Corporate
Thinking Like An Investor
Delivery:~1 Day
Experience Level:Mid-Career M&A Pros | M&A Leaders
What I Will Learn
- Decision frameworks used to hone in on what matters most
- Key value creation drivers to grow a business
- How to dissect key diligence reports; such as FDD and CDD reports
- To construct dynamic due diligence plans
- To ask better / more insightful questions
- To anticipate investment committee questions
About the Course
Learn to think like an investor by applying frameworks and tools in the evaluation of businesses and related investment opportunities. Participants gain an ‘inside baseball’ view of key due diligence workflows and related deliverables that allows them to be more discerning in how they use, interpret, and question diligence findings in formulating investment decisions.
Course Curriculum
- Introduction to Foundational Questions©
- Foundational Questions© as the Question Behind the Question
- Project / Client Foundational Questions©
- Company / Target Foundational Questions©
- Foundational Questions© Exercise
- How Businesses are Valued
- Relative and Absolute Value
- Free Cash Flow (“FCF”)
- Three Sought-After Attributes of FCF
- Desirable Business Traits & Their Impact on FCF
- The Importance of Perspective
- Risk & Opportunity
- Billionaires Brawl
- Foundational Questions© Revisited
- Prioritization & Decision Gates
- Building Intuition & Establishing Bookends Using Fermi Math
- Finding Insights in Contradictions
- SOPs Create Consistency & Efficiency
- Using Checklists to Reduce Error Rates
- What Does it Look Like if We are Wrong?
- What Would Easy Look Like?
- What Will Make or Break the Deal?
- Identifying Asymmetric Bets
- Review of The Three Ways PE Investors Make Money
- Acquisition Driven Growth Strategies
- Averaging Down the Purchase Multiple Via Add-ons
- Roll-up Strategies
- Sale Leaseback Opportunities
- Inside View: How to Interpret & Use FDD / Quality of Earnings Reports
- Inside View: How to Interpret & Use Industry Diligence Reports
- Inside View: How to Interpret & Use Legal Diligence Summaries
M&A Professions
- Financial Due Diligence
- Investment Banking
- Leveraged Lending
- Private Equity

It starts with a conversation
Benefits Obtained :
- Learn decision frameworks
- Identify the crux of underwriting faster
- Enhance your diligence efforts