ENTREPRENEURIAL FINANCE

The course contributes to acquire the skills required to fund new entrepreneurial businesses.
Three main educational goals concern classes:
1. deploying the inner characteristics of the Entrepreneurial Finance that make it very different from the standard corporate finance approach, being them: (a) investing in ?financial capital? in corporations mostly profiled by performances strongly related to ?human capital? while less linked to competition in the specific industry; (b) a corporate risk profile strongly related to the innovation processes that support the competitive advantage and the long term economics of the entrepreneurship; (c) the must to adopt financial solutions contingent to the entrepreneurial life cycle being able to change the dimension, the terms and covenant along with the legal and tax profile of the running financial transactions
2. give to course attendants the best practice and tools developed to apply in business practice the above topics: (i) financial planning of affordable corporate expectations and financial analysis of true growing opportunities to invest in, along with a structural analysis of the timing for competence spreading into the corporate organizations; (ii) fixing the capital attraction capacity (as debt or equity capital) of the entrepreneurial project both through intermediaries and financial markets, thus defining the market-to-potential value ratios; (iii) structuring a funding package for the specific entrepreneurial proposal along with its upkeep in time.
3. getting knowledge of the best professional practice that supports the most important transactions of entrepreneurial finance during the corporate life-cycle along with the evidence about the inner financial bias and the main legal and tax profile that can be generated during the transaction evolution.

Students attending this course will acquire a picture of the key topics of the entrepreneurial finance practice compared with the standard corporate finance practice. A special focus is reserved to the differences between acting inside complete financial markets vs. the incomplete ones. This makes the difference between private and public companies as well. Knowledge will concentrate into the contribution of the entrepreneurial competence to the value of the business as compared with the contribution given by specific assets. This makes possible to discover hidden values according to standard financial practices. The assesment of competence value of an entrepreneurial business will be presented and discussed in depth.
The inner practices concerning the design of the financing of a new business or he development of an existing one will be acquired during the course.
Particularly, students will learn how to present a project in order to raise the required funds in terms of equity and debt. They will learn which elements to focus on, during the presentation as compared with the one of the written side documents. Moreover, some technical elements concerning the legal framework of the transaction will be considered in order to maximize the efficiency of the funding process.

Coporate Finance, Business Economics and Management

Five topics will be dealt with the course on a weekly basis.
1.Entrepreneurial Finance: inner financial transaction topics and main difficulties in corporate analysis
2.Valuing the return-to-risk profile through the entrepreneurial life cycle
3.Equity capital solutions to Entrepreneurial Finance
4.Debt capital solutions to Entrepreneurial Finance
5.Tuning Entrepreneurial Finance transactions

Mantovani Guido Max, The Financial Value of Entrepreneurship, Palgrave Editor, New York City, 2017
Leach, J. C., & Melicher, R. W. (2020). Entrepreneurial Finance. Cengage Learning.

The final grade will be usually through written examination. To all course attendants the opportunity to carry on specific weekly assignments will be given in order to increase the final grade. Written examination is made of MCQS and two/three questions to answer in written English, within 60 minutes. Some question might require answering by numerical examples Course attendants will be required to contribute actively to classes and to participate in class quizzes. Their marking will be based on their participation as well. Each attendant is invited to contribute to a workgroup and highlight her/his own contribution. Final marking for each student will be based both on their knowledge at theoretical level and practical level, along with their capability to communicate in a very efficient way their knowledge

Classes are based on a six hours weekly programme for a complete cycle of 30 hours of attending during the five weeks course period. Each week course is dedicated to one of the subjects as highlighted in the contents section
All the classes are based on a very practical approach thus widely using cases and real corporate experience but without offending sound scientific framework. Classes will be thus developed in a typical business-school approach. During each weekly cycle lessons will be intended to
- the former, to give a complete theoretical framework
- the second, to highlight the inner difficulties in practical application and practice
- the latter, to discuss a real case
Classes requires a strong relationship with the attendants that could be encouraged by the joint attendance of classes by guest attendants from real corporation, professional and financial intermediaries. Attendants are thus suggested to read in advance the readings for the specific lessons according to the analytical syllabus that will be available a few days before classes begin.

English

written