BCC Master's Entrepreneurship Course

We've spent three editions taking multidisciplinary professionals from "I have an idea" to a venture pitched to a professional jury

Client: Basque Culinary Center — Master in Gastronomic Sciences (MCG)
Sector: Higher Education
Service: Education
Location: Donostia / San Sebastián, Spain · Year: 2023–2026 (three editions)

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Result: Three editions of an integrated entrepreneurship programme. Each cohort moves through six classes that shape a venture concept, a structured selection where peers vote the strongest projects forward, and a two-week Bootcamp where the chosen teams validate in the market, build prototypes, and pitch to a professional jury on Pitch Day. Idea to investor-ready venture, in a single arc.

The Master in Gastronomic Sciences at Basque Culinary Center brings together chefs, scientists, designers, sommeliers, and food strategists from over 20 countries. Most arrive with a hunch — an ingredient they want to commercialise, a service model they want to test, a category they think is broken. The challenge BCC handed us was to turn that raw multidisciplinary energy into actual ventures the cohort could carry into the world.

We move from a six-week course to teach frameworks and students apply them theoretically. Followed by a two-week bootcamp where students move a real venture from "I have an idea" to "I've validated this in the market, built a prototype, and pitched it to people who could fund it."

The Challenge

How might we take culinary professionals from a hunch to a market-validated venture pitched to a professional jury — across a single integrated programme?

How we tackled it

The programme is one continuous arc with two distinct phases. Six classes shape the concept and two weeks of Bootcamp test it in the real world.

Phase 1 — Six classes that build the venture concept

The first phase is a 30-hour course structured as a strategic arc. Each class answers one core question, and each builds directly on the previous one:

1. Opportunity — "Is there an opportunity worth pursuing?"

2. Landscape — "What forces shape this industry, and what do customers really need?"

3. Your Offer — "How do I differentiate?"

4. Your Model — "How do I deliver and capture value?"

5. Your Numbers — "What are the numbers behind the model?"

6. Your Launch — "How do I sell this to the world?"

Capstone: Video Pitch

The midpoint — Peer voting and team formation

After Phase 1 submission, the cohort watches every pitch and scores each one anonymously on four dimensions: Desirability (would customers want this?), Feasibility (can it be built?), Viability (can it make money?), and Team Appeal (would you want to work on this?). Maximum 20 points per project.

The top four projects advance. Their pitch authors then recruit team members from across the cohort — a deliberate step that teaches founders how to pitch internally, not just externally. By the end of selection week, four small founding teams have formed, each around a real venture concept that's already been peer-validated.

Phase 2 — Two-week Bootcamp: validate, build, pitch

The four teams move into the Bootcamp — a two-week intensive that turns the validated concept into a venture ready to face investors and customers. The arc:

• Market validation — Each team takes their concept into the field. Real customer interviews, real supplier conversations, real pricing tests. The frameworks from Phase 1 become tools they use under live conditions.

• Prototyping — Teams build tangible artefacts of their venture: a product sample, a service prototype, a brand mockup, an MVP financial model.

• Iteration — The Phase 1 frameworks return as diagnostic instruments and the learning compounds.

• Pitch Day — At the end of the two weeks, each team presents to a professional jury — industry experts, founders, and investors invited to evaluate the venture, push back, and where appropriate, open doors.
  

The throughline — what holds both phases together

Three design choices make the programme cohere rather than feel like a course-plus-add-on:

• One framework set, two intensities. The strategic frameworks introduced in Phase 1 are the same tools used to diagnose problems in Phase 2. Bootcamp doesn't introduce new theory — it stress-tests the theory under real conditions.

• Peer infrastructure throughout. Peer feedback in Phase 1 (on the logs), peer voting at the midpoint (which projects advance), peer team formation (who joins whom), peer accountability in Phase 2. The cohort itself is the most important teaching apparatus.

• Outputs designed for life after the Master's. The Value Proposition document, the video pitch, and the Pitch Day deck are real founder artefacts — every team leaves the Master's with materials they can show an investor, a co-founder, or a future hire the next day.

Scope

• 3 editions taught and counting (2023–24, 2024–25, 2025–26)

• ~80 hours of structured course teaching per edition

• + 2 weeks of Bootcamp per edition

• 4 venture concepts per cohort

• 1 Pitch Day with a professional jury per edition
  

Outcome

The programme has become a fixture of the Master in Gastronomic Sciences and a feeder into BCC's broader entrepreneurship ecosystem (Culinary Action and beyond). Each cohort generates 5 venture concepts, of which four cross the threshold from idea to investor-pitched venture inside the same academic term.

The compounding outcome that matters most: graduates now have a vocabulary and a set of artefacts they actually use after the Master's. Founders refer back to the frameworks. The programme is producing not just pitches but a network of practitioner-founders moving the gastronomic sector forward.

Entrepreneurship education doesn't only produce founders. It produces people who understand markets, think in systems, tolerate ambiguity, and build things.

Meet the Team Involved

• Estefania Simon-Sasyk

• Daniel Riveong

• Maddi Murguia (Polo Digital)

Guest Speakers & Mentors - Alumni Panel

• Mariana Reyes, Gastronomic Sciences Research Assistant “Kost Studio”, Copenhagen

• Olesia Avtandilian, intern at “Poseidona”, Barcelona

• Seonghwan Park, Research Intern at the GoeTech Center, Chef, Donostia

• Harsh Pawar, Research Intern at the GoeTech Center, Chef, Donostia

• Paula Sánchez del Pozo, Project, Events and Client Manager @DSTAgE, Madrid

Guests Speakers - Experts

• Blanca del Noval, “Yagi Miso”, Donostia

• Caribay Bolívar, “Caraï Slow Bakery”, Donostia

• Hampus Jakobsson, “Pale Blue Dot”, Stockholm

• Ramkumar Nair, Founder & CEO “SMAQO”, Founder & Inventor - “Mycorena Promyc”, Stockholm

• Analisa Winther, Co-Founder, “Top 50 Farmers”, New York

• Lucia Arenzana Franco, founder “Luk Beer”, Madrid

• Marta Echavarria, founder “EcoDecision · Canopy Bridge”, Quito

• Tassa Agustriana, founder “Thrive Food Consulting”, Bali

• Ana Lobato Font, owner restaurant “Clara” and professor at USFQ Ecuador, Quito

• Claudia Polo, content creator @soulinthekitchen, Madrid

• Jenny Dorsey, founder “Studio ATAO”, Singapore

• Silvia Berciano, PhD, founding team “WiseCode”, Boston

• Raquel Martín, strategy & Business Development Manager, GOe / BCC, Barcelona

Jury Members

• Olga Valls, Senior Advisor, BridgeWhat, Barcelona

• Unai Sardón, Corporate Venturing & Open Innovation EROSKI, Bilbao

• Griffin Halpern, Founder & CEO, “Mucha Drinks, Donostia

• Alexis Forzan, Founder “SIMONA Coffee Club”, Donostia

• Irati Lekue, Entrepreneurship Manager GOe, Donostia

• Valerie Maza, Founder “115 Sagar Ore Ama”, Donostia

• Mario Mimoso, Founder “Sharp & Sour”, Madrid/Amsterdam

• Begoña Medio, founder “El Mostrador Market”, Gijón

• Idoya Fernández, Investigadora y profesora UPNA tecnología de alimentos, Pamplona

• Clément Cantenys, founder of “The Grape People” and “Manuel Vermouth”, Paris

• Bella Bowring, Owner “Gerald's Bar”, Donostia

• María Aguirre Landa, founder “Mai Ona”, Gernika

• Selena Calleri, AI Ambassador at 20 Minuten (TX Group), Zurich

• Sònia Hurtado, founder “Poseidonia”, Barcelona

• Lina Álvarez, owner “Bar Manojo”, Donostia

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