75310 - New Venture Financing Lab

Learning outcomes

The course is designed to provide a practical introduction to understand how new ventures are managed and developed, focusing on the opportunities and challenges businesses are faced with beyond their start-up stage. At the end of the course the student will be able to: - implement simulation models, financial statements and cash flow forecasting; - understand the indexes for the evaluation of a project.

Course contents

• Business Plan, strategic planning tool
• Logical scheme of construction of a forecast plan
• Sales forecast
• Investment plan
• Running costs and break-even point
• Financial needs and sources of coverage
• Forecasting schemes (income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement)
• Sensitivity analysis, scenario analysis and simulation models

Readings/Bibliography

Material made by the teacher

Teaching methods

The course includes different teaching and learning methodologies:

• Frontal lectures
• Flipped classroom
• Case studies
• Exercises
• Group assignment

Effective teaching during this course requires attending students’ active participation during the classes and requiring practical activities to be carried out partially in the classroom, partially outside the classroom (e.g., group assignment). For all the activities, students can benefit of the teacher’s.

For group work, it is necessary to maintain the same groups created within course 23716 - BUSINESS PLAN, Prof. Bolzani.

Assessment methods

The assessment methods are different for attending and non-attending students.

NB: the assessment methods described on this page are to be considered provisional (August 2021) as they may undergo changes, also based on the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and related teaching management regulations of the University of Bologna. Students will receive details of the definitive learning assessment procedures during the first lesson of the course.

ATTENDING STUDENTS

In line with the objectives of the course, different assessment methods are used to evaluate students' achievement of different skills:

- Group work: student groups will develop a business plan during the course (up to 15 points);
- Group presentation: a presentation of the business plan will be made at the end of the course and presented by the group during a "pitch competition" (the students present at the competition will vote for the three best teams, which they will receive will receive 0.5 - 1 - 1.5 points);
- Individual participation in group work: each student will deliver an individual diary (based on an electronic model provided by the teacher) at the end of the course. The diary includes the following elements: an account of group meetings and activities, detailing how the work was organized and distributed among the members; the individual and motivated evaluation of the contribution given by each student to the group work. This individual diary allows for a peer review of the contribution made by each individual student to group work. Each student will receive an individual final vote of participation (up to 1 point) based on the average of the evaluations of the group members. Students who have proven health or personal reasons (e.g. continuous or recurrent illness, as evidenced by medical certificates; or travel abroad, as evidenced by travel documents) should only be assessed on the basis of their actual participation in the job group. Each student in the group must receive a reasoned assessment and it is not possible to assign the same grade to each member of the group.
- Individual written test: a written test based on questions on the teaching materials will be carried out at the end of the course (up to 14 points).

Date / place of the exams and the list of participants are managed through Almaesami.


NON ATTENDING STUDENTS
Individual exam: written test with questions and exercises on teaching materials (up to 30 points);

Date / place of the exams and the list of participants are managed through Almaesami.

For both attending and non-attending students, the assessment will be carried out considering the extent of the preparation with respect to the topics covered during the course. Students will pass the exam according to the following levels:

Preparation on a very limited number of topics covered in the course and analytical skills that emerge only with the help of the teacher (18-19);
Preparation on a limited number of topics covered in the course and ability to autonomous analysis only on purely executive matters (20-24);
Preparation on a large number of topics covered in the course, ability to make independent choices of critical analysis (25-29);
Substantially exhaustive preparation on the topics covered in the course, ability to make autonomous choices of critical analysis and connection (30-30L).

Teaching tools

• Lecture notes by the teacher
• Slides of the lessons
• Spreadsheets

Office hours

See the website of Francesca Liverani