Private Equity and Venture Capital: How the Money Actually Works

A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing

The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Private Equity and Venture Capital: How the Money Actually Works course, in the Sales, Service & Revenue category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.

The contract is the machine. Pension money, endowment money, family money, and corporate money are committed to a partnership, handed to a manager under a contract, called down over years, invested into companies no stock exchange lists, worked on for years more, and — if the work goes well — sold, with the proceeds split according to rules written before the first dollar moved. This course takes that structure apart piece by piece and puts it back together: who the parties are and what each has actually promised, how the fee and the carried interest really work in dollars, and how performance is measured — and mismeasured.

It starts with the parties and their promises. The running example is Pellbrook Capital, a fictional firm invented for this book: its venture funds buy minority stakes in young companies, and its buyout funds buy control of established ones. Its funds, its portfolio companies, and every figure attached to them are teaching constructions, chosen so the arithmetic can be checked with a pencil — fees computed on the base the text names, waterfall splits that add back to the total being split, and multiples and rates of return derived from the cash flows printed beside them.

It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — The Fund and the Deal — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Fund-and-First-Deal Review; then, Module 2 — Owning, Exiting, and Judging — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Portfolio, Exit, and Re-Up Decision.

Both capstones produce real artifacts — a fund-and-first-deal review memorandum on a proposed Pellbrook fund and its opening investment: the terms audited, the endowment's cash scheduled, the first deal's diligence program set, its price recomputed and tested, and a recommendation with documentary conditions; and a portfolio, exit, and reporting decision pack on a maturing Pellbrook fund: the remaining assets triaged, the exit computed and judged, the performance record rebuilt into cash and estimate, and a written re-up judgment argued from the evidence.

The honesty standard is part of the course. This course teaches how the private equity and venture capital industry works. It is not investment advice, and it promises no returns. Where a return figure appears, the book shows the arithmetic behind the figure and the limits of what the figure can say — because in private markets, where no exchange publishes a price, the person who cannot rebuild a number from its parts is at the mercy of the person who built it. Understanding the machinery is a working capability. It is not a forecast.

The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.

Private Equity and Venture Capital: How the Money Actually Works is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning delivers.