Financing for Startup Businesses

This course will teach you how to manage a startup’s financing strategy, where you will learn how to build capitalization tables (or “cap tables”) in Excel. Cap tables will help you explore different financing strategies for your startup company and determine which financing decisions are best for your entrepreneurial venture. You will also learn about innovations in the digital space that allow new ways to finance entrepreneurial ventures. These include different forms of crowdfunding, and alternative credit scoring mechanisms based on web-based data. This course concludes with a module featuring cutting edge research from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business on the financial technology industry. In this module, you will learn how financial technology companies are disrupting the credit scoring industry by developing new methods for credit scoring using consumers’ digital footprints. In addition, you will explore how financial technology platforms have introduced new, experimental forms of financing, such as crowdfunding

• Manage financing strategy for startup businesses effectively
• Build capitalization tables using Excel
• Analyze various financing strategies and make informed decisions
• Understand digital innovations in startup financing
• Evaluate fintech impact on credit scoring and financing
• Explore new financing forms such as crowdfunding

• Basic familiarity with finance and related terminology
• Readiness for practical exercises or case studies