About this course
A free course for founders who can build a product but never learned how startup money works.
Who it is for
The course is for first-time founders, early employees, and anyone who reads startup news and wants to understand the numbers. It starts from zero. It does not expect you to know finance.
How the facts were checked
Each lesson comes from research notes that cite primary sources: Y Combinator documents, SEC and IRS pages, law-firm guides, and data reports from Carta, PitchBook, and others. A second researcher did a check of each set of notes against independent sources and recalculated every worked example. Each lesson lists its sources at the bottom, and the sources page lists them all.
Market numbers, such as median valuations, change every quarter. Each market number in the course shows the period it describes. Before you use one in a negotiation, look for the newest report.
What it is not
This course is education. It is not legal, tax, or investment advice. Before you sign a financing document, speak to a startup lawyer. Before you make a tax decision, such as an 83(b) election, speak to a tax professional.
Your data
The course has no accounts and no tracking. Your progress, quiz scores, and flashcards stay in the local storage of your browser.