OLA BENGTSSON

Overview of Teaching

Teaching at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I will teach electives on entrepreneurial finance, venture capital and private equity. These courses will be taught beginning from the spring semester 2010 to undergraduates and master students. The courses are currently under development but will be similar to those I taught at Cornell.

Teaching at Cornell

At Cornell I taught three MBA electives that cover different dimensions of entrepreneurial finance, venture capital and private equity. They are aimed towards students who wish to start new ventures or join new and growing organizations, and students who wish to work in buyout, venture capital or business development. The courses are designed to be good complements to eachother and the degree of overlap is relatively small. Many of the class topics coincide with my own research interests. The classes are aimed towards 2nd year MBA students who have taken the core courses in finance, accounting and statistics. Students from other colleges and school can take the courses after being approved by me.

Cases in Venture Financing (NBA5570, 3 credits, Fall)

The course is built around a series of real-world cases. The cases are actual business plans that were developed by entrepreneurs and later evaluated and invested in by venture capitalists. In class, we do due diligence of these business plans, i.e. analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the product, marketing plan, management team, etc. We also discuss what venture capitalists do to help the entrepreneurs and to mitigate investment risks that are specific to the financing of early stage companies. Each case is presented by both the entrepreneur who developed the business plan and the venture capitalist who invested in the company. With this class format, this course offers a unique chance for students to meet and interact with professionals who have extensive experience of venture financing. Each case is followed by a dinner where the students can interact more informally with the entrepreneur and venture capitalist. In addition to the cases, the course has a lecture series where I discuss some broader perspectives on the entrepreneurial process and venture capital investment strategies.

Advanced Private Equity (NBA6780, 3 credits, Fall)

This course is an advanced MBA-level finance course in private equity. “Advanced” means that the level and pace of the course assumes that students (i) have core knowledge of primarily finance, but also of accounting, economics and Excel, and (ii) are willing to put in hours outside the classroom on case analyses and homeworks. “Advanced” also means that you will not learn lingo and vague definitions but get a fundamental understanding of how things work in Private Equity transactions. “Finance” means that the course builds on the traditional finance concepts such as risk and return tradeoffs, capital structure, and valuation. “Private Equity” means that the course studies both venture capital investments in risky early stage companies and buyout investments in large mature corporations. The course has two primary goals. The first goal is to teach you how private equity transactions are structured and to give you an understanding of why this is the case. This goal is achieved via lectures, including two guest lectures by Mr. Joseph Bartlett, and cases. The second goal is to strengthen your ability to apply theories and tools of finance to venture capital and buyout transactions. This goal is achieved via lectures, practice problems and homeworks in basic financial modelling. The class also has a secondary goal, which is to further your ability to review empirical evidence that support or refute a claim (for example: “the IPO window in the US is currently closed”).

Entrepreneurship and Private Equity (NBA5640, 1.5 credits, Fall/Spring)

Cotaught with David BenDaniel

Uses Cornell-developed case studies and lectures to address entrepreneurial management in start-up ventures and new-business development in existing companies. Topics include valuation of business, planning, obtaining resources, management of growth, and cashing out. Guest lecturers speak on specialized topics such as corporate and patent law, bankruptcy and work-outs, leveraged buy-outs, and valuations of businesses. Students team up to write and present business plans. The course attempts to integrate marketing, finance, operations, and human-resource topics in the context of high-growth business ventures.

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