The Second BuildOpen the app

Curriculum

Every lesson in the product, listed.

9 modules, 36 lessons, roughly 6 hours. Lessons run 8 to 15 minutes each. The journey orders these for where you are; this is the whole map.

Founder Finance 101

The core machinery: ownership, shares, valuation, cap tables, dilution, SAFEs, priced rounds, preferred stock, and who actually gets paid in an exit.

  1. What ownership actually means8 min
  2. Shares: authorized, issued, and fully diluted12 min
  3. Valuation: the price tag that is not money10 min
  4. Cap tables: the scoreboard12 min
  5. Dilution: where did my company go?12 min
  6. Why investors invest: the other side of the table12 min
  7. SAFEs: money now, dilution later15 min
  8. Priced rounds: where everything becomes real15 min
  9. Preferred stock: what investors actually buy12 min
  10. Liquidation preferences: who actually gets paid15 min

Startup Foundations

Who the product is for, how it is positioned, and the startup-vs-traditional-business fundamentals that shape every later choice.

  1. Who exactly is it for?8 min
  2. Positioning and the one-sentence pitch9 min

Company Formation

Entity choice, keeping personal and company money separate, terms of service and privacy, founder stock, and the order things are supposed to happen in.

  1. LLC or C corp?11 min
  2. Your money and the company's money8 min
  3. Terms of service and privacy policy9 min
  4. Founder stock and the 83(b) clock10 min
  5. Own what you build9 min

First Customers

Doing things that don't scale, recruiting users by hand, charging real money, and the craft of turning strangers into paying customers.

  1. Do things that don't scale8 min
  2. Pricing 101: charge real money9 min
  3. One channel done well9 min

Founder Operations

The operating rhythm of a real company: bookkeeping, sales tax, and the habits that keep growth from creating chaos.

  1. Books before it hurts8 min
  2. Sales tax on software9 min
  3. The monthly operating rhythm8 min

Term Sheets: The Decoder

Every major clause: what it says, what it means, why the investor wants it, and whether it is normal, aggressive, or dangerous.

  1. Reading a term sheet9 min
  2. The economics clauses, decoded11 min
  3. The control clauses, decoded11 min

SaaS Metrics

MRR, ARR, churn, NRR, CAC, LTV, payback: the numbers that run a software business and what investors read into them.

  1. Signups, activation, and honest numbers8 min
  2. The unit economics of one customer9 min
  3. The MRR dashboard: growth and churn9 min
  4. NRR, payback, and what investors read10 min

The Fundraising Process

Deciding to raise, reading your own fundability, running a real process, diligence, and closing without losing months.

  1. Should you even raise?10 min
  2. Are you fundable right now?9 min
  3. Running the raise like a process10 min

Don't Get Screwed

Predatory terms, fake investors, pay-to-pitch schemes, cap-table disasters, and the pattern recognition to spot them early.

  1. Fake investors and fee harvesters9 min
  2. Predatory paper10 min
  3. Cap-table disasters10 min