Changelog

Hi! Quick note today that Build a Cap Table from Scratch is 25% off with the code MAVEN100 for Maven's Top 100 Courses promotion through Sunday, June 9. Check out that course and many more courses from other Maven instructors at The Maven 100 👉

One of the things I'm working on is expanding the prebuilt functionality for anti-dilution into the Cap Table and Exit Waterfall Tool, here's an overview on what is being added to the tool to deal with (a) ownership dilution, and not just value dilution, and (b) issuing new shares, and not just adjusting the conversion ratio:

For a deeper dive into anti-dilution, check out the upcoming lightning lesson on anti-dilution for a free 30 minute workshop on the topic, and for a more comprehensive class on cap tables, check out Build a Cap Table from Scratch, a one session workshop covering how to model equity rounds, SAFEs, convertible notes, and options.

June 11, 12 PM Eastern: Free 30 minute Lightning Lesson hosted by Maven, on how down rounds and anti-dilution protections impact cap tables. Sign up here to join live or watch the replay.

Today I released the relaunch of the Build a Cap Table from Scratch one session workshop covering how to model equity rounds, SAFEs, convertible notes, and options.

I also released the new Build an Exit Waterfall from Scratch one session workshop covering how to build exit waterfalls for liquidity distributions and valuations.

Combined, the classes mimic the material from the Cap Table and Exit Waterfall Masterclass in a shorter, tighter format, for a different learning experience this summer. The two workshops have sessions currently scheduled in June, and are likely to repeat a couple times this summer, while the Masterclass is slated to return in September 2024.

Launched the new How to Model Venture Funds course, with the same content, slides, spreadsheets, and materials as before, now a self-paced only course at 1/3 the previous cost. Take the course on your own pace, schedule a 1:1 with me, and ask questions by email, I'm happy to help.

• Edited Key Metrics, Total Employees, to pull it from the corresponding line on the Forecast sheet

Added a new Simple Venture Valuation sheet to the Venture Valuation Tool to provide an alternative example of doing the math to calculating the returns to an investment.

One of my beliefs about building tools like this is that all analysis involves tradeoffs between complexity and ease of use, and that the fundamental goal of an analyst is to develop the appropriate level of complexity for the depth of insight required to make the decision at hand.

The goal for this sheet is not to be a comprehensive analysis (that would be the Venture Valuation sheet in the tool), or to be the only way to do it, but instead provide an instructional example for how to evaluate the returns to an investment (gross multiple and gross IRR) with an intentionally limited set of data. The method in this sheet is built using a set of tradeoffs that makes sense to me to help with analysis, but will not work for all situations, so treat it as an instructional resource to help you build your own analysis for your specific situation.

Recently I've been working on a variety of website updates aimed at making it easier to find content and support. Here's a quick summary of recent changes:

• Listed Tools for Startups and Tools for Investors, new bundles of existing products to make it easier for people to download multiple tools and templates.
• Listed Token Allocation and Distribution Model, not a new product but a new listing of something that was not surfaced in the products and templates sections.
• Swapped out the technology behind the search functionality, shifting from Algolia to Pagefind, which should result in better search results in a better interface.
• New Blog and Docs pages to make it easier to find content. The new Docs page will be a base for continued documentation improvement.
• Minor reorganizations of content on product pages, additional download information, and minor tweaks to styling across the website.

• Adjusted methodology for estimating forecasted unrealized gains and losses. I could write an essay on this, but in short, this is a best estimate using the gross IRR and accounting for value of invested capital and exits. The change was to shift from a method that used the overall net IRR to estimate the annual changes in unrealized gains and losses (calculating fair market value, FMV) to a method that uses the modeled rounds on the portfolio construction sheet. Please note this model does not have sufficient tracking of intermediate changes in value of the portfolio to calculate this accurately, so this is a best estimate given the information the model has, and you may alter the logic behind this if you want to change the estimate.

For a more specific method of doing this, that requires the more advanced portfolio construction method used in the Venture Investor Model.

• Upgrading how the waterfall handles warrants. Edited the Exit Waterfall and Exit Waterfall, Extended sheets for a beta implementation of cashless warrants exercise. Select the option for cashless exercise in the pre-distribution cap table setup, and the model will adjust the proceeds from exercise and proceeds to warrant holders automatically. This is prebuilt for all of the options or warrants lines, although this would only be used for warrants.