Financial Modeling Cohort · Starts October 12
“Your model balances. Can you explain why?”
The question that separates people who’ve memorized the statements from people who understand them
Become job-ready in financial modeling.
Build a complete 3-statement model from scratch: the skill behind a promotion, a pivot from FP&A into investments, or a move across borders. Wherever you want to take it.
The Market
Why learn financial modeling?
in-demand skill investment firms are specifically seeking.
transferable across employers, industries, and markets. It reads the same in Astana, Dubai, or London.
The Gap
It’s not in the theory,
but in the live moment.
You’re asked to explain what’s driving a sharp cost increase, and you take a beat too long to connect the financial statement to the business reason behind it.
Cost: the offer goes to someone who answered instantly.
You passed the knowledge screen, then lost a competitive selection round because the model didn’t hold up once assumptions were questioned under time pressure.
Cost: years of reapplying to the same gatekeeping programs.
“Can you sit down today and build a financial model from scratch for a real company?” Most people, even ones with a certificate, answer NO.
Cost: staying one step behind the role you actually want.
Why Most Modeling Courses Don’t Fix This
Most modeling courses teach mechanics.
This cohort teaches thinking.
Who This Is For
Three kinds of people end up here.
Career-changers into finance
CFA prep, online courses, YouTube. You understand the statements. You’ve never built one unaided, start to finish.
Career transitioners into investments
You work in finance but can’t build financial models. You want stronger logic, cleaner structure, and the confidence to defend every assumption.
Founders & independent consultants
Build one, challenge one, or defend your assumptions to investors, clients, and your own board. And take on freelance or project work with a portfolio piece behind you.
The Program
A 3-statement model built from scratch
WK 01Income Statement build
- A clean, professional model structure, and formatting as a language
- Build the shell: cover, assumptions, historicals, scenario switch
- Build the revenue schedule: volume × price, with a capacity ceiling
WK 02Costs & mechanical schedules
- Cost structure: fixed, variable, and semi-variable; operating leverage
- Build depreciation, capex, and the PP&E roll-forward
- Build the income tax schedule, including deferred tax and the tax-shield logic
WK 03Working capital & linking
- Build the working-capital schedule: receivables, inventory, payables
- Learn the cash-direction rule for reading any balance-sheet change
- Start linking the income statement to the cash flow statement
WK 04Debt, circularity & balancing
- Build the debt and interest schedule, with the revolver as the balancing plug
- Manage circular references with an iterative-calculation circuit breaker
- Complete the three-statement links and get the balance sheet to balance
WK 05Valuation (DCF) & audit
- Build a DCF: FCFF, WACC, terminal value, and a football-field range
- Run sensitivity analysis on the drivers investors actually care about
- Audit the model live for hardcodes, broken links, and logic gaps
WK 06Turn model into messages
- Build the investor one-pager: thesis, key charts, value range, risks
- Decide which sensitivities and scenarios belong in front of an investor
- Present and defend your model live, under questioning
Not Just Another Course
The most common gap we hear isn’t the modeling.
It’s no one to check your thinking against.
Someone checking your logic
Live feedback on your assumptions, through the cohort. Not just whether the formula works, but whether the thinking holds.
People starting from zero, together
A small international cohort solving the same problem in real time. With each other, not alone.
Built by someone who's done this for a living
16+ years across sell-side research, IR, and modeling for public companies. You’re taught what holds up under real investor questioning.
The Weekly Practice
Your home assignment each week is two things:
- 1Rebuild what we covered in class.
- 2Apply it to a real public company you choose at the start.
What You Leave With
- A full 3-statement model + DCF valuation, built on a real public company of your choice
- A portfolio piece you can show in interviews, client pitches, or on LinkedIn, not just describe
- Direct feedback on your model before you call it finished
- Confidence to explain assumptions and defend your logic live, under questioning
- Real structure you can apply to any business, not just the one you practiced on
Meet the Trainer
Mira Maralova
Investor Relations & Financial Modeling · Meraki GrowthStrong analysts aren’t the ones who know every Excel shortcut. They’re the ones who understand the thinking underneath the model.
Where I’ve worked and taught
What Past Cohort Participants Say
“I joined with almost no modeling knowledge and felt intimidated at first. By the end, I could build my own model and truly understand how the statements connect. The live exercises and practical examples made everything much easier to follow.”
“As a CPA and finance leader, I had worked with models before, but this cohort helped me structure my thinking much more clearly. The practical sessions gave me a strong framework for building decision-ready models for clients.”
“This course gave me a much clearer understanding of how financial statements, business logic, and modelling connect. Modelling starts with the business, not the formulas.”
Join the next cohort
Cohort 3 starts October 12.
Your cohort access includes:
- 6 weeks: one recorded lecture + one live working session, weekly
- A complete 3-statement model built from scratch
- A portfolio case: DCF valuation on a real public company of your choice
- Lifetime access to recordings and materials
- Weekly assignments and direct feedback
Early bird price, before October 6.
100% risk-free. If the cohort isn’t valuable within the first 30 days (having attended at least the first two live sessions), request a full refund.
Before You Join
Common questions.
I already know the theory. Is this still for me?
Almost certainly, yes. Most people in this cohort can already read a balance sheet or describe a cash flow statement. The gap this closes isn’t theory, it’s building and defending a model live, under questioning. If you’ve never built one unaided, start to finish, this is built for exactly that.
How much time does it actually take?
About 2.5 hours a week for the recorded lecture and the live working session, plus roughly 3–3.5 hours of home assignment: rebuilding what you covered and extending it on your own public-company portfolio case. Around 6 hours a week in total, built to fit alongside a full-time job, not compete with it.
Is this just templates and shortcuts?
No template is handed to you. You build the model from a blank sheet, driver by driver, so you understand why every line exists, which is exactly what a template-based course doesn’t teach.
What if I miss the live session?
Both the recorded lecture and the live session are yours to keep, and you keep access to post-cohort Q&A for three weeks after the program ends, so you won’t fall behind from missing one week.
What tools do I need?
Excel. No add-ins, no PowerBI, nothing to buy. The point is understanding the logic well enough that the tool becomes secondary.
Cohort 3 starts October 12: small group, live.
Six weeks from now, you could be the person in the room who answers instantly.
Join the next cohort · $549