BAFN206 - New Venture Finance

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

BAFN200 Principles of Finance

Teaching organisation

Unit rationale, description and aim

This unit focuses on the financial aspects of establishing a new venture. The managerial and financial challenges for start-up firms and small businesses are different from those of larger, public firms and often require a different approach because of their small scale, lack of liquidity and the difficulty of attracting and deploying capital. Students need to understand the concepts of development of business ideas, financing new ventures, creating financing plans, writing business plans, valuation of new ventures, angel investors, and crowd funding. The unit provides students with the necessary knowledge and skills needed to apply new venture financing tools in managing a new venture.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - evaluate appropriate sources of finance for a new venture and the way in which funding could generate common good. (GA2, GA5)

LO2 - critically analyse the concepts of developing ideas, protecting ideas, preparing financial statements, and financing new ventures (GA4, GA5)

LO3 - prepare financial plans and business plans, respectively in local and global contexts (GA5, GA8)

LO4 - measure, interpret and compare values of early stage ventures using different methods including accounting method, equity method, and venture capital methods (GA5, GA6)

LO5 - appraise ethical strategies to harvest and exit a venture. (GA3, GA5)

Graduate attributes

GA2 - recognise their responsibility to the common good, the environment and society 

GA3 - apply ethical perspectives in informed decision making

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA6 - solve problems in a variety of settings taking local and international perspectives into account

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

Content

Topics will include:

• Developing business ideas
• Ethics and common good 
• Protecting new ideas
• Financing new ventures
• Financial statements
• Creating financial plans
• Writing business plans
• Valuation of new ventures
• Angel investors, venture capitalists and crowd source funding

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

The teaching and learning strategy is built on a “student-focused approach,” which can be described as “Level 3. Focus: what the student does” instead of a “teacher-focused approach,” ACU’s teaching policy focuses on learning outcomes for students. Our teaching aims to engage students as active participants in the learning process while acknowledging that all learning must involve a complex interplay of active and receptive processes, the constructing of meaning for oneself, and learning from others. ACU promotes and facilitates learning that is autonomous and self-motivated, is characterised by the individual taking satisfaction in the mastering of content and skills and is critical, looking beneath the surface level of information for the meaning and significance of what is being studied.

The schedule of the workshop is designed in such a way that students can achieve intended learning outcomes sequentially. Teaching and learning activities will apply the experiential learning model, which encourages students to apply higher order thinking. The unit ensures that learning activities involve real-world scenarios that in turn assist with ‘real-world’ preparedness. The unit also uses a scaffolding technique that builds a student’s skills and prepares them for the next phase of the learning process.

This unit is taught in a flipped classroom format and will require face-to-face attendance in specific physical location/s. Students will have face-to-face interactions with lecturer(s) to further their achievement of the learning outcomes. This unit is structured with required upfront preparation before workshops, most students report that they spend an average of one hour preparing before the workshop and one or more hours after the workshop practicing and revising what was covered. The online learning platforms used in this unit provide multiple forms of preparatory and practice opportunities for you to prepare and revise. It is up to individual students to ensure that the out of class study is adequate for the optimal learning outcomes and successes.

Assessment strategy and rationale

Assessments are used primarily to foster learning. ACU adopts a constructivist approach to learning which seeks alignment between the fundamental purpose of each unit, the learning outcomes, teaching and learning strategy, assessment and the learning environment. In order to pass this unit, students are required to achieve an overall score of at least 50%. Using constructive alignment, the assessment tasks are designed for students to demonstrate their achievement of each learning outcome.

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

The latest edition of:

Allen, KR 2020, Launching new ventures, 8th edn, Cengage Learning.

Bamford, C & Brutton, G 2019, Entrepreneurship: the art, science, and process for success, McGraw-Hill.

Harris, T 2019, Start-up: a practical guide to starting and running a new business, 2nd edn, Springer International Publishing.

Leach, JC. & Melicher, RW 2020, Entrepreneurial finance, 7th edn, Cengage Learning.

Longenecker, JC, Petty, JW, Palich, LE & Hoy, F 2019, Small business management: launching and growing entrepreneurial ventures, 19th edn, Cengage Learning.