Hello from the University of Maryland and welcome to one of our newest courses on coursera. Financial management for product leaders. I'm James Green, the managing director for learning and Development at M TEC at the University of Maryland and our lead faculty for the courses, Michael Pratt, a lecturer within our institute that's bringing some vast experience and financing, both on the startup side, on the venture capital side, as well as on the corporate side from a variety of different industries. So who is this course for? Well, if you're an aspiring or active product leader, you're in the right space, perhaps you're involved already in product management or in design development on the software engineering side, on the marketing side, on the business side of consultant. Again, all of those areas are well attuned with the topics that will explore within our course. There's no pre existing knowledge that we anticipate. We started a fairly basic level and then work our way up quickly from there. And it's for people that want to understand how to secure and manage financing. So with that, perhaps you're launching a new product, perhaps you're trying to get resources to improve an existing product, perhaps you're in the service arena, all of those fit, be it again on the new side or expanding something that's existing right. Within our course, we're going to focus on four key areas. One is learning some fundamentals, learning some basics of financial statements and how they exist within an existing corporate or organizational environment. We're going to talk a little about valuation and how do you really trying to understand the worth of an idea? I've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs and innovators over the years, a lot of great ideas, but when it comes to trying to quantify what's it worth, people often fall short, but it's something that every startup faces that many existing corporate innovators faces. They're trying to rally the resources for new products. And we're going to talk to you about about how do you value ideas? How do you try and translate an idea into a unit of currency to give people a sense of the size of that opportunity? We're also going to explore some different sources of financing. Internal financing, external financing, what's out there these days? What are some common sources of financing for people working within an existing company or organization? And then lastly, we're going to talk about structuring that deal, structuring the pitch, how to get in front of the right people and what do you tell them once you have that audience. We're also going to talk about about corporate venturing and corporate entrepreneurs, and I want to take a moment to give you a context of really kind of, what does that mean? So when we talk about a corporate venture in our course, it could be a new product, it could be a new service, it could be a new version of a product or service. Or it could be a new program, a new division or an entirely new company that might get spun out of your organization. So we use that word venture fairly broadly really, we're talking about any idea that could have some commercial potential. We'll also use the word corporate entrepreneur. Well, what do we mean by that? Well, it's a bit of a summit of term that we use to categorize anybody that's within this category of product leadership, product management of design, development engineering, business marketing. So rather than listing all of these people every time we're trying to refer to you and people like you that are trying to innovate from within will simply call that a corporate entrepreneur. Now with this course there is the opportunity to do an audit track to learn for free. There's also the opportunity to earn a certificate. With the certificate you'll have some added resources, some added quizzes and added assessments, an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and to earn that certificate in the way that you can share that with in your resume, share that certificate with others, share a verifiable certificate on LinkedIn if you're interested in doing the certificate track. Now we are also a part of the product Ideation design and management specialization in Coursera were really designed to be the 5th course whereby you can work throughout the specialization on developing and analyzing and building your ideas. And then in the 5th course you work at developing your pitch for what exactly is that idea? What's that market? Who are the competitors etcetera? So by doing the prior four courses it gives you a big leg up and being able to be successful and have a real hands on practical experience within this course. Alternatively, there are no prerequisites. You can take these courses individually or in any order, but if you're interested in the specialization, I encourage you to sign up for some of the other courses as well and to move through them sequentially. So with that, that gives you a little bit of an overview of financial management for product leaders, what you'll learn who it's for the certificate opportunity as well as how it fits within the specialization. So if you're already on the course, our platform, we include the opportunity here to go ahead and click and get started. If you're not yet on Coursera, it's free to join and we invite you to do that as well. Thank you.
