45-905 Funding Early Stage Ventures
6 units, Carnegie Mellon University
Funding Early Stage Ventures is a course intended for students interested in the area of high-risk finance from the entrepreneurial and venture capital perspectives. It is highly recommended that students have taken Lean Entrepreneurship (45-805). The course will be of interest to the student interested in an entrepreneurial career, and who wants to expand his/her understanding of finance as it relates to a small company in its early stages of growth. The course will also be useful for the student interested in venture capital or other forms of high-risk investing. The course intends to build on the concepts introduced in the Entrepreneurship courses 45805 and 45806. The course will extend the concepts to emphasize the financial aspects of entrepreneurship, and particularly the strategy for successfully raising money. The course will be a combination of readings, lectures and case analyses that emphasize each area, with appropriate class visitors. Upon the completion of the course, the student will understand the complexities and nuances involved in creating successful investment transactions for the company, investors and founders. The student will learn to appreciate the "art of the deal" and how deals get done in the real world. The course will begin with an analysis of risk in the entrepreneurial setting, and then will proceed to look at the structure of the venture capital industry. It is important to understand the process and context in which equity investors make decisions and how an entrepreneur can favorably affect that decision process. Throughout the course there will be exposure to the private investor and how capital from that source compares to institutional venture capital. The course will then look at the due diligence process that both the investor and entrepreneur go through, with the use of a real life case that allows the student
Prerequisites: none listed
Offered: Spring 2027, Fall 2026, Spring 2026, Fall 2025
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