One equation. One company. One five-year hold.
Take a set of private company accounts, a data room and a process letter, and arrive at a price, a structure and a recommendation you can defend under questioning.
- Taught modules
- Ten, in sequence
- Notional hours
- 160, declared
- Assessment
- Examination and capstone
- Marking
- By people, to a published rubric
- Award
- Certificate of Completion
Five variables. Nothing else moves the return.
Every private equity return resolves to one identity. The Masterclass is built on it. Every module attacks exactly one variable, and every number a module produces becomes the input to a later one.
What the business actually makes.
What somebody else will pay for that.
Who owns the cash flow first.
What the transaction costs to do.
How long the money is out.
You do not finish with ten separate skills. You finish having closed one argument, which you opened in Module 1.
Every module hands one number to the next. Break a link and everything after it is wrong.
Ashgrove Instrument Works is a fictional flow and pressure instrumentation business, built for teaching and used in every module. Its numbers were verified and frozen before a word of the course was written.
- Module 327.9Reported EBITDA
- Module 429.4Defensible EBITDA
- Module 5269.82031 revenue, built driver by driver
- Module 650.02031 EBITDA
- Module 7300.0Entry value at 10.2x; exit at 10.0x
- Module 875.1Exit net debt, from 147.0
- Module 98.8Fees
- Module 10263.1The gain: 2.63x and 21.3% a year
USD millions except multiples and percentages. Every figure is a course-internal calculation on a fictional company.
The seller's bank presented 34.6. Diligence could defend 29.4.
At 10.2 times, the gap between them is worth 53.1 of price. Five of the nine adjustments moved, and one moved in the seller's favour. Stating that one is what made the other four credible. Module 4 builds that bridge line by line.
Not a list of topics. A position, a trap and a proof.
Each of the ten modules ends in the same three parts, so you learn what practitioners argue about, not only what they agree on.
- The Judgment. A position competent practitioners dispute, and who disagrees.
- The Trap. The plausible wrong move a diligent person makes.
- The Proof. The arithmetic that settles it.
- The Drill. A specified deliverable, with a published worked answer.
Ten modules. Each one attacks one variable.
Modules open in order, each after the one before, because each depends on the number the last one produced.
The Asset Class and the Arithmetic That Governs It
States the identity and the value bridge the whole course proves.
The Process, and What Each Document Commits You To
Competitive processes, optionality and what a letter binds you to.
Reading a Private Company
Rebuild the statements. Hands forward reported EBITDA of 27.9.
Quality of Earnings
The number you underwrite. Hands forward defensible EBITDA of 29.4.
The Revenue Build
Units times price, segment by segment, to 2031 revenue of 269.8.
Cost Structure and Operating Leverage
Why the blended margin can rise while the business weakens.
Price: What a Multiple Is Actually Saying
Entry at 10.2x, exit underwritten at 10.0x, and why.
Leverage: Capital Structure, Debt Schedules and Covenants
From 147.0 of net debt at entry to 75.1 at exit.
Structure and Tax: How the Deal Is Papered and Who Pays
Fees of 8.8, and who bears them.
The LBO, the Bridge, and the Recommendation
2.63x and 21.3%, proved term by term, and a recommendation.
The skill the next seat is decided on.
In private equity, and in every role that sits across the table from it, people are trusted with more when they can take a set of numbers and defend a price. That is what this programme builds, and what you leave able to show.
Speak the committee's language
Frame a deal the way an investment committee reads it: what the business earns, what it is worth, what could break it, and what you recommend.
Walk in with a deal you have worked
A model you built, a two-page recommendation you wrote and defended. Evidence to put in front of an interviewer or a managing director, not a list of topics.
Be the one who finds the gap
Spot the adjustment that does not hold before it is priced into the deal. It is the work that gets noticed, because it changes what gets paid.
Build toward the next seat
Analyst to associate, finance to deals, operator to investor, owner to seller. The same skill set, in the order it is used on a live transaction.
A university-grade programme, priced to be taken.
Comparable university-branded private equity certificates are listed at up to USD 5,000. PEMC is built to the same standards, with published outcomes, a published blueprint, human marking and declared hours, for USD 299 in one payment.
We do not promise a job, a promotion or a salary; no programme can. We promise the skill set those decisions are made on, and a certificate that names exactly what you were assessed on.
Everything a participant receives.
Taught
- Ten modules with worked examples
- Ten drills with published worked answers
- Four bonus units: The Vocabulary (225 terms), The Data Room Index, The Model Build Standards, The Interview
- Start Here, the Accounting Primer and What Comes Next
Practice
- An entry diagnostic that routes you and reports no score
- Five practice assessments 62 questions, every option reasoned
- Eleven interactive pieces, including a nine-bidder process scored on IRR rather than on winning
- 34 exhibits drawn from the frozen numbers
Tools you keep
- A model template shell: eleven tabs, 993 live formulas, check block wired
- The Field Card: every instrument on one printable A4 side
- The Falsifier: a one-page underwriting record for an investment committee memo
- The Value Bridge Calculator
Assessed
- A closed-book examination: 50 questions drawn from a bank of 100
- A capstone on a second company, in a different sector
- Human marking against a published rubric
- A Certificate of Completion with a scope line
Two summative components. Human marking. A published rubric.
The examination tests whether you know the machinery. The capstone tests whether you can use it on a problem that does not tell you which chapter it came from.
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Examination | 40% | 50 questions, 90 minutes, closed book, calculator permitted. Two attempts, fourteen days apart. |
| Capstone | 60% | A working LBO model, a two-page investment recommendation, and a defence: six questions drawn from a published bank of eighteen. One resubmission within ninety days. |
The award requires 60 per cent overall and at least 50 per cent in each component. The capstone is a different business with its own data room extract and process letter, marked on five criteria in four published bands. It is marked on the process, not the verdict: buy and do not buy can both earn a distinction.
Assessed on: reconstruction of private company financial statements; construction and defence of a quality of earnings bridge; bottom-up operating model construction; valuation by multiple, discounted cash flow and precedent; capital and transaction structuring; and the production and defence of an investment recommendation.
Self-paced. Finish in weeks, or take the year.
Who it is for
Analysts and associates. People moving into investing from operations, consulting, finance or a technical discipline. Owners and executives who sit across the table from a buyer.
You should be comfortable reading an income statement and a balance sheet, and able to use a spreadsheet with absolute references and a lookup. You need no private equity experience and no modelling experience.
If you have never built a cash flow statement, you are the intended participant. Module 3 teaches it from first principles.
Two masterclasses. Two lenses.
APEX shows you how private equity creates value across the lifecycle. PEMC teaches you to prove it, number by number, on one deal.
Companions, not substitutes. Our suggested path: PEMC first for anyone who has to underwrite or defend a number; APEX afterwards for breadth.
Before you enrol.
Is there anything I have to attend?
No. The course is asynchronous, with no scheduled classes. You work through it at your own pace, and modules open in sequence.
Is this a professional credential?
No. Completion produces a VCI Institute Certificate of Completion with a scope line naming what was assessed. It is not accredited, carries no university affiliation, no CPE or CPD credit, and no licence or designation.
How is the capstone marked, and how fast?
By people, against a published criterion-referenced rubric. Results are released no earlier than business day 3 and no later than business day 5 after submission.
What if I do not pass first time?
The examination has two attempts, the second no earlier than fourteen days after the first. The capstone allows one resubmission, addressing written feedback, within ninety days.
Is Ashgrove a real company?
No. Ashgrove Instrument Works is fictional. Every figure, document, person and event in it was created for teaching. The capstone company is fictional too.
Can I use AI tools?
Yes, within a published policy. Explanation and debugging need no declaration. Drafting prose on your own analysis is permitted with a two-line declaration. Submitting a model you did not build and cannot audit is not.
What does it not cover?
Fundraising and investor relations, portfolio operations after close, distressed and credit, venture, non-US tax and legal structuring, and secondaries. A syllabus is defined as much by what it leaves out.
What is the refund policy?
A full refund within seven days of purchase while the course is unused. Starting a practice assessment, the examination or the capstone ends the refund window.
What does it cost?
USD 299, one-time, with twelve months of access from enrolment. PEMC is sold as a standalone programme.
Who do I contact?
James Bachus, at [email protected].
Statement of standing
The Private Equity Masterclass is a taught programme offered by VCI Institute. It is not accredited by any accreditation body. It carries no university affiliation. It is not registered for continuing professional education or continuing professional development credit. It confers no regulatory recognition, licence or designation. Completion produces a VCI Institute Certificate of Completion carrying a scope line naming exactly what was assessed, and nothing more than that. It makes no claim about salary, employment, promotion or return on the fee paid.
The programme is designed to the standards a university would apply to a taught postgraduate module: published learning outcomes, a published assessment blueprint, criterion-referenced marking, declared notional learning hours and an enforced academic integrity policy. Those standards describe how it was built. They are not a claim of accreditation.
The number you can defend.
A model you build yourself, a recommendation you write yourself, and a defence in which you locate every number you wrote. The course gives you the machinery. The capstone shows whether you can use it.