Self-Paced Online Course
Finance & Accounting
The financial statements, cap tables, and valuation tools every founder needs to read their numbers — and steer by them — from day one.
Subscribe to Start →About This Course
Finance and accounting, through a founder's lens
This course presents finance and accounting with a deliberate emphasis on the entrepreneur and the high-tech startup venture. You'll work through the core building blocks — finance and accounting principles, the profit & loss / income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement — and learn how each one fits together to tell the story of a company's financial health.
From there the course turns to the tools founders rely on most: the startup capitalization table, discounted cash flow and the time value of money, business and patent valuation, cost accounting, financial ratios, and the bookkeeping, banking, and tax practices that keep a young company on solid ground. You'll also see how modern business accounting software handles much of this, day to day, for a small company.
A certificate of completion is awarded when you successfully complete the course.
Learning Objectives & Outcomes
What you'll be able to do
- ✓Explain the essential principles of accounting and bookkeeping.
- ✓Build and read the three core financial statements — the profit & loss / income statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement — and understand how they connect.
- ✓Structure a capitalization (share ownership) table for a venture-capital-backed, high-tech startup venture.
- ✓Apply discounted cash flow and the time value of money to weigh cash today against cash in the future.
- ✓Use cost accounting to understand what a product or service truly costs to deliver.
- ✓Calculate and interpret key financial ratios to gauge a company's health, profitability, and efficiency.
- ✓Keep accurate books through sound double-entry bookkeeping practices.
- ✓Address the finance and accounting challenges specific to startup ventures, from burn rate to runway.
- ✓Approach business valuation and patent valuation with a grounded, numbers-based method.
- ✓Appreciate how modern business accounting software operates and can be used by a small company.
- ✓Navigate the essentials of business banking and the tax obligations a startup faces.
Course Sections
Thirteen sections, in sequence
- 01Finance & Accounting Essentials
- 02The Profit & Loss / Income Statement
- 03The Balance Sheet
- 04The Cash Flow Statement
- 05Discounted Cash Flow & The Time Value of Money
- 06Cost Accounting
- 07Finance & Accounting for Startup Ventures
- 08Financial Ratios
- 09Bookkeeping
- 10Capitalization Table
- 11Business Accounting Software
- 12Banking
- 13Taxes
Goes Well With
Where the numbers lead next
Finance & Accounting gives you the language of the books. These SVBS courses put that language to work — raising capital, pricing the company, and steering the deals that follow:
Sherpa · Your AI Startup Guide
Take the journey for real, with Sherpa
Knowing your numbers — runway, burn rate, cap table, valuation — is how you take your bearings on the climb. Sherpa turns what you learn here into your route. As your AI guide, Sherpa helps you target your destination, plot your milestones, and track your momentum stage by stage, drawing on the same "Zero to IPO" methodology to keep you climbing toward your summit.
Sherpa is included with the Entrepreneur subscription ($50/month), which adds startup guidance and the Milestone Progress tracker on top of the full course library.
Get Sherpa →Ready When You Are
Start the Finance & Accounting course today
Self-paced, 14 study hours, included with your SVBS subscription alongside the full course library and Prof, your AI course tutor — and you earn a certificate of completion when you finish.
Subscribe Now →Certificate of completion included · Cancel anytime · Instant access