and recognize what challenges you might face in getting your business off the ground. Enrolling in this course gives you access to the full Career Success Specialization at Coursera.
- Price: $39 per month
- Time to complete: Approximately 5 hours
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes
Who should take this course? This course is great for beginning entrepreneurs with busy schedules who need the flexibility to change due dates and engage with the course entirely at their own pace.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Very flexible. | Relatively short course. |
| Great for beginners. | |
| Assignments with peer and instructor feedback. |
Udacity
How to Build a Startup
Intelligent Award: Most Affordable
Udacity’s How to Build a Startup course is completely free, but don’t let that fool you. This is a high-quality intermediate course taught by successful industry professionals. The main goal of the course is to help students understand how to swiftly and efficiently launch a startup, collect as much customer feedback and data as possible, and adjust accordingly. Through self-paced learning, interactive quizzes, and rich learning content, you’ll learn from industry pros and better your current business ideas or operations. Much of this course focuses on getting to know your customers, solicit their feedback, and refine your product or service to better meet the needs of the market.
- Price: Free
- Time to complete: Approximately 1 month
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: No
Who should take this course? This is an intermediate course that is best suited to students with an entrepreneurial mindset and a clear idea of a business they want to work on. This is also a good course for anyone considering signing up for one of Udacity’s paid Nanodegree programs.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Free. | No live interactions with fellow students. |
| Flexible scheduling. | Geared toward intermediate or advanced students. |
| Taught by industry professionals. |
Harvard University
Technology Entrepreneurship: Lab to Market
Intelligent Award: Best for the Tech Sector
Harvard’s Technology Entrepreneurship: Lab to Market course hosted by EdX is an introductory dive into how entrepreneurs pair exciting tech developments with customer needs in order to launch successful businesses. Using real-world examples as case studies, the course moves students through a systematic approach to technology entrepreneurship. The ultimate goal is to help you understand how to take promising new technologies out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. At just five weeks long, this course is relatively short but nonetheless packed with useful video mini-lectures by professors from Harvard University and University of California San Diego.
- Price: Free (audit track); $99 (verified track)
- Time to complete: Approximately 5 weeks (2 to 4 hours per week)
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes, if you sign up for the paid “verified track”
Who should take this course? This introductory course is well suited to students with an interest in tech entrepreneurship — especially those who want to help bring a technological advancement from the lab into the market in unique ways. The time commitment is relatively low, so this is a good course for people looking to dip their toes in tech entrepreneurship.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Flexible scheduling. | No live interactions with fellow students. |
| Beginner-friendly. | Full participation in the course requires you to pay the verified track fee. |
| Taught by industry professionals. |
Harvard Business School
Entrepreneurship Essentials
Intelligent Award: Most User-Friendly Platform
Harvard Business School Online’s Entrepreneurship Essentials helps you bridge the gap between an idea and an actual business. The course focuses on tried and true strategies for building and financing new business ventures in any industry. The user platform is very straightforward, easy to follow, and well organized, so you won’t waste valuable time trying to figure out where you are in the course or what you’re supposed to be doing. The syllabus provides a really clear table with the title of each module, the case study you’ll use to explore that concept, the main takeaways from the module, and the related activities. The platform is streamlined and appealing. However, the price point is high relative to other courses, and the schedule is less flexible than that of some comparable courses.
- Price: $1,050
- Time to complete: 4 weeks (6 to 8 hours per week)
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: No
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes
Who should take this course? This course suits students who want practical and actionable operations knowledge in order to launch a startup and anticipate problems before they arise.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Great design and execution. | Large time commitment per week. |
| Good for beginners. | Less flexible scheduling. |
| Taught by a top business professor. |
Udemy
How to Come up With Killer Business Ideas
Intelligent Award: Best for Generating Ideas
Udemy’s course is all about helping students “come up with killer business ideas.” Whereas the other courses on our list focus on the nitty-gritty logistics of bringing a business to life, Udemy’s course centers on the creative flurry that precedes the actual formation of a business. But don’t let the word “creative” fool you. Udemy’s course is about the science of generating business ideas. In addition to learning to objectively assess their ideas, passions, strengths, and shortcomings, students learn systems for analyzing different areas of a business’ value chain and spotting potential opportunities, as well as how to quickly evaluate ideas using five different dimensions.
- Price: $139.99
- Time to complete: Approximately 7 hours
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes
Who should take this course? Anyone in the process of coming up with the next “big thing” should take this course. You won’t get much in the way of business logistics, so if you’re in need of those skills, you’ll want to account for those elsewhere.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Flexible scheduling. | No live interactions with instructor. |
| Great for beginner and veteran entrepreneurs alike. | The price point is relatively high for only 7 hours of video content. |
| Top-rated instructor. |
edX
Becoming an Entrepreneur
Intelligent Award: Best for Beginners
EdX’s Becoming an Entrepreneur course is offered in conjunction with MIT Launch. The course aims to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with both the inspiration and the information needed to succeed as business founders. Students learn to build and nurture an idea from the ground up before taking the logistical steps to bring it to life in the real world. The tone of the course is fun, friendly, and approachable — but the content is seriously impressive. Uniquely, the course features a combination of short videos and activities that require stepping away from your computer and heading into your community to make a meaningful impact.
- Price: Free (Audit Track), $69 (Verified Track)
- Time to complete: Approximately 6 weeks (1-3 hours per week)
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes, if you pay for the Verified Track
Who should take this course? This course is perfect for beginning entrepreneurs. It helps you build a solid foundation to understand how to launch a business in the real world. For more experienced entrepreneurs, this course would primarily be a review.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Flexible scheduling. | Certificate comes with a surcharge. |
| Beginner-friendly. | |
| Incorporates offline exercises. |
edX
Entrepreneurial Operations: Launching a Startup
Intelligent Award: Best for Launching
EdX’s Entrepreneurial Operations: Launching a Startup, offered in conjunction with business powerhouse Babson University, is very practical and real-world oriented. It focuses on the actual challenges, roadblocks, and opportunities that come with getting a new venture off the ground. It’s a start-up operations course packed with actionable steps, systems, and frameworks to use when building a startup operation from scratch. Using video lectures, lecture notes, readings, and case studies, you’ll explore the role operations play in launching a startup, how to cultivate an operations mindset, tools for documenting startup operations, common operational risks and challenges related to launching a startup, and operations metrics for tracking startup performance.
- Price: Free (Audit Track), $149 (Verified Track)
- Time to complete: 4 weeks (4 to 6 hours per week)
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes, if you pay for the Verified Track
Who should take this course? This course suits students who want practical and actionable operations knowledge in order to launch a startup and anticipate problems before they arise.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Very actionable. | Relatively large time commitment per week. |
| Great for intermediate entrepreneurs. | |
| Assignments with instructor feedback. |
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program
Intelligent Award: Best Advanced Course
Wharton’s Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program: Scaling Your Business is the most comprehensive online course reviewed in this guide, and provides the best challenges for entrepreneurs who want to seriously step up their game. Though this program requires a steep investment compared to the others, the potential return on that investment is five-fold or more: the winner of the pitch competition receives $10,000 in seed funding for their venture. Through a combination of live and recorded video lectures by faculty, engaging assignments, quizzes, and interactive discussions with your classmates moderated by teaching assistants, you get a multifaceted immersion in what it takes to build and launch a successful business. This course is for entrepreneurs who are very serious about investing in their continued growth.
- Price: $1,950, or get $150 off with a referral; flexible payment options available
- Time to complete: 3 months (3 to 4 hours per week)
- Prerequisites required: No
- Flexible schedule: Yes and no; some recordings and discussions are live
- Includes verified certificate of participation: Yes
Who should take this course? This course is best suited to up-and-coming entrepreneurs who are very serious about bringing their business idea to fruition.
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Very comprehensive. | High price point. |
| Taught by industry leaders. | Somewhat inflexible scheduling. |
| Incorporates offline exercises and live discussions. |
Online Entrepreneurship Course Comparison Chart
| Course | Price | Features |
| Coursera — Entrepreneurship Specialization — Top Pick | $79 per month | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation |
| Coursera — Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship Specialization — Best for Entrepreneurial Mindset | $49 per month | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation |
| Coursera — Essentials of Entrepreneurship — Most Flexible Schedule | $39 per month | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation |
| Udacity — How to Build a Startup — Most Affordable | Free | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule X Includes verified certificate of participation |
| Harvard University — Technology Entrepreneurship — Best for the Tech Sector | Free; add a verified certificate for $99 | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation (with $99 fee) |
| Harvard Business School — Entrepreneurship Essentials — Most User-Friendly Platform | $1,050 | ✓ No prerequisites required X Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation |
| Udemy — How to Come up With Killer Business Ideas — Best for Generating Ideas | $139.99 | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation |
| EdX — Becoming an Entrepreneur — Best for Beginners | Free; add a verified certificate for $69 | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation (with $69 fee) |
| EdX — Entrepreneurial Operations: Launching a Startup — Best for Launching | Free; add a verified certificate for $149 | ✓ No prerequisites required ✓ Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation (with $149 fee) |
| Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania — Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program — Best Advanced Course | $1,950 or get $195 off with referral | ✓ No prerequisites required X Flexible schedule ✓ Includes verified certificate of participation |
Tips for Succeeding in an Online Entrepreneurship Course
1. Consider the cost
How much do online entrepreneurship classes cost?
Online entrepreneurship course costs vary widely. You can expect to spend anywhere from $0 for a free course to upwards of $2,000 for a comprehensive course typically run by an elite business school. Most fee-based courses offer you the option of making payments in installments as opposed to upfront in one lump sum. Furthermore, some courses charge by the month for course access, so the sooner you complete the course, the sooner you can stop paying the monthly fee. If you do not want or need a verified certificate at the completion of your course, then you can audit many courses for free.
Will my employer pay for me to take the course?
Employers often reimburse or help to subsidize the cost of professional development courses and programs for their employees. This is definitely something worth speaking to your boss or HR department about, because there is a good chance your employer will seize the opportunity to support you in improving your skills as a member of their team.
2. Get your tech squared away
The online entrepreneurship courses featured in this guide do not require any fancy software or programs. You can engage with all the course materials through your web browser. Your computer will need to be able to support streaming video, so you’ll want to make sure you have a fast, reliable wifi connection and at minimum, an i5-level processor and 8 GB of RAM.
3. Use the right study resources
Many courses are geared towards beginners, so they offer great materials for laying a solid foundation in entrepreneurship fundamentals. Nonetheless, it’s always beneficial to supplement course materials with outside resources. A few good places to start: Seth Godin’s blog, Tim Ferriss’s book The Four-Hour Workweek, and the podcast Startup.
Frequently Asked Questions About Online Entrepreneurship Courses
What jobs can you get after completing an online entrepreneurship course
People who are interested in online entrepreneurship courses typically want to break the standard mold and become their own boss. The earning potential of entrepreneurs is unlimited, as Amazon and Tesla demonstrate. However, statistically speaking, the vast majority of startup companies fail. This means that your potential income as an entrepreneur is anywhere from $0 to thousands of dollars. Most of these courses are designed to provide you with the tools to launch your own business, but the skills of entrepreneurship are transferable to nearly any industry.
Are there free online entrepreneurship courses?
There are plenty of free entrepreneurship courses available online, some of which are featured in this guide. One thing to bear in mind is that many platforms offer an “audit” version of their courses for free, but require you to pay a one-time or monthly fee if you wish to benefit from all the features of the course, such as instructor feedback, unlimited access to course materials, and a verified certificate of completion.
How long is the average online entrepreneurship course?
Online entrepreneurship courses can be as short as a few hours and as long as 6 or 8 months. Most courses run for approximately 1 to 2 months, with 2 to 3 hours of work per week.
Are entrepreneurship courses worth it?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Whether an entrepreneurship course is worth it to you depends on where you are in the process of starting a business, what time and money you have available to invest in the course, and what you hope to achieve by taking it. The best entrepreneurship courses offer a mix of inspiration, information, networking, case studies, and actionable steps to get your business off the ground. Some even offer a chance to win seed grant funding at the end of the course, which can really help to accelerate your business.
Interested in a degree instead?
Learn more about online degrees, their start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.
