The Entrepreneur Bootcamp

Essential skills to launch and grow a business, taught by people who have.
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How to Read Financial Statements (with AI Tutor)

Experience the first finance course that comes with an artificial intelligence tutor to quiz you and answer your questions!

Understand the financial health of any business by learning to read and analyze financial statements. In this course we take you line-by-line through Apple’s actual financial statements and explain every concept with simple terms, examples, animations.

Curriculum

01 Income Statement: Above the Line

Understand the revenue and cost of “ingredients” that go into creating and delivering products to determine how much money is left over to pay for business operations.

02 Income Statement: Below the Line

How much did the company spend running the business? That’s what we’ll discover in this lesson!

03  Income Statement: Simple Analysis

By the end of this lesson, you will understand a company’s operations just by looking at the income statement.

04 Balance Sheet: Overview

How to look at a balance sheet, know where the money comes from, and how it is put to use.

05 Balance Sheet: Liabilities

Understand how much the business owes to other people.

06 Balance Sheet: Shareholders’ Equity

Understand how much money investors have put into the business in exchange for ownership and how much money the company has retained from its own profits to grow the business.

07 Balance Sheet: Assets

Discover how all the capital is being put to use to run the business.

08 Cash Flow Statement

Learn about the different sources of cash flow and why it matters where the cash comes from.

09 Financial Ratios

Now you know how to read financial statements! Congrats! But to unlock their power, you have to put the numbers into context.

How to Build a Business Budget

Follow along as we take you step-by-step through the budget-making process for a local pizza restaurant. Learn the basics of building a detailed business budget in Excel or Google Sheets just like the pros!

Curriculum

01 Introduction

Learn the basics of budgeting, what it is and why it is important.

02 Setting Up The Model

Understand the structure and line items that go into a budget and the importance of selecting the right assumptions that drive the revenue and expense estimates.

03 Top Down: Estimating Revenue

Create assumptions for monthly sales using high level estimates and generate formulas to determine the top line budget.

04 Top Down: Estimating Cost of Goods Sold

Create assumptions for the cost of goods sold using estimated margin percentages and generate formulas to determine the gross profit budget.

05 Top Down: Estimating Operating Expenses

Create assumptions for the operating expenses using estimated percentages of sales and generate formulas to determine the operating income budget.

06 Bottom Up: Estimating Revenue

Estimate monthly sales based on detailed inputs and assumptions about where customers come from, how many there will be, and how much they will spend.

07 Bottom Up: Estimating Cost of Goods Sold

Estimate the monthly gross profit based on detailed assumptions about the costs of producing each type of product and delivering it.

08 Bottom Up: Estimating Operating Expenses

Estimate the operating income by including detailed inputs about the anticipated costs for every overhead expense line item.

09 The Variance Report

Learn how to build a monthly report that compares the actual business performance to the budgeted performance so you can tell if you are on track.

Market Sizing

When making important strategic or product decisions, finding the market size is almost always the first step. Learn what a market size is, the types of decisions it can help inform, and how to calculate it using two different approaches.

Curriculum

01 What is it?

Understand what a market size is and what it is not. Learn about the two components to every market size: geography and product sets.

02 Why Is It Important?

Understand the various business decisions that rely on knowing the size of a market.

03 How Do I Calculate It?

Go step-by-step through the calculation of a market size through an example of the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach.

Building a Startup with Alexi Robichaux​

Have you ever thought about starting a business? Learn how to build a startup from the co-founder and CEO of multi-billion dollar startup, BetterUp. Alexi provides practical steps and insider advice to prepare you for all the challenges you will encounter as a founder.

Curriculum

01 Introduction

Alexi introduces the topics that he will cover in this course, and shares the stories about how and why his entrepreneurship journey started.

02 Always Be Learning

Alexi talks about how he sought learning opportunities and built a network in his early career, and how that led to his initial leap to build a startup.

03 Generating a Startup Idea

Go on the journey with Alexi on building an idea and purpose for your startup.

04 Getting Started

Learn how to hit the first big milestone in building a company – find the product market fit.

05 Building a Team

Learn the importance of building a team that you can learn from and align with.

06 Building a Culture

Setting up the values for your company with intentionality, and building a community and culture that embrace the values is a key to success.

07 Raising Money

Alexi walks you through the journey of raising venture capital for your startup and finding supportive value-add investors at each stage.

08 Selling Your Product

Dive into the sales and marketing strategies, methods of product distribution and measuring scalability.

09 Startup Metrics

Learn what metrics you should focus on at the early stage of the startup journey.

10 Always Be Firing Yourself

As a startup founder, you are always wearing multiple hats. Find the answers on when and how to delegate your job duties.

11 Embrace Your Camino

Alexi shares his mindset and what he has learned about self-improvement and personal growth on his entrepreneurial journey.

Pricing Strategy

Where can you find the answer to all of your pricing questions? Inside your customer’s brain! In this course, entrepreneur, corporate executive and Fortune Midas List venture capitalist, Michael Dearing, gives you the tools you need to understand value based pricing by understanding your customers’ psychology.

Curriculum

01 Pricing Isn’t a Math Problem

Pricing is not about complex math, but a judgment problem seen through the lens of human psychology.

02 The Standard Model and Consumer Psychology

Michael outlines the four pricing tools that leverage the power of psychology, setting them apart from the classical standard pricing model.

03 A New Pricing Model

Learn how Kahneman and Tversky’s two-part brain analysis of decision-making applies to crafting your pricing strategy.

04 Value-Based Prices and Assortments

Play the brain game to build your pricing around “perceived value” and create assortments to capture a larger segment of the demand curve.

05 Pricing Your Product

Learn how a small twist on your pricing could lead to huge differences through a real-life example from eBay.

Mission Statement with Nathan Rosenberg​

Learn how to craft a mission statement that gives your business a purpose, a “North Star” you can always point to. Nathan Rosenberg, a founding member of Insigniam and executive coach to Fortune 500 CEOs, leads a mission statement workshop with three members of the Pareto Labs team so that you can learn how to lead this process with your own team.

Curriculum

01 Introduction

Nathan answers the question, why have a mission statement at all?

02 The Predictable Future

The team begins the process of writing a mission statement. The first step is setting a realistic expectation for what your business will look like in the distant future.

03 The Future You Really Want

Next, consider what you would want the organization to look like in a perfect world.

04 The Four Questions

Answering these four questions will bring clarity and alignment to your team on the core business principles.

05 The Customer’s Viewpoint

Imagine the product from the customer’s perspective to get a better understanding of what value your company provides.

06 Mapping Out The Mission

Nathan leads a group exercise with sticky notes to assemble a cohesive mission statement.

07 Final Thoughts

The team drafts their mission statement and Nathan gives his concluding thoughts on the statement’s significance in running a business.

Compensating Your Employees​

Whether you run a business or manage a team, you will eventually need to decide how much to pay the people you hire. In this course you will learn how to structure your process for setting employee compensation from analyzing the market to establishing pay ranges and choosing the best mix of cash, equity and perks.

 

Curriculum

01 The Four Pieces

Compensation includes much more than salary. Understand the four components of employee compensation that can be mixed and matched to attract top talents.

02 Compensation Philosophy & Culture

Learn the importance of using compensation as a way of reinforcing your company culture and values.

03 Building a Compensation Structure

Build a compensation structure from the ground up using this step-by-step method.

04 Reviewing Compensation Structure

Learn how to evaluate and re-evaluate your compensation structure regularly to ensure that you stay competitive in the market and retain your most valued employees.

Understanding Equity Ownership with Cap Tables​

Learn how companies keep track of shareholder equity using cap tables. In this course we walk you through building a cap table for a startup, editing it for multiple rounds of financing and forecasting potential payout scenarios for all shareholders.

 

Curriculum

01 Introduction

Understand what cap tables are and why they are important.

02 Cap Table Components

Learn cap table basics as we take you on a tour of a standard cap table.

03 Founders’ Round & Initial Employees

Begin building a cap table from scratch with the first step, establishing the founders’ equity.

04 Seed Round & Employee Option Pools

Learn how to edit the cap table when the first round of venture capital is raised.

05 Raising a “Series A” Round

Learn how to edit the cap table when adding a second round of venture capital financing and see how dilution impacts all existing shareholders.

06 Liquidation Analysis and Waterfall

Gain an understanding of the importance of liquidation preferences, which establishes which shareholders get paid out first when a company is sold, and learn how to model different potential payout scenarios for all shareholders.

Customer Acquisition Cost and Lifetime Value​

Every business needs to know how much it costs to acquire new customers and how much profit those customers will generate. In this course we show you how to measure these metrics so that you can make more optimal decisions about how you spend your sales and marketing budget and how you monetize your customers.

Curriculum

01 Introduction

Get an overview of customer acquisition cost (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV) and how they can work together to inform business decisions.

02 Customer Acquisition Cost

Learn the formula to calculate your CAC and how to identify trends over time or by marketing channel.

03 Customer Lifetime Value

Learn the formula to calculate how much money you can expect to make from your customers over time and how the calculation is different based on your revenue model.

04 LTV Demonstrated

Time to practice! Reinforce your knowledge of lifetime value through the example of a lemonade stand.

05 The LTV-CAC Ratio

Put lifetime value and customer acquisition cost together to understand your core business economics and whether you are on a path to sustainable growth.

Raising Capital with Lisa Alderson​

Learn the tried and true playbook of how to raise venture capital for your startup from Lisa Alderson, founder and CEO of Genome Medical, who has raised hundreds of millions for 7 startups over her career.

Curriculum

01 Introduction

Learn what will be covered in the course and get a breakdown on the basics of venture capital and the investment stages.

02 When to Raise Capital

Learn how to identify the right time to start the fundraising process for each stage of investment.

03 Finding Potential Investors

Lisa offers her insight on the advantages and disadvantages of different types of investors and how to get in front of the right ones for you.

04 The Pitch

The pitch is your moment to shine, which is exciting but also stressful. Who do you bring? How long should it be? What information is typically included? Don’t worry, Lisa has the answers.

05 The Process

When you start the process of raising capital, you’re signing up for months of working and waiting. Lisa walks you through each step.

06 Selecting Investors

Learn how to qualify an investor in a simple way.

07 Diligence

Learn how to prepare for this stage of the process where investors will dig deep into the details of your business.

08 Valuation and Key Terms

Valuation is not the only factor to consider. Understand the other important terms in venture capital deals.

09 You Can Do It!

Stay resilient. Be strategic. Do your homework. Lisa leaves you with some parting words of inspiration.
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What Our Students Are Saying

“I absolutely love this training and I am learning so much! I would have paid 10X the price.”

– RICK L, FOUNDER

“I’ve been in business for years and wish I had this resource sooner.”

– BURKE M, CEO

“As an adult running a business, I cannot afford the time for night classes or to go back to college. This is the perfect solution to sharpen my skills on my own time. “

– ROB G, BUSINESS OWNER

“They break down what can seem like intimidating subject matter into approachable and relatable lessons.”

– JENNIFER C, INVESTMENT MANAGER

“Amazing! They explain everything so simply that is was actually enjoyable to listen to and learn from!”

– ADAM W, CRO

“Love this course! The content is useful, easy to understand and entertaining. Wish I could have gone through my MBA this way.”

– CALEB C, BUSINESS OWNER

What You Get 

  • Entertainment. Fun courses that feel like watching a TV show
  • Q&A chat. Our Ai teaching assistant will quiz you and answer your specific questions
  • Anytime, Anywhere. Watch on your own time and as many times as you want.
  • Retain the info. Quizzes and cheat sheets to reinforce what you learn

Meet Your Instructors

Elaine Paul

CFO, Lyft
CFO, Hulu

Nick Van Dyk

Chief Strategy Officer, Nexon
SVP, The Walt Disney Co.

Alexi Robichaux

CEO/Cofounder, BetterUp

Nic Barnhart

Cofounder/CEO, Pareto Labs
Finance/Analytics, ZipRecruiter

Tommy Moreno

CEO, AMI Entertainment
Strategic Planning, Disney

Matt Kuta

President, Voyager Space Hldg
Private Equity, Goldman Sachs

Sean Griffin

Consultant, BCG
Strategy, The Walt Disney Co.

Nihaar Sinha

Strategy & Analysis, Netflix
Investment Banking

Nathan Rosenberg

Founding Partner, Insigniam
Executive Coaching Pioneer

Lisa Alderson

Founder & CEO,
Genome Medical