The finance of building a startup
Everything from founder identification and business models to fundraising, forecasting, and pitch decks.
Free and self-paced, open to anyone. No account or sign-in needed; progress saves in this browser.
- Weeks live
- 10
- Practice questions
- 618
- Key terms
- 326
- Est. time
- 24hrs
Practice tools
Curriculum
Weekly Modules
WEEK 1
The Founder Is a Startup’s First Asset
How the founder shapes the financial reality of a startup. Why investors and advisors diagnose the founder before the business; the three dimensions that locate any founder (financial capital, domain experience, and goal orientation); the four resource profiles and eight archetypes; personality, risk perception, social capital, and founder identity as modifiers rather than stereotypes; how coaching priorities shift with stage and market; and two worked diagnoses that turn the matrix into a concrete plan.
WEEK 2
The Venture Economics Framework
How to assess the economic quality of a business opportunity, layer by layer. A practitioner framework for evaluating how ventures create, capture, and sustain value: problem-solution fit and the evidence ladder; revenue-model classification and operating leverage; pricing strategy and sensitivity; channel and go-to-market fit; unit economics (CAC, LTV, payback, churn, burn, runway); market sizing with TAM/SAM/SOM and competitive position; financial viability and default-alive analysis; and the Venture Viability Scorecard that synthesizes all seven layers into a recommendation, with four interactive calculators.
WEEK 3
Financial Statement Analysis for Startups
From unreliable data to actionable intelligence, a diligence-oriented toolkit for separating signal from noise in early-stage financials. Why startup books are unreliable by default; where revenue hides the truth (gross vs. net under ASC 606, bookings vs. billings vs. revenue vs. cash, deferred revenue); cash flow as the survival lens; the indicators that drive valuation (working capital, burn, runway, FCFF, FCFE, P/E, PEG, terminal value); unit economics by business model; vertical, horizontal, peer, and cohort analysis; driver-based forecasting; due-diligence red flags and the data room; capital structure, cap tables, and liquidation waterfalls; and reconciling the founder narrative with financial reality, with five interactive calculators.
WEEK 4
Financial Forecasting for Startups
How to build a forecast you can defend, a driver-based, bottom-up approach that connects operating assumptions to cash, runway, and enterprise value. Why a forecast is a structured hypothesis, not a prediction; compound growth and CAGR; trailing-twelve-months, run-rate, and NTM as credibility checks; building revenue from the drivers (volume × price) rather than the outcome; eleven guidelines for a clean model; the revenue engine (sales-headcount and subscription MRR models, market sizing); cash as the constraint (gross vs. net burn, runway, minimum cash, and the financing need); unit economics (margins, CAC, LTV, payback, churn, NRR); pipeline, conversion, and headcount timing; stress-testing with sensitivity, scenario, rolling-forecast, and variance analysis; and the MARCS framework that unifies the whole workflow, with five interactive calculators.
WEEK 5
Valuation Methods for Startups
The capstone of the valuation sequence, turning the Week 4 forecast into a defensible number across every professional method. Why every valuation answers one question and how the income, market, and cost approaches triangulate; the DCF engine from FCFF and FCFE to enterprise and equity value; building the discount rate with CAPM and WACC (and the circularity problem); terminal value via the Gordon Growth Model and exit multiples; IRR, its hidden reinvestment flaw, and MIRR; stage-adjusted year-by-year discount rates; the market lens of trading comparables and precedent transactions; the VC method and future-dilution math; the cost approach as a floor; how deal terms diverge from headline valuation; probability-weighted scenario value; and triangulating every method into a football-field range, with seven interactive calculators.
WEEK 6
Cap Tables, Dilution, and Deal Terms
A deep dive on the equity itself: who owns what, who gets paid, and how ownership erodes round by round. The cap table as the founder’s financial constitution and why fully diluted is generally the fairest basis for comparison; equity classes and the liquidation stack; the three forms of liquidation preference and how they reshape every exit; SAFEs and convertible notes as the default pre-seed instruments; conversion mechanics and the hidden cost of liquidation-preference overhang; the option pool and the pre-money vs. post-money shuffle; the equity waterfall and how dilution compounds across rounds; and antidilution, term-sheet economics vs. control, vesting, and the 83(b) election, with five interactive calculators.
WEEK 7
The VC Industry and Fund Economics
The other side of the table: how the venture capital business itself works. Why VC is a small, concentrated asset class with winner-take-most firm dynamics; how it differs from private equity buyout; the three legal entities of every fund (the limited partnership, the management company, and the general partner); the 2-and-20 model of fees and carried interest; the four-tier distribution waterfall and American vs. European timing; the fund lifecycle and the J-curve; performance measurement with DPI, RVPI, TVPI, MOIC, and IRR; why returns follow a power law rather than a bell curve; performance persistence; and how to access the asset class and build a career around it, with four interactive calculators.
WEEK 8
Capital Structure
The financing decision: whether a company should raise debt, equity, or a hybrid, and at what cost. Why capital structure is a founder's highest-stakes financial choice; how Modigliani and Miller set the frictionless baseline and then break it with taxes; the tradeoff theory that balances the interest tax shield against distress; the pecking order under asymmetric information; the agency-cost and signaling forces that shape the choice; the weighted average cost of capital and why a startup's cost of equity is dilution; the debt instruments available to startups and the tax-shield caveat; how the capital stack evolves across the lifecycle; when venture debt extends runway and when it becomes a cliff; and the control, signaling, and rich-versus-king dimensions beyond money, with four interactive calculators.
WEEK 9
Pitch Deck Mastery
The capstone, where every prior analysis becomes one slide in a single argument to an investor. How investors actually read a deck (the read-alone and live tests, and the six questions every slide must serve); why the founding team carries the earliest decision and how to build the team slide; the standard slide sequence and the practitioner rules that shape it; the market-size slide and why a bottoms-up build earns trust; the team and traction slides; the financial slides as the analytical centerpiece (unit economics, driver-based projections, and burn and runway); the ask slide as a capital-structure negotiation sized by the milestone framework; and the seven ways founders destroy their own pitches, with four interactive calculators that carry the course's analysis onto the slide.
WEEK 10
Exits, Fundraising, and the Capital Landscape
The week that completes the venture lifecycle. How the money actually comes back (the M&A sale process, IPO mechanics, secondaries, and acquihires), and how each exit runs through the Week 6 waterfall; the fundraising process from deck to wire (target lists, the meeting cascade, the data room, and closing mechanics); financing in adversity (bridge notes, down rounds, pay-to-play, and recapitalizations); employee equity from the employee's side (evaluating an offer, ISO vs. NSO vs. RSU taxation, and the 90-day exercise window); angels, syndicates, and corporate VC; and the capital landscape beyond venture (crowdfunding, grants, accelerators, venture studios, and revenue-based financing).
Optional
Supplementary Modules
MODULE
Appendix: Term-Sheet Negotiation & Deal Dynamics
An optional appendix on how deals are actually struck, not just what the terms mean. The term sheet as a negotiation rather than a form; leverage and BATNA, and why parallel term sheets are a founder's strongest bargaining lever; which two or three terms genuinely move value versus boilerplate; the behavioral traps of dealmaking (anchoring on headline valuation, over-optimizing pre-money while conceding control, and round-momentum social proof); a fully worked clean-price-versus-dirty-terms negotiation run through the Week 6 exit waterfall; and the tactics, reputation, and limits of negotiating leverage in a repeated game.
MODULE
Appendix: Post-Investment Governance & Board Dynamics
An optional appendix on what happens after the money lands: how a venture-backed company is actually governed over the multi-year hold. What changes when you take institutional capital and the fiduciary duties that follow; board composition and how control shifts from founder-majority toward investor influence across rounds; how protective provisions, information rights, and board-approval matters operate in practice; running the board (cadence, the board deck, pre-wiring, and managing dissent); founder-CEO succession in the Rich-versus-King frame and the board's duty to common (In re Trados); and the alignment and misalignment that governance produces across the lifecycle to exit.
How this course works
1. Read one section at a time
Short, focused steps with worked examples and interactive calculators. Move with Continue or the arrow keys.
2. Check yourself as you go
Sections end with a knowledge check that explains every answer, right or wrong. Answers save as you go.
3. Finish with practice
Each chapter wraps up with a practice exam, and the course-wide Final Practice pools every question by topic.
Free and self-paced, open to anyone. Your progress saves automatically in this browser, so no account or sign-in is needed.
Go deeper
Sources & further reading
Everything behind the material: the research the chapters cite, the books worth owning, and the shows worth a commute. Open a shelf to browse.
Your instructor
Devon Coombs, CPA, MBA
Professor at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. This is the same course he teaches on campus, adapted for self-paced online study.
“He provides every resource in the world to help his students, whether that be his own book, the videos he creates with great edits, or his own website, which helps you really drill down the information.”