Financial Intelligence: How to value your startup and raise capital?

Financial intelligence is essential to attract investors or business leaders to support new ventures. This module will help participants understand how to identify funding opportunities for their business, project, or startup. Based on a fundamental knowledge about financial statements and metrics, participants will learn how to analyse them and explore how financial projections can be used to demonstrate the growth potential to investors. The module will briefly touch on financing options including crowdfunding and cover various valuation methods such as discounted cash flow (DCF). It will lead to a discussion about appropriate valuation of a business or project.

PhDs and Postdocs across the Helmholtz Association. This module may also be of interest for Helmholtz transfer and talent management offices (e.g. TTOs, Career Development Center and Graduate Schools), or Spin-off teams who are already pursuing a business idea.

Participants will gain an essential understanding of the sources of capital, understand the time horizon of venture investments, and learn how to weight some typical challenges and key risks in fundraising. Participants will be engaged in hands-on exercises to apply their financial intelligence.