Teaching
I teach the Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation courses to Wharton MBAs and Corporate Finance at Wharton's Executive Education.
Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation
The course covers the finance of technological innovation, with an emphasis on the quantitative methods useful for venture capital investing. This is first and foremost a finance course, so we will not cover the management, strategy, legal, marketing, and other non-financial topics that are also important in VC investing. The primary audience for this course is finance majors interested in careers in venture capital, entrepreneurship, or R&D-intensive companies (e.g., tech, pharma). There are five quizzes and one team project with four deliverables throughout the semester.
Corporate Finance
This course is an in-depth introduction to the foundations of finance with an emphasis on empirical analyses that are vital for corporate managers. We will discuss most of the major financial decisions made by corporate managers both within the firm and in their interactions with investors. Essential in most of these decisions is the process of valuation, which will be emphasized throughout the course. Topics include criteria for making investment decisions, valuation of financial assets and liabilities, relationships between risk and return, capital structure choice, payout policy and risk management.