Coursera sent me an email alerting me to a new course I might be interested in called New Venture Finance: Startup Funding for Entrepreneurs. Turns our Coursera was quite correct. I just registered for the course, watched a few of the lecture videos, and examined the assigned reading materials. Everything looks solid and well done so I'm giving it my two thumbs up so far. The instructor Micheal R. Pratt from the University of Maryland has been involved in raising around $100 million in early stage funding so has some practical experience to go along with his academic background.

The assigned book for the course is by Andrew Sherman and is called Raising Capital: Get the Money You Need to Grow Your Business, 2012, 3rd Edition. The Amazon link to the book above gives you access to the first few chapters if you want to check it out. Also, the second lecture in the course is a 24 minute interview with the author.

One final note is that the course is fully available now. Unlike some Coursera courses where new lectures, assignments, readings are made available each week, this one has everything available so you can dive in and binge learn or sample what interests you. This is a great resource if you want to learn more about how to raise capital. It just started on Feb 9th, 2015 so any time this week would not be too late to start.