Taylor Davidson

Today more than ever, it's important to know how fundraising structures impact ownership and dilution as valuations change, but the terminology and structures can often be confusing and opaque even to people experienced in finance. Even if you are working with experienced investors, lawyers, and founders, knowing the fundamentals of how venture financing structures work can save you from costly misunderstandings and errors. I've helped over 35,000 founders, venture capitalists, and lawyers from around the world with tools and classes to understand how equity, convertible notes, SAFEs, and tokens impact their cap tables, dilution, and ownership. This six session workshop provides a comprehensive education on equity fundraises, convertible financing instruments (e.g. convertible notes and SAFEs), options, warrants, exit waterfalls. This is a hybrid course, with options on how you want to participate in the course: - Self-paced with the pre-recorded videos of each session along with the bite-sized projects that accompany each session. All materials are immediately available so you can start learning today.- Live sessions with Taylor and the rest of the cohort for going over the material, Q&amp;A, and exercises to dive deeper into that week's material.- Or do both! Regardless of how you choose to participate, you'll leave the sessions with access to a spreadsheet resource library covering numerous examples of cap table calculations, slides and videos for you to review whenever you need, and a solid understanding of the fundamentals. No advanced preparation is required, basic knowledge of venture capital is recommended.

Master cap tables and exit waterfalls

We'll dive into details on the terminologies and structure of capitalization tables, including how to calculate share prices, use valuations, model equity fundraising rounds, issue new shares to investors, and calculate ownership percentages.

How to model equity fundraises

We will cover how to issue convertible securities (SAFEs, convertible notes, and warrants), and how to convert them into shares, calculating share prices, valuations, and ownership percentages.

How to model convertibles (SAFEs and convertible notes)

We will cover how to model option pools, from creating, refreshing, and tracking the issuance of options through rounds.

How to model option pools

We will learn how to create an exit waterfall to model the distribution of proceeds to shareholders, detailing how to handle liquidity preferences, converting preferred shares to common shares, and handle the flow of proceeds to multiple classes of shareholders.

How to model exit waterfalls

Continuing on from the first class on exit waterfalls, we'll dive into how to use the waterfall to understand investor returns across share classes, incentives around the terms and structures around liquidity distributions,&nbsp;and more advanced topics around waterfalls and investor return modeling.

How to model investor returns

The case study is optional, but a great opportunity to apply your learnings from the class. You can work on the case along with the classes, ask questions in the community, and we will cover it in the course wrap-up and Q&amp;A.

Case study

6 sessions + downloadable tools and instructional videos

1 module per week with slides, spreadsheet, background readings. Watch the 1.5 hour recording of a class on the material, or join each module's live class for Q&amp;A and interaction.

Self-paced lessons

Practical exercises for you to apply what you learn in class. <a href="https://maven.com/p/0f7c03" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Download an example of the exercises here</a>. The time commitment is manageable for busy professionals, with actionable takeaways to use in your business.

Bite-sized projects

Live session with Taylor and the rest of the cohort for going over the material, Q&amp;A, and exercises to dive deeper into that week's material. Tuesdays at 12 PM Eastern time

Live sessions

Course schedule

Venture Capital analysts and associates, lawyers and accountants looking to learn how to build cap table models

Founders, CFOs, Controllers, VPs of Finance, and finance executives raising capital who are creating and managing cap tables

Anyone looking to get into venture capital or startups and understand how cap tables work.

Who this course is for

Learn how to read, understand, and create cap tables and exit waterfalls

Understand the math and structures necessary to create fundraising rounds, convert notes and SAFEs, calculate proratas, and more.

Build a cap table from scratch

Understand the terminologies and math involved in showing how proceeds from an exit are distributed to the owners of a business, and be able to build your own.

Build an exit waterfall from scratch

Be able to take a list of shareholders, rounds, share prices, and more from any cap table management software and create your own custom scenario analyses around future fundraising rounds or exits.

Create scenario analyses around fundraising events

Understand how to calculate dilution and ownership over time to understand the impact of different fundraising structures (equity, notes, SAFEs). We will cover the common legal structures used in fundraising and how to understand the terms and the math they imply.

Understand how fundraising rounds impact cap tables

Hybrid masterclass for founders, investors, and lawyers to learn the structures and math for building cap tables and exit waterfalls.

Founder and Managing Director, Foresight

Cohort 13

Starting a fund, syndicate, or getting started with angel investing? It's important to understand how to budget for investments and forecast returns for your limited partners. Come for the education, leave with a model you can use. The three sessions&nbsp;can be joined live or watched on your own time. All students will receive the slides, the example spreadsheet, the case study, and the recording of the full workshop, and all of the materials can be viewed on your own time.

Understand how the economics of venture funds work

Using our knowledge of modeling portfolio construction, building out a schedule of capital calls, investments, proceeds, and distributions to limited partners and general partners

How to model fund flows

We will start by building cap tables to understand discrete investment scenarios, and use that to understand the different approaches to modeling portfolio construction.

How to model portfolio construction

Wrapping up our model, we will learn how to calculate key fund performance metrics and use them to create scenarios and communicate fund performance.

How to model performance metrics

Optional session for reviewing content from the class, reviewing the case study, and answering questions not addressed in the previous sessions.

Optional Q&A

4 sessions + downloadable tools and instructional videos

Practical exercises for you to apply what you learn in class, with a case study to practice building a complete model. The time commitment is manageable for busy professionals, with actionable takeaways to use in your business.

Live session with Taylor and the rest of the cohort for going over the material, Q&amp;A, and exercises to dive deeper into that week's material. Thursdays at 12 PM Eastern time

Live Sessions

Course Schedule

Emerging general partners and junior venture capitalists working on a venture capital fund.

Syndicate leads and angel investors wanting to structure their investing tracking and reporting.

Founders or executives looking to understand how the economics of venture funds work.

Key outcomes

How to use assumptions around fund size, management fees, and expenses to create a forecast of called capital, expenses, and invested capital over time.

Model fund capital budgeting and deployment

Cover a few common ways of approaching portfolio construction models and discuss the pros and cons of each, and how to use them in our forecast of investments and proceeds. We will cover simple and complicated ways of forecasting portfolios.

Create a portfolio construction model

Using our forecast of invested capital and our portfolio construction logic, we will cover how to create a forecast of proceeds from investments and a waterfall of distributions, including preferred returns, GP catchups, and carried interest.

How to model proceeds and distributions

Using our forecast of fund cash flows, we will introduce how to calculate unrealized gains and residual values, using our portfolio construction approach to forecast the underlying changes in value in the portfolio not captured in our realized cash flow forecasts.

Present key metrics and key reports

This is a bonus session using prerecorded video, to cover how to model the forecasted revenues and expenses for the management company. If time, will address questions and comments in the session.

Bonus: Model a management company

Hybrid course for angels, syndicate leads, and venture investors to learn how to model venture funds.

Cohort 8

Today more than ever, it's important to know how fundraising structures impact ownership and dilution as valuations change, but the terminology and structures can often be confusing and opaque even to people experienced in finance. Even if you are working with experienced investors, lawyers, and founders, knowing the fundamentals of how venture financing structures work can save you from costly misunderstandings and errors. I've helped over 35,000 founders, venture capitalists, and lawyers from around the world with tools and classes to understand how equity, convertible notes, SAFEs, and tokens impact their cap tables, dilution, and ownership. We'll build a cap table using examples of equity, SAFEs, convertible notes and options and you'll leave with a model you can use. The workshop is two hours long and can be joined live or watched on your own time. All students will receive the slides, the example spreadsheet, the case study, and the recording of the full workshop, and all of the materials can be downloaded for viewing on your own time. The content in this course covers a portion of the material from the comprehensive Cap Table and Exit Waterfall Masterclass, a 4.6 star (out of 5) rated class from the 300+ students that have joined the thirteen cohorts over the last two+ years. No advanced preparation is required, a basic knowledge of venture capital is recommended.

Build a cap table you can use

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Course syllabus

Modeling a cap table from start to finish in two hours, with Q&amp;A, live over Zoom. Immediate access to slides, spreadsheets, background readings, and a class recording.

Tuesday, June 18th

We'll build a model live, and you'll leave with a model you can use and the knowledge to build your own from scratch. Practical exercises for you to apply what you learn in class. <a href="https://maven.com/p/0f7c03" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Download an example of the exercises here</a>.

Bite-sized, practical exercises

Structured to be manageable for busy professionals with actionable takeaways that you can use at work today.

No required homework or prereading

The workshop will be recorded, so you can watch again if you have to miss a section, or just want a refresh on the material.

Join live, watch anytime

Workshop Details

Learn how to read, understand, and create cap tables

Build an example cap table to show you how to calculate the key aspects of cap tables, including price per share, share counts, ownership percentages, and how raising capital dilutes shareholders.

Understand how to calculate share counts, share prices, ownership, and dilution

How common and preferred equity are modeled on cap tables, and why founders and investors care about different share classes.

Model common and preferred equity

Build a cap table showing how to issue SAFEs and convertible notes, how to calculate the number of shares to issue and share prices at conversion in equity financings, and what terms to care about when negotiating these instruments.

Learn how to issue and convert SAFEs and convertible notes

How to create new option pools and expand existing option pools through equity fundraising events, how options dilute existing shareholders, and what to look for when negotiating option pools and valuation.

Learn how to create and expand option pools

Understand how to model typical anti-dilution structures to deal with down rounds

Model down rounds

Understand how to change the parameters for fundraising rounds to see the impact on ownership, dilution, and share value.

Scenario plan fundraising rounds

Gain an introductory knowledge of how the key terms of these financing structures impact shareholder incentives

Understand the hidden incentives behind term sheet structures

2 hour workshop for founders, VCs, and lawyers to build a cap table for a startup, modeling equity, SAFEs, convertible notes, and options.