Please if I can leave you with one piece of advice is DO NOT take Professor Nathanson while at UCLA. Whether you're an Econ major or not, DO NOT take this Professor. I've been fortunate to have some really incredible Professors at UCLA, but this man should not be teaching. He has a career in Entrepreneurship, but he should not be teaching. The concepts are not explained at all, his tests are incredibly unfair (though he'll argue with you that they are) and he constantly insults his students when they ask questions that are considered "basic" or "stupid" according to him.

He took a poll at the beginning of this quarter to see what students were in his class. 75 out of 280 students were Econ majors. Professor Nathanson explained that the "majority" of the class was therefore Econ and he would teach more advanced topics and not clarify basic accounting principles because the class was "mostly Econ" despite the majority of the class being humanities and science majors with no Entrepreneurship or Accounting experience.

The midterm was not at all what he prepared us for. I studied for 2 weeks all of the in-depth terms that were in the weekly chapter assessments and the exam contained none of those concepts. The average on the midterm was a 60%, but the Professor argued with those who tried to ask questions by saying that the exam was "completely fair." Professor Nathanson also insulted all the students who needed scratch paper on the test, saying that the math was simple and those who needed scratch paper were clearly unprepared for the class and needed to go back to reviewing simple math.

If you can avoid Professor Nathanson in your time at UCLA, I would plead with you to do so. His class made many of his students insecure about their intelligence, frustrated about their grade, and hopeless with the lack of help and poor lectures. In my time at UCLA, I've never ever left a negative review, nor have I EVER contacted the department on behalf of a Professor. However, this Professor should not be teaching at UCLA.

Lectures are super long, and a couple were incredibly boring, but a lot of them include a guest speaker and those are typically interesting. The class is easier than people say, just do all the homework, it's pretty much completion based, attend the lectures (they're mandatory), and study the textbook and slides.

Overall, this class was okay. I ended with a B+ after getting a C on my midterm and a B+ on the final so I can't complain. My advice to you for this class would be to study the textbook for the final and midterm (not so much on the midterm). There are also a lot of accounting concepts on the exams, so try to memorize those. I had to pay quite a bit for the class, but luckily I was able to get a refund on breakout learning because it glitched out a lot. Class can be time-consuming but manageable. Guest speakers are great. Attendance is important, but I got away with skipping one or two classes or leaving midway (I just got a friend in the class to send me the attendance code). I feel like if I had tried and studied a bit harder, I could have gotten an A, so its definitely possible, but with some work.

Absolutely waste of time of a class and terrible professor. I am truly not exaggerating when I say that this class was completely useless and taught me absolutely nothing of relevance to business or entrepreneurship. There were some financial concepts such as financial statements, return on investment, and accounting but the professor did not teach those well at all, and I only understood these concepts having taken accounting courses in the past such as Mgmt 1A and B.

What added to the frustration was that this class was not only useless, but also extremely, unnecessarily expensive: we were forced to buy a $100 textbook that was completely garbage teaching us facts like "the preferred method of contact for Gen X is email and that the disadvantages of starting your own business is time commitment issues and that your company will cease to exist if you die". We were forced to buy $36 worth of material from this Zoom platform where an AI grades our discussion...$12/case study to hop on a 1 hour Zoom call filled with bugs and the Professor was an ADVISOR to the company. I'm pretty sure that is a conflict of interest, and I know that past year classes have also been used as the "beta testers" for this product and also complained, but the Professor sent out a long email calling out this anonymous reddit poster who posted about the issue "weak and timid". The professor's excuse in the email was that it was to convey the entrepreneurial concept of finding your market's willingness to pay...but that is complete bullshit because he could have made the product free and surveyed the class, or done anything. It just seems like the sleeziest cash grab to me, and I should not feel this way at an institution like UCLA.

This class was truly awful, and every Wednesday I would have to haul ass to listen to 3 hours of completely common sense, zero substance rambling by the professor who read off slides. I was taught nothing, NOTHING of value and the tests were filled with memorization based questions that you will never need in your life such as "In class the professor mentioned the 3 C's of management, what are they?" apparently Commitment, Credibility, and smt else I am not remembering. I only took this class because my class load was tough (taking Econ 104 and a CS upper div) but I'd rather have added a third class that was challenging and tough but intellectually stimulating than wasting my life taking this class that still required me to spend time memorizing absurd and useless details. I feel like the Bruinwalk reviews are somewhat negative, but nothing conveyed the extent of how goddamn awful and useless this class is. I'm also speaking as someone who scored 100% after the curve on the midterm if that adds credibility to my review and shows I am not stating this out of spite because of a bad grade or smt. This is BY FAR the worst class I have ever taken at UCLA, I am appalled that it exists.

Professor Nathanson is literally horrible. As an Econ major I really struggled in his class. He gave no help and was really rude to all of his students. Also all the case studies had typos in it that he just ignored and the TAs continuously changed the syllabus every week so you never knew what you were supposed to do.

The previous comment is very overdramatic, as I am in the class and the quarter hasn’t yet come to an end to put our final grades. While I think the professor could work on clarifying the math involved in the lessons, I don’t think he’s a bad professor at all. He has a lot of hands on experience in entrepreneurship and shows a lot of care and passion for the subject, with great practical advice and guest speakers that give you a glimpse into that world. The midterm was difficult for me, mostly because I didn’t study, but everything on the quiz was covered in the book or his lectures if you look back, so I wouldn’t say anything came out of left field. And a couple weeks after the midterm grades came out, he said if you do better on the final, he wouldn’t count your midterm grade, which I felt was extremely generous. And even if you don’t do well on the exams, there are a bunch of other easy A assignments to balance it out. I’d just warn that absences aren’t accepted in the class, and more than one results in a big grade drop. And if you do miss one, you’d have to do a 3 page summary of what happened in class based of the recording. The math aspects of the course do take time to adjust to, so reaching out to TAs is essential. Grade is divided into Attendance, Participation, (20 question online) Weekly Assessments, midterm, a paper based on an interview with an entrepreneur and the final. Overall good teacher, good TAs, and the concepts aside from the math are simple to understand. He does seem to do what he can to get people higher grades— as shown through his willingness to drop the midterm for higher final scores. So I would highly recommend taking him!

Probably my favorite class I have taken at UCLA and prof Nathanson makes every class super entertaining and truly speaks from experience. Overall great prof.

This class was very interesting! Prof Nathanson is very knowledgeable and an engaging lecturer. The guest speakers were very interesting too. There are quite a few readings and online assignments, but they are very manageable. It seems as though the class did not do very well on the midterm/final. However, if you throughly study the textbook and do the practice problems, it is very easy. The Prof also uses the basic Anderson grade distribution (about 50% As). Easy class overall!

Professor Nathansom is the man. While it's week 10 and I have not yet got my final grade, I can truly say I learned a lot from his course. Prof Nathanson has many businesses of his own and actually practices what he preaches.

Grade breakdown
45 percent of the class is free points based on completion assignments, attendance and participation. The rest of your grade comes from the midterm worth 15 percent, final worth 30 percent and 10 percent for assignment where you have to interview an entrepreneur. The exams are just memorization of concepts.

Very interesting and engaging class, and manageable even for non majors. The professor is super knowledgeable and speaks from experience. I got a really solid understanding of entrepreneurship from this class, would definitely take it again.