When you pitch a new product or marketing campaign, finance will ask two questions: "When do we break even?" and "What is the NPV?"

1. Break-Even Analysis: If you spend $100,000 building a software app (Fixed Cost), and it costs you $0 to distribute it (Variable Cost), and you sell it for $10, your break-even point is 10,000 units. Unit 10,001 is pure profit.

2. Net Present Value (NPV): This is the holy grail of corporate finance. NPV combines everything we learned this week. It takes all the cash a project will generate in the future, uses the discount rate (Cost of Capital) to translate those future dollars into Present Value, and subtracts the initial cost.

• Rule of thumb: If the NPV is greater than $0, the project creates value. Do it. If the NPV is negative, the project destroys value. Reject it.