Venture capital e private equity: metodologie di analisi e valutazione finanziaria

In our country, now more than ever, is the desire of rampant entrepreneurs to set up their own start-ups, to see an innovative company emerge through which they can to consecrate and deploy their verve and thus see their first goals achieved in the short term. It’s an era of challenges and opportunities that lies ahead in the short to medium term, which fosters a strong aspiration towards innovative solutions in multiple fields of our daily life. It is precisely these technological innovations in a world evolving at the speed of light that delineate today's contemporary world. In any case, it is very difficult for a start-up to access debt capital, as these are businesses that do not have a solid history or stable economic roots. The most frequent case is, in fact, where such entrepreneurial realities are financed through venture capital, i.e. by selling part of the equity to professional investors, specialised in investing in private companies, which are recently established but have very wide margins for growth. In doing so, the start-ups also acquire managerial and technical skills, from the fund, which allows them to make the best use of the liquidity received and thus be able to reach the next stage, having received substantial know-how. The aim of this paper is to direct the potential reader towards a clear description of Venture Capital, through the elaboration of a theoretical text, accompanied in the last part by a practical evaluation process, in which the notions I will discuss. The first chapter introduces the world of Private Equity, outlining its meaning and main characteristics, and gives a screening, also, of Venture Capital, which, of the former, represents a particular declination. The investment characteristics during the main stages of start-up development are then analysed. The third section introduces the two main formats of private equity, distinguishing and underlining the main differences between European format and Anglo-Saxon format. During the second chapter, the process of selecting the target investment is covered. From the screening process to the contractual clauses to be established up to the final step, the exiting.Through research, I will explain which characteristics carry most weight in an investor's early-growth financing decision. The fund usually defines certain contractual clauses that regulate the relationship with the majority shareholders, after concluding the investment process and having sifted the market to the point of finding a winning investment project. Clauses used mainly to avoid the occurrence of certain events that may, in some way, alter the original conditions of the investment and thus harm the investor, given that the Venture Capitalist's ultimate goal is as will be seen and as can be guessed intuitable - to increase the market value of the start-up and realise a good bargain. In the third chapter, in a much more technical descriptive framework, I will try to describe through examples the various methods (the Multiples method, the Venture Capital method and the Berkus method) most frequently used by venture capital funds to assess the start-ups concerned (for the purposes of possible investment) with a degree of almost scientific objectivity.