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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Advanced Valuation and Strategy - M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital by Erasmus University Rotterdam

4.6
stars
1,200 ratings

About the Course

Hi and welcome to this course! Would you like to learn about the latest valuation methods that may help you to make better business decisions? Then 'Advanced Valuation and Strategy – M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital' by Erasmus University Rotterdam is the right course for you! This course is helpful for executives that need to value complete strategies and for all students interested in corporate finance and strategy. We present the latest tools and show you how to apply them! We will revolutionize your way of decision making, by extending static techniques from corporate finance with dynamic methods to quantify strategic thinking. Traditionally, we assess the attractiveness of an investment as a mature business, where future cash flows mainly result from past decisions. But, in an ever-changing world, strategic decisions determine the firm’s long-term success and market value. Yet managers often have to consider these long-term implications using intuition and experience alone, with little guidance from structured, quantitative analysis. Our treatment goes far beyond the use of standard valuation analysis. We introduce the expanded NPV, which brings together DCF, real options, and game theory. Thinking in terms of options, games, and adaptive strategies may help managers address strategic questions such as: How do you value a leveraged buyout? How can you value a high-tech venture with negative cash flows? When should you invest in new ventures in stages? How can you incorporate rival bidders in the analysis? The tools we provide can improve your decisions in business and in daily life. * Who is this class for? We hope that our course appeals to (graduate) students in finance, economics, and business, as well as to high-ranking professionals and a general audience. This course is particularly interesting for venture capitalists, private equity investors, investment bankers, CEOs, CFOs, and those who aspire these affiliations. We offer this MOOC at 3 levels: 1.Executive Summary: This 1-week module provides critical insights into the principles of corporate valuation and strategy. This is accessible for time-constrained executives and the general audience without any prior knowledge. 2. Student Level: This level involves an understanding of the technical details. This level requires basic knowledge of concepts in corporate finance, e.g., the time value of money, financial statement analysis, capital structure, and the relation between risk and returns. Learners of this level can skip week 1. 3. Honors Level (honors certificate): This level is challenging, engaging, and compelling to an intellectually rigorous student....

Top reviews

AS

May 18, 2020

Boosts your up-to-date understanding of how strategy and valuation come together. It helped me better understand my PE clients' buy & build strategies from a growth option valuation perspective.

DH

Aug 6, 2023

Great course- the material is engaging, and the assessments are challenging. The honours case study is worth doing to test your knowledge, plus the case study is a classic and well documented.

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51 - 75 of 327 Reviews for Advanced Valuation and Strategy - M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital

By Adriano C

Jan 16, 2022

Really confusing explanations of the topics. Could have definitely used more video time to explain to explain the topics.

By Mustafa Y

Jun 24, 2021

Waste of time

By Thiago N F

May 13, 2020

I am quite impressed by this course. Lots of topics covered in a very simple and comprehensive manner. Challenging sometimes and going deeper in some evaluation methods.

Also, very interesting the way the evaluations are structured, providing good insights. The course also joints strategy and financial aspects, making a fantastic mix of contents and different valuation methods whilst providing some case studies.

The course is really demanding, we can expect more than the duration / dedication reported there.

Videos very didactic, examples practical and some hands-on exercises are really appreciated. Also, as it says, the examples and the knowledge acquired also can be applied in our personal lives and personal investments.

I do recommend this course.

Many thanks and congrats for the framing of this course.

By OSCAR A G

Feb 17, 2021

I did not expect this course to be so complete, I am completely satisfied with both the lectures as well as the tests and exercises... I felt quite challenged a lot of times but I definitely learned a lot about strategy and strategic thinking not only in Financial decisions but in any corporate strategic decision, I applied some of this learning to product development and therefore an R&D project and It was very helpful. I highly recommend this course for someone that is hoping to consolidate their financial understanding with strategic applications.

By Mirza D

Dec 13, 2020

Mind opening course that delves into quantitative aspects and teaches how to calculate value beyond standard DCF method. Equally important is a potential paradigm shift in the way we see and think about opportunities and choices we make.

Professor Han Smit is highly knowledgeable of the subject, and excellent professor who knows how to teach and transfer knowledge. The course is however advanced and requires some quantitative knowledge beforehand, and is difficult to complete in a shorter time frame than that indicated in the course description.

By Indika N

Aug 31, 2021

An excellent course for top-level finance professionals to hone their knowledge on Mergers and Acquisition. The only downside is that if you get down a graded quiz, you have to wait for 21 days to redo it. This is too much as time is precious for most of us working in the corporate sector. Further, if we can get answers for questions raised through discussion forum, that would be great. Thanks again for this wonderful course.

By Roy H

Mar 11, 2023

Dear Professor Smit and colleagues,

My name is Roy Hutchinson and I just finished taking the course “Advanced Valuation and Strategy - M&A, Private Equity, and Venture Capital”.

I truly enjoyed the course, and really have learned a lot. It is well structured, very comprehensive, very well explained and I did not find it easy to complete. If I find somewhere to give a rating I will give five stars. Thank you so much.

Warmest regards,

Roy Hutchinson

By Mukul G

Sep 17, 2022

What a great learning experience!! This course opens up multiple vistas and alters your way of thinking pertaining to decisions in business and real life by giving you tools to quantify your decisions. Professor Han Smit does an excellent job explaining the concepts. The assignment and test questions are neatly thought out testing all aspects of the videos. This is not an easy course by any means but one that gives you a lot to think about.

By Xuejiao W

Oct 11, 2018

This course is pretty interesting and helpful for me and the professor and tutors are very professional and kind. I really into this class, like the atmosphere in class, the interesting guest lectures. and I also think for international students, the Coursera is very helpful. For me, my English is not that good, I can not follow the class all the time, so I can review the contents here. Thanks!!! Hope I could pass the exam!!

By ANDRÉS A G

Sep 22, 2021

Great course! I learned a lot and enjoyed the classes. The assignments for honor degree do take some time to do, but are totally worth it. I decided to complete the mandatory tests first and now I will finish the other part, this way I'm forced to review everything that I learned. You have to see which is the best strategy for you, but I encourage you to take the course and improve your financial valuation skills.

By Dheeraj O

Jul 10, 2020

This was an amazing course. Learned a lot of new things when it comes to growth options valuation and other factors to be considered for company valuation. I feel more advanced topics and examples could have been covered or exercise problems for practice would be suggested, but I guess we can get those form textbooks. Also, I loved it when Professor Han jumped up from the bottom during the intro of some videos xd.

By Jose E R C

Jul 5, 2020

Amazing (and tough) course!!!! I can recommend it to anyone interested in the topic not only for the financial side of things but also due to how these metodologies can help you make decisions in your personal life. Prof. Smit explains topics very well. However, the course is certainly not simple and you will have to put in the effort but the reward is absolutely worth the while!

By Hagop A

Jan 14, 2022

The course is an in depth look into strategy and it's underlying valuation of assets and projects. The course requires you to have some previous knowledge of PE and basic valuation but you can overcome this prerequisite with a bit of extra work. The scope of the course makes it very useful and practical. I would recommend it to those looking into M&A and venture capital.

By Diana H

Apr 22, 2020

This curse is well structured and has the perfect mixture of challange, theory and practrical cases. I would assume it would be too difficult for people withouth basic knowlege in investment decision making. The course material, videos and contents are very high-quality. The course itself requires concentration & was challenging enough for advanced learners. THANK YOU!

By DS

Dec 7, 2018

When I was following this course as a student I enjoyed the content a lot. While I was familiar with both real options and game theory, I had not seen the integration of the two, which seems natural. Finally, the quantification of strategies (combining strategy and valuation) forces me to think about it more and go beyond intuition alone.

By Mohamed J A

Oct 17, 2022

Very good content. It's a bit technical and it was my first experiece in M&A and valuation. Thank you to Mr.Han Smith, he seems like a very nice guy and having him as a teacher (even if it was only through my computer) was a very nice experience ! I recommend this course if you are really commited to progress in this area.

By Juan C V

Apr 29, 2020

Greatly designed course. Methodology is engaging (lots of different activities: quizzes, discussions, case studies, practice exercises) and inspires curiosity to do additional research on the topics. Everything is nicely explained and good insights can be learned from the lessons. Glad I took this, highly recommended.

By Daan H

Oct 25, 2018

Well taught course with instructive and clear videos which introduce the topics, further elaborate on them as well as clearly provide explanations of practice problems. Thereby, it consists of many exercises and practice questions for you to do. Overall a clearly and well constructed course from which I learned a lot.

By Luís M B d M

Mar 13, 2021

I really recommend this course to anyone with some gor previous know how of corporate finance looking to consolidate knowledge and get valuable tools to apply in daily work or life. Nonetheless, the course smashed my expectations because the professor is awesome, the videos and materials are top notch quality.

By Kenneth S

Feb 29, 2020

I found the course quite insightful but got a little trouble with the terminologies. Nonetheless additional research and reading contributed to better understanding of the course material.

The key to the learning was the exercises /quizzes and the insights provided in the answers.

Overall a very good programme.

By Loïc L

Feb 26, 2021

Thank you very much to Han and its team ! The course is quite complete and easy to follow and understand. The tools provided to learn are wide and adapted. Hope you ara going to develop other courses according to strategy, valuation and corporate finance in general. Congrats for this successful program !

By Ali M

Oct 5, 2018

The course provides great insights into corporate finance and strategy. The concepts are explained in a well detailed way. Additionally, through its interactive character, the course is a fun way to learn about valuations and startegy in the context of M&A and private equity/venture capital.

By John S

Jun 8, 2021

The course was professionally executed. Lectures were informative and backed by exercises with the answers to reinforce learning. The tests had an appropriate level of difficulty. I recommend viewing the lectures 2 to 3 times with the checklist to assure passing the tests first time.

By Chandra A

Jul 30, 2019

This course is really useful and gives you an expanded view of Business Valuation. I think this knowledge would be necessary if you're projecting yourself to work as an Investment Analyst. This will also be useful in the long run if you're in the position of strategic decision making.

By Kevin V

Oct 5, 2018

This course gave me a clear overview of valuation & strategy and how it is used in practice. Furthermore, the topics of real option valuation and game theory were very interesting.

If you are still thinking about taking this course, stop thinking and just do it! You will not regret it.