ย Legal & finance 101

- How to calculate a return on investment
- The present value of future cash flows
- The time value of money
- Compounding interest
- Corporate entities
- Piercing the corporate veil
Accounting

Building a company

- Key business metrics
- Price: why lower isn’t always better
- Projections, budgeting and forecasting
- Scenarios
- Budgeting in a small, early-stage company
- Budgeting in a growing company
- Budgeting in a large company
- Forecasting
Economics & finance

- Risk and return
- Diversification
- Hedging
- Currency risk in a business
- Purchasing power parity
- Opportunity costs
- Sunk costs
- Off balance sheet liabilities
- Enterprise value and market value
- Bookings vs revenues vs collections
- Commission plans
Operations

Employee equity

- Employee equity
- Dilution
- Appreciation
- Options
- The liquidation overhang
- The option strike price
- Restricted stock and RSUs
- Vesting
- How much?
Mergers & acquisitions

M&A case studies

M&A issues

- The integration plan
- The stay package
- Governmental approvals
- Breakup fees
- Reps, warranties, indemnities, and escrows
- Timing
- Consideration
- Price
Operations, finance, etc.

- What a management team does
- MBA Tuesday
- 360 reviews
- Margins
- Margins (continued)
- LTV > CPA
- Ordinary income vs capital gains
- Competition โ the pros and cons
- Sizing option pools in connection with financing
Financing options

- Financing options for small tech companies
- Financing options for startups
- Friends and family
- Contests/prizes/accelerator programs
- Government grants
- Customers
- Vendor financing
- Convertible debt
- Preferred stock
- Venture debt
- Capital equipment loans and leases
- Bridge loans
- Working capital financing
- Revenue based financing
Venture investing

- Pricing a follow-on venture investment
- Determining valuation multiples
- EBITDA
- Cap tables
- Liquidation analysis
- Liquidation analysis (continued)
Operations, finance, etc. II

- VP finance vs CFO
- VP engineering vs CTO
- Business arcanery
- Business arcanery: going concern
- Sustainability
- Burn rate
- Burn rates: how much?
- How much to burn while building product
The management team

- Scaling the management team
- While building product
- While building usage
- While building the business
- Guest post from Matt Blumberg
- Guest post from JLM
- Guest post from Phil Sugar
- Guest post from Joel Spolsky
- Guest post by Jerry Colonna
The board of directors

- The board of directors
- Roles and responsibilities
- Selecting, electing, and evolving
- The board chair
- Board chemistry
- Board meetings
- Board committees
- Guest post from Scott Kurnit
- Guest post from Matt Blumberg