Entrepreneurship
Finance your venture
When you need the right capital before the cash runs out, read the financing need off the business model; choose among angels, venture capital and strategic investors, master the valuation and cap table arithmetic, and negotiate the convertible structures.
Your learning route
The program order
Complete the programs in order to finish the route. Each one brings short lessons, applied practice and a realistic business case together.
Plus and Pro members can create a verifiable Stratify certificate when the route is complete.
- Program 01
Understanding the Need for Financing
Foundational: you learn to read how much outside capital a business needs from its business model. By the end of this program you can work the three determinants of financing need, read a maximum requirement off a cumulative cash flow trough, weigh the limits of bootstrapping, and compute why a lender and an equity investor choose different projects.
- A business is a cash engine
- Asset intensity and pace of growth
- Bootstrapping
Apply it: Applied: Kelmarsh Kitchen
5 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 02
Investor Types and the Financing Map
Intermediate: you learn which investor fits which venture. By the end of this program you can tell angels, venture capital and strategic investors apart by their resources and incentives, place a venture on the capital-and-novelty map, anticipate the financing consequences of ordinary business decisions, and pick the right source for a venture's stage in its life cycle.
- Angels and venture capital
- Strategic investors and the financing map
- Five financing consequences of business decisions
Apply it: Applied: Ashendon Biogas
5 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 03
Valuation, Dilution and the Cap Table
Intermediate: you learn the arithmetic of startup valuation. By the end of this program you can compute pre-money and post-money valuations, build a multi-round cap table and follow the dilution through it, measure what the timing of an option pool costs the founders, and run the investor's method of working backward from a target return.
- The economics of a venture portfolio
- Pre-money, post-money and a full cap table
- Timing the option pool
Apply it: Applied: Verrall Analytics
5 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 04
Convertible Structures and the Negotiation
Advanced: you learn the fine structure of investment instruments and how a round is negotiated. By the end of this program you can compute what convertible preferred stock returns across three exit zones, work out who a discount and a cap protect in a note or SAFE, read a term sheet along valuation, control and risk, and connect the whole financing shelf to your round strategy.
- Convertible preferred stock
- Notes, SAFEs and conversion caps
- Term sheets and tactical rules
Apply it: Applied: Rockbourne Robotics
5 lessons · ≈3 hours