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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Startup Valuation Methods by Duke University

4.4
stars
679 ratings

About the Course

How do different types of investors think about an investment opportunity? What kind of securities and contracts do they offer? How should a company decide what is a "good deal"? This course is designed to introduce you to the challenges and pitfalls of financing new enterprises. You will learn the basic tools for valuating companies, including using discounted cashflow analysis in Excel and understanding how to apply this model to your entrepreneurial venture. You will then learn how valuation works with different types of securities that investors use to finance startups, from bank loans to venture capital to angel investing....

Top reviews

CK

Apr 30, 2020

The best ever online course one could find. It is worth every single minute spent. Thank you so much for offering this course. And really so happy to complete this course. Much love to the professor.

NB

Mar 2, 2021

Learned lots of new valuation techniques, it was well crafted and smoothly presented by the professors. The tests were also in line with the course and very helpful in understanding the concepts.

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176 - 200 of 201 Reviews for Startup Valuation Methods

By Sergio L B

Jul 16, 2020

Curso muito interessante e bastante amplo.

By Satya V T

Aug 5, 2020

VC method could have been better

By Parth B S

May 8, 2020

Though tough, made it done.

By Renan R F A

Apr 28, 2021

Very good, indeed!

By Anurag J

May 9, 2020

Excellent course

By Carl D

Nov 28, 2022

Really good!

By Enrico T

Oct 11, 2021

It is one thing to lecture and another thing to teach. David's lectures left a number of gaps meaning I had to struggles to connect up all the pieces of information. The content covered overall was great and the lighting and self tan on the lecturers was very nice. But the assessments were poorly structured and frustratingly so. For example, one four-question assessment asked to calculate terminal value when they only taught this in the subsequent module. So I went crazy trying to figure out where I missed this in the lectures and ultimately failed the test (need 80% to pass). But you can retake the test right? Yes, after you get locked out for precisely 24hr. And once you try tests a second time and pass, only your initial fail scores are tallied up by the end of the course to count towards your final score. Anyway, I got through it but perhaps the course by Yonsei University would be better.

By Marc B E

Jan 28, 2021

Great course, well delivered. I would have preferred more reading material to fill the blanks between practical and theoretical. That said, I wouldn't say the course was strictly academic, it was in fact very practical. Just would have liked some real life challenges to be included, and not just the simplest ones. Anyone who takes this course will come out of it having a string understanding of VC. And if those ones are willing to do extra work around the content, you'll benefit greatly. I would have liked to see more information on unforeseen failures on a fundamentals level.

By Alberto C

Mar 26, 2024

As half of the reviews state, the first two weeks are very good, while the third and fourth weeks are weak. Personal suggestions for people approaching the topic: if your knowledge of finance is zero, I would consider another course because this one does not give you the basic information to understand the topic properly.

By Julie C

Nov 17, 2023

Very interesting course, especially the two first weeks, but in Week 3 we missed a lot of information (correction of exercise, formulas incorrect, formulas missing from the course to take the quizzes...)

By Juan P G

Aug 9, 2021

Overall good, although the first two weeks are a bit too basic in content. Later on, the course gets better. It could improve by giving examples of solutions to the proposed exercises.

By Divya D

May 10, 2021

The course was overall interesting. VC investor model needs to be more elaborate with supporting excel sheets for better understanding of complex calculations.

By Liliana T

Oct 25, 2021

Unfortunately, the second professor did not teach the mathematical formulas and I believe there were some errors in the questions on the week 3 test.

By Carlos d J R R

Mar 18, 2021

The 1st part of the course it's very clear, the week 3 and week 4 the content it's good but there's no relation with some questions in the quiz.

By Dan C

Feb 22, 2024

Weeks 3-4 were difficult to follow along. No solutions were provided for the homework. More work in excel would have been preferred.

By Jordi V P

Apr 29, 2022

the explanatory videos are Ok but the tests contain mistakes and some extra exercesises with more guidance would be appreciated.

By Tarun B

Jun 21, 2020

Concepts are covered in a smooth flow but practical examples are too less to understand typical calculations of some parts.

By rezvan a

Mar 11, 2020

Even though It was helpful material after all, however I was expecting it to be more advanced that it was

By Paulo E

May 26, 2022

Total lack of feedback about exercises. Also, ome topics (option pools) were poorley explained.

By Yendry C B

Aug 24, 2022

Me parece muy bueno, sin embargo considero que deberian dar mas explicación en los calculos

By Gregory Z

Jul 10, 2020

there is not enough examples and practice

By Paul W

Mar 20, 2022

This was my first Coursera course, and unfortunately, I am a little disappointed. As many others mentioned, weeks 1 and 2 by Manuel Adelino were presented well. However, the execution of the course was poorly done. Some of the quizzes contained questions that weren't answered until later in the course, if at all, and the later sections covered by David Robinson were a train wreck. I had to go to external sources to teach myself most of the material in Professor Robinson's lectures. I got the same (or better) value from free Investopedia articles. Based on comments in the class discussion forums, the issues that I and others mentioned have existed for years, so it's clear no one is bothering to fix these mistakes. I have no desire to finish this specialization. While there may be other fantastic courses taught by other universities, I don't think I'll take another Duke course. I'd highly recommend skipping this one.

By nathasya k

Mar 17, 2022

the professors do not give any feedback or assignment answers. students are required to self-learn and self-taught during the whole course. some formulas are even incorrect and we have to find out on our own.

By Edward W

May 9, 2022

I would have given this course 4 or 5 stars but week 3's content, instruction, examples, and quiz problems were sub-par.