Venture Capital & Private Equity
Accelerate Your Company’s Growth with Professional Venture Capital Investments
Venture capital investment is the driving force for entrepreneurship and innovation. A venture capital investor must know the rules concerning financing and be able to identify business growth opportunities.
The Venture Capital & Private Equity program improves your success in venture capital investments by increasing your skills in key venture capital investment themes.
The program increases the hunger for growth and know-how of investor teams and strengthens the foundations for the overall understanding of venture capital investment. After the program, you will be fully familiar with the management and operations administration of venture capital investments, as well as the investment process as a whole, from analyzing the development of the target company all the way to venture capital investment modeling.
The program brings together the most essential information for venture capital investment.
4.5 ECTS credits can be transferred from this program to the Aalto Executive MBA or Aalto MBA program.
The participants of the 2025 program were very satisfied with the program. The training received an overall rating (avg) of 5.4/6.0 from the participants.
The 2025 participants felt that the program brought clear added value to their organization: "My program participation will bring value to my organization": (avg) 5.4/6.0
In addition to practical exercises, the program offers interesting expert speeches and real-life cases linked to the private equity industry
Benefits
The program will help to understand the importance of venture capital investment and the investor at different stages of business operations. During the program, you’ll gain an insight on how to manage your venture capital investment activities in a controlled manner and understand the way funds work. You’ll know how to organize the right kind of management and reporting for investment activities.
For
The program supports the development of venture capital investment activities from the first stages towards a professional enterprise, as well as the creation of a more efficient venture capital investment process.
The program will benefit, in particular, venture capital and angel investors, entrepreneurs, managers of family businesses, and business experts working in M&A and business development activities.
In addition, the program is useful for service providers dealing with venture capital investment, such as lawyers, consultants and banks.
Contents and Schedule
The program consists of three in-class training days, as well as pre-reading materials and a take-home assignment.
The contact days consist of lectures by a professor of venture capital at Aalto University, as well as key-notes by experienced private equity professionals. During the days, participants work on case exercises to deepen their knowledge of valuation and structuring. Competence and experiences are shared through joint discussions and small-group reflection tasks.
Modules
Instructors
Markku Maula
Markku Maula is Professor of Venture Capital and the Head of the Institute of Strategy and Venturing at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Aalto University.
His research focuses on value creation-related issues in business strategy and corporate finance, particularly on venture capital and private equity, technology-based new firms, corporate venturing, mergers and acquisitions, and innovation.
Maula has received several international awards and has published his research in leading journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Organization Science, Research Policy, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Strategic Management Journal.
Maula is Editor of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice and serves on the Editorial Boards of Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Business Venturing, and Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance. He was the founding director of the Aalto Ventures Program, served on many scientific committees and organizations, and acted as an advisor to many firms and government agencies on issues related to his areas of expertise in Finland and abroad.
He was appointed as a professor in 2004 and tenured in 2009. He graduated with a Doctor of Science in Technology (with distinction) in 2001. Before that, he graduated with an MSc (Econ.), majoring in Finance at Helsinki School of Economics (2000) and an MSc (Eng.) (with distinction) in Strategy at Helsinki University of Technology (2000). He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Scancor, in 2000 and 2012, and at INSEAD in 2010 and 2015. Before his academic career, he worked at Nokia and CapMan.