<aside> 📌 Legend: 📑 case-based class; 🛠️ project-based class

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📑Corporate Finance // Fall 2 & Spring 1 // 3 credits

Corporate Finance examines important issues in finance from the perspective of managers who are responsible for making significant investment and financing decisions. Valuation approaches such as net present value and multiples analysis (adapted to account for taxes, uncertainty, and strategic concerns) are used to analyze how investment and financing decisions interact to affect the value of the firm. The main topics covered are valuation (e.g., discounted cash flows, multiples), capital budgeting (i.e., choosing investment projects), cost of capital (i.e., funding costs), capital structure (i.e., choosing the source of funds), and payout policy (e.g., dividends versus repurchases). These are the bread and butter issues that every manager should understand.

📑Venture Capital & Private Equity // Fall Term 1 // 3 credits

The course addresses not only how venture capitalists provide capital to start-up firms in growing industries, but also how private equity markets provide capital to help established medium-sized firms (often family businesses) grow and restructure. If you are interested in a career in venture capital, this course covers the essentials of the deal including term sheets, option pools, anti-dilution protections, and how liquidation preferences affect the distribution of exit proceeds.

📑Entrepreneurial Finance // Spring Term 2 // 3 credits

The course is designed to introduce students to the challenges and pitfalls of financing new enterprises, beginning with identifying opportunities, moving to marshaling resources to take advantage of these opportunities and executing the business plan, and ending with harvesting the venture’s success. Understanding the stages of startup growth is essential for any startup funder; therefore, this course is essential.

📑Entrepreneurial Strategy // Spring Term 2 // 3 credits

This course provides entrepreneurs with tools and information for evaluating opportunities and developing strategies for starting innovation-based ventures. The course is designed to address the needs of students who hope to pursue startup opportunities in the near future, prepare for entrepreneurial activities at later career stages, lead new ventures in established firms, or pursue careers where the ability to evaluate startups would be helpful (e.g., venture capital, mergers and acquisitions). A deeper understanding and analysis of startup strategy will provide venture funders with critical insight about the risk-return profile of potential investments.

📑Managerial Accounting // Fall 2 & Spring 1 // 3 credits

Managerial Accounting emphasizes the use of accounting information for internal purposes. In this course, you’ll cover the design of management accounting systems for planning and controlling operations and for motivating personnel. This course will help you, the investor, better understand the current financial state and potential opportunities/risks of your portfolio company.

🛠️New Venture Development // Fall Semester and Spring Semester // 3 credits

New Ventures Development is the ideal course for anyone who wants to learn how to build and assess new business models. New Ventures Develop isn’t just for founders. If you want the experience of designing a business model but don’t have your own idea, there will be an opportunity to form teams around ideas sourced from your peers across Duke. There is no better way to understand the startup process than to have experience as an operator, which you can gain through this course. Meets one day per week over the course of the full semester (two terms).