Faculty lecturer Stephen Gugu taught on Entrepreneurial Finance to Lagos Business School MBA students, where he tackled Financial Modelling and some bits of Entrepreneurial Finance from 22nd to 26th of February, 2016. 

 

Stephen, who works as an adjunct faculty member in Entrepreneurial Finance (ENFI) at Strathmore Business School (SBS) explained this opportunity as fulfilling and very interactive. Stephen has been teaching finance and entrepreneurship related courses for the past 9 years. In this capacity, Stephen acts as a module leader for the private equity and venture capital program in the business school.

What is Entrepreneurial Finance about?

?Entrepreneurial Finance is about understanding the financial journey of an entrepreneur, all the way from starting a company to exiting, through trade sales, stock exchange or private equity investors. In ENFI sessions we look to equip the learners with skills necessary to advice the entrepreneur on various sources of financing for an entrepreneur such as; how to evaluate a business or a business idea; deciding on whether to finance it; how to carry out due diligence, valuation, deal structuring, and negotiation; how to manage an investment and eventually how to exit.

How was your experience at Lagos Business School (LBS)?

?My experience was very good. LBS is the premier business school in Nigeria and you get that sense from how everyone carries themselves, from the security guards at the entrance of the institution, to the students and the faculty. I got to meet a number of faculty who shared their research interests and their interest in working together to carry our joint programs, joint research, or case writing assignments. With regards to the class, I was impressed by the level of participation and points put across by the students. Good point to also note is that during my stay, LBS held a careers day where among other things, I got to listen in on industry based presentations by the students who noted that LBS is able to job place their full time MBA students with a success rate of +95% within 12 months, and +70% within 6 months, impressive! ?

You used Case teaching method, what is it all about?

?In short, case teaching is about examination of a real life situation based on a case to distill learning. It gives the participant a seat in the boardroom, office, factory etc in the case where they get to debate why settling on certain decisions was right or wrong and how they could have handled the situation differently. Case teaching is part of experiential learning which ensures that participants learn from each other’s’ experience by sharing views on dilemmas faced by the actual case participants. 

What are your plans to advance in this area?

?I have already written three short cases, the thing is to keep writing and using the content in class. I would also like to work with more African cases as opposed to Western cases, I believe if Africa is going to do business with itself, business schools need to start expanding the horizons of participants using cases!?

 

How does entrepreneurial Finance sit in an economy that is developing, and that has so many budding entrepreneurs?

 

?Skills in ENFI are pivotal in this kind of economy, investors need to know how to evaluate, invest, manage and eventually exit their investments, and entrepreneurs need to understand how to engage investors, what source to tap for financing and at what point! We are living in times where barriers to entry from both local and international firms have come down substantially, this has increased the pressure for growth by entrepreneurs hence the need to seek external financing. With companies like Uber, Carrefour, Dominos Pizza etc setting up in Kenya with relative ease it means as an entrepreneur you need to grow big FAST to be able to compete! 

 

Stephen undertook an MBA from Vlerick Business School in Belgium (Under the Kofi Annan Fellow Scholarship) in 2011, and an undergraduate degree in Law and several professional courses in Finance and Accounting.

 

During his spare time, Stephen, enjoys travelling and interacting with different world cultures. He maintains that to travel is not only to discover, but most importantly to learn!