The Business Finance Bootcamp

Learn 10x faster with these 6 concise & practical finance courses!

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How to Read Financial Statements

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.

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!

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.

How to Value a Business or Investment

Learn how to determine if an investment in your business will be profitable and use those same concepts to value an entire business.

01 Introduction to Valuation

We introduce you to the basic terminology and concepts of valuation and give you a preview of what you will learn in this course.

02 Return on Investment (ROI)

Learn when to use ROI at work and how to calculate it for any short term project. We walk you through an example of using ROI to determine whether hiring additional staff at a food truck is a good investment.

03 The Building Blocks of Valuation

Understand the fundamentals of valuation as we introduce terms and definitions of key concepts like cash flow, time value of money, and discount rates.

04 Net Present Value (NPV)

Use net present value to determine whether an investment is a “go” or “no-go.” We discuss the components of the NPV formula and teach you how to use this valuation method through a case study: deciding whether or not to purchase a second pizza oven for our food truck.

05 Valuing a Business Using Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)

Learn how to use a discounted cash flow analysis to determine the value of a single business. We take you step-by-step through the calculations to value a food truck business.

06 Valuing an Acquisition Using Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)

Understand the concepts of cost and revenue synergies while calculating the value of an acquisition using the discounted cash flow method. We use the example of acquiring another food truck and combining the businesses.

07 Valuing a Business Using Comparables

Learn a second method investors use to value businesses, comparables analysis. We walk you through an example by valuing a food truck business by basing it on the prices of other similar businesses.

08 Executive Interview: Valuation at Amazon Studios

Sit down with the CFO of Amazon Studios, Elaine Paul, to hear about how valuation concepts are used inside corporations every day to make better decisions.

09 Executive Interview: Disney’s Acquisition of Pixar

Hear directly from Nick Van Dyk, former SVP of Corporate Development at The Walt Disney Company as he tells stories about executing multi-billion dollar M&A deals including Disney’s acquisition of Pixar.

10 Executive Interview: From Goldman Sachs to Buying Space Companies

Learn from Matt Kuta, a former Air Force fighter pilot who worked in investment banking and private equity at Goldman Sachs before starting a holding company that acquires businesses in the space industry.

Build a Valuation Model in Excel

Learn to build a model in excel, step by step, to determine the financial viability of a project or the value of a business.

01 Introduction

We introduce the course and tell you about what you will learn.

02 Build an ROI Model – Return on Investment

Learn to build your first model from scratch! In this lesson you will estimate what your return on investment (ROI) will be for a short term project of selling t-shirts to Pareto Labs customers.

03 Build an NPV Model – Net Present Value

In this lesson you will learn how to build a model for a longer term investment. You will build a model using the net present value method (NPV) to determine whether buying a t-shirt printing press would be a good investment.

04 Build a DCF Model – Discounted Cash Flow

Building on the previous lesson, in this one you will learn how to build a model to evaluate whether it makes sense to invest in a longer term business opportunity. In this case, you will be estimating whether or not Pareto Labs should start a t-shirt business, which means a much larger investment that is measured over a much longer time period.

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.

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.

Building an Operating Model in Excel

Learn how to build a dynamic financial operating model in Excel from scratch just like the investment bankers do it. We make it super simple by taking you step by step through each line using the example of a lemonade stand.

01 Introduction

Understand what a financial operating model is and what attributes make for a good one.

02 Why You Need an Operating Model

Learn why operating models are critical for making more informed business decisions.

03 Revenue and COGS Assumptions

We take you step-by-step through the assumptions section of your model, focusing on the inputs and structure that will drive the revenue and cost of goods sold components of the income statement.

04 The Income Statement Part 1

Begin assembling your income statement by connecting it your revenue and COGS assumptions. Then build out the assumptions that will drive your operating expenses.

05 The Income Statement Part 2

Finalize your income statement by connecting the operating expenses section, identifying capital expenditures and filling out the the depreciation and tax lines.

06 The Balance Sheet

Build a balance sheet and connect it to your assumptions and income statement tabs.

07 The Statement of Cash Flows

Finalize your model by assembling a statement of cash flows to understand how cash is generated and consumed.
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What Our Students Are Saying

“Presentation of the information was very good and easy to follow.”

– CLAYTON J, BELLEVILLE, MI

“You make budgeting so easy!”

– JEN S, DRIPPING SPRINGS, TX

“I really enjoyed how you included Joe’s Pizza, I found it helpful having that as an example. I also found it beneficial that you did step by step explanations in excel and included ways to do keyboard shortcuts.”

– BLEUE S

“I didn’t know how a budget worked, it was always an elephant in the room. But thankfully after going through this course I am pumped to create my first budget!”

– IDRIS B, BUSINESS OWNER

“I think this gave a simple and concise way to build a budget with a template that helps guide and make a good visual presentation.”

– JACQUELINE M, AVP OF FINANCE, HR & OPERATIONS

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