The concepts behind every question.
16 guides covering the finance interview topics CapTableClash actually quizzes on: what each concept means, the method behind it worked through with real numbers, and the questions interviewers tend to ask about it. New guides publish regularly. Every guide ends with one live question from that topic, the same engine and clock a real duel uses, no account required.
Same technical foundation everywhere. What actually differs is the process: Morgan Stanley's group exercise and stock pitch, Lazard's DCF-heavy first round, JPMorgan's risk-and-controls theme. Six firms, each with its own real, reported format and a practice round filtered to what that firm actually leans on.
Valuation
What a company is worth, and the three standard ways to argue it: intrinsic value from its own cash flow, relative value against public peers, and the prices acquirers have actually paid.
DCF (Discounted Cash Flow)
Project unlevered free cash flow, discount it at WACC, and bridge enterprise value to a per-share price. The walkthrough asked in almost every finance interview.
Enterprise Value vs. Equity Value
What EV actually measures, how it differs from market capitalization, and how to bridge between the two with debt, cash, preferred stock, and minority interest.
Trading Comps
Valuing a company by how the market prices similar public companies, and the multiples (EV/EBITDA, P/E) that carry the comparison.
EBITDA Explained
Why EBITDA became the standard base for valuation multiples, what gets added back to it, and why it is not the same thing as cash flow.
Levered vs. Unlevered FCF
Unlevered free cash flow belongs to everyone with a claim on the business; levered free cash flow belongs to equity alone, after debt has been served.
Precedent Transactions
Valuing a company by what acquirers have actually paid for similar businesses, and why those multiples run higher than trading comps.
Accounting
How the statements are built and how they move together. This is the foundation the valuation work sits on, and the first thing a technical interview tests.
The Three Statements
Why net income flows into both the cash flow statement and retained earnings, and how a single change ripples across all three statements.
Building a Cash Flow Statement
The indirect method, section by section: operating, investing, and financing, built from net income up rather than tracked transaction by transaction.
Net Working Capital & the Cash Conversion Cycle
Why growth ties up cash in receivables and inventory, and how DSO, DIO, and DPO combine into a single measure of how long that cash is stuck.
Cost of Capital
The discount rate itself: what return investors require, where it comes from, and how the same rate decides whether a project is worth doing.
WACC (Cost of Capital)
The weighted average cost of capital, from CAPM's cost of equity through the after-tax cost of debt to the final blended rate a DCF discounts at.
NPV vs. IRR
Net present value measures dollars created; internal rate of return measures the annualized return itself. Why they can disagree, and which one wins.
Levering & Unlevering Beta
Why a single company's own beta is noisy, and how unlevering and relevering across a peer set builds a cleaner input for the cost of equity.
Private Equity
Buying a company with borrowed money, paying the debt down with its own cash flow, and measuring what the sponsor made.
Leverage & LBOs
The debt side of a model in detail: how balances, interest, and cash available to repay them all depend on each other.
M&A
What happens to the balance sheet after a deal closes.
Venture
Preferred stock terms and what they do to a cap table when a round prices below the last one.
These guides cover standard, canonical interview material and are meant as a study aid, not a substitute for a finance course or textbook. When you are ready to test yourself under a real clock, the Ladder campaign, Rush mode, and the Daily Challenge all draw from the same question bank these pages do.