MGT 816 — The Private Firm CFO
Accounting and Finance Strategies
This course is about the CFO role at a private, entrepreneurial company. We cover accounting-based financial metrics, financial reporting, and managerial accounting, and we build the accounting system the way a company does: from the start-up phase through to exit.
The course follows the life of the company — from financial infrastructure through capitalization, equity compensation, forecasting, board reporting, revenue recognition, fundraising, and exits. Two cases and two problem sets give you hands-on practice with the material.
What you will take from the course
Public-company finance is well covered elsewhere in the curriculum. The private firm is different: there is no market price, no analyst following, and little mandated disclosure, and the owners — founders, employees, and funds — hold claims with different rights and different incentives. The CFO sits where those claims meet.
By the end of the term you will have built these working documents yourself: a capitalization table constructed from formation through a priced Series A; a driver-based operating forecast, built with AI tools doing the analyst work and you certifying every number; a board memo on equity compensation and its tax consequences; and a critique of a board reporting package.
This week
Week of September 2. First class Wednesday, September 2 — Case 1 (FeedBurner) assigned; memo due Wednesday, September 16 at 1:00 pm.
Coming up: CFO Toolkit Bootcamp Friday, September 4 (required Monday-makeup class). Problem Set 1 goes out Wednesday, September 9 — done in the digital workbench.