Funding Entrepreneurial Ventures

Catalog description

So you want to do a startup and you know that you need funding. There are multiple ways to fund a new venture: bootstrapping, economic development, angels, venture capitalists. The question is what are these funders looking for in an early stage investment? What is important to them? How do they decide which companies to invest in and which not? This class looks at funding from the funder's point of view and provides the student with a framework of the investment process: investment criteria, sourcing, selection, due diligence, deal structure, valuation, post investment involvement. Real companies seeking funding are used for the final project in which students will be expected, as investment teams, to make investment decisions and convince their fellow investors (the class) to join them (or not). This is a highly interactive and project class. There will be multiple guest speakers. This course may use third-party course material that is not available for individual purchase from the publisher. If so, the third-party course material will be secured and provided by the Tepper School to students enrolled in the course, and students enrolled in the course will be required to pay to the University the associated additional course materials fee for the third-party course material provided. The amount of the course materials fee is dependent on the University's cost of the particular materials provided, and typically ranges from $13 to $75.