Entrepreneurial Finance: Venture Capital

Welcome to the Venture Capital course, where you will learn to evaluate the different sections of the term sheets. My name is Carlos Martínez, I have a Ph.D. in Management from the University of St. Gallen. During my doctoral studies, I delved into access to entrepreneurial financing in contexts with institutional voids, research that I presented at some of the most prestigious academic conferences and doctoral colloquiums held at the University of Tel-Aviv (Israel), Politecnico di Milano ( Italy), University of Halmstad (Sweden) and MIT (USA), and which was also partially published as a chapter of the book “New Frontiers in Entrepreneurial Finance Research,” co-edited by established Professors in the Entrepreneurial Finance literature.

I designed this course for potential entrepreneurs, and university students interested in pursuing a career in Venture capital funds. At the end of this course, you will understand the Venture Capitalists’ investment decision-making process and be able to evaluate the different sections of a term sheet: the valuation, vesting, convertible preferred equity, and anti-dilution provisions.

The course has a practical approach and uses the teaching case method. First, we will review the VC decision making process. Secondly, you will learn the VC valuation model. After that, you will take the role of one of the entrepreneurs and evaluate different scenarios according to the vesting clauses. Then, you will estimate different investment vehicles such as simple and participating convertible preferred stocks under different exit values. Finally, we will illustrate the full ratchet and weighted average anti-dilution provisions. In addition to the video sessions, you will have access to all the Excel files that we will develop in the course.

The ideal students of this course are early-stage entrepreneurs interested in getting funding to scale, and young professionals pursuing careers in early-stage financing. The only requirement is a basic use of spreadsheets.

Feel free to take a look at the course description and I am looking forward to seeing you soon!