The price of money, before you pay it.
Most fundraising instruction teaches the what and the how. Fitzroy & Co. is about the when and the why: pricing the decision to raise, bootstrap, or wait before you make it.
The Ledger is free and needs no signup.
Raising $300,000 for 15% of your company costs $1,500,000 at a $10,000,000 exit. That is $5.00 of exit value for every $1 you raise.
Move the sliders to try your own numbers.
Three costs, one column
Most founders weigh a raise against nothing. The Capital Ledger puts the real costs of a funding decision side by side, in dollars.
Dilution
Equity is a claim on your future. At a $10 million exit, 15% is $1.5 million, whether or not you ever felt it leave.
Your time
A raise takes months of founder hours. Those hours have a price, and so does every other way to fund the same stage.
Delay
Moving slowly is not free, and neither is moving fast on someone else's terms. Delay belongs in the same column.
Added up, that is the price of the money.
The Price of Money
A free tool, a free live lesson, and a cohort course for founders deciding whether and when to raise.
Advisory
One-to-one sessions to work through your own decision before you commit to a path.
A teacher's framework, built on deal experience
Brian Bartles teaches venture finance and entrepreneurship at SMU's Cox School of Business. His background spans investment banking, venture capital, private equity, and hedge fund management, and he has founded and run companies of his own.
The Price of Money grew out of one observation: capital is the most expensive thing most startups buy, and the one they price least carefully.
- Teaching
- SMU Cox School of Business, 14 years
- Program
- Developed the Venture Finance Certificate Program
- Background
- Investment banking, venture capital, private equity, hedge funds
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Occasional notes on the when and why of raising capital. No spam, and you can leave any time.