The books you need to read before pitching investors.
If you're reading this, you are likely considering raising money for your business. We have some great tools to help you simplify the fundraising process, but we recommend you also check out the books below to help you get ready. Remember, the fundraising preparation process can take a long time, so completing these reads before you start pitching investors should be doable. We guarantee you will be thankful you did.
Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin. The Founder's Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team.
Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them. He looks at whether it is a good idea to cofound with friends or relatives, how and when to split the equity within the founding team, and how to recognize when a successful founder-CEO should exit or be fired. Wasserman explains how to anticipate, avoid, or recover from disastrous mistakes that can splinter a founding team, strip founders of control, and leave founders without a financial payoff for their hard work and innovative ideas. He highlights the need at each step to strike a careful balance between controlling the startup and attracting the best resources to grow it, and demonstrates why the easy short-term choice is often the most perilous in the long term.
The Founder's Dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, while mining quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders.
People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups. This book offers solutions."
- The above description is provided by the publisher
"What are venture capitalists saying about your startup behind closed doors? And what can you do to influence that conversation?
If Silicon Valley is the greatest wealth-generating machine in the world, Sand Hill Road is its humming engine. That's where you'll find the biggest names in venture capital, including famed VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, where lawyer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-VC Scott Kupor serves as managing partner.
Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VCs think. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Kupor explains exactly how VCs decide where and how much to invest, and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal and make the most of their relationships with VCs. Kupor explains, for instance:
• Why most VCs typically invest in only one startup in a given business category.
• Why the skill you need most when raising venture capital is the ability to tell a compelling story.
• How to handle a "down round," when startups have to raise funds at a lower valuation than in the previous round.
• What to do when VCs get too entangled in the day-to-day operations of the business.
• Why you need to build relationships with potential acquirers long before you decide to sell."
- The above description is provided by the publisher
"Get Backed isn't just about startup fundraising. It's a handbook for anyone who has an idea and needs to build relationships to get it off the ground.
Over the last 3 years, entrepreneurs Evan Loomis and Evan Baehr have raised $45 million for their own ventures, including the second largest round on the fundraising platform AngelList. In Get Backed, they show you exactly what they and dozens of others did to raise money—even the mistakes they made—while sharing the secrets of the world's best storytellers, fundraisers, and startup accelerators. They'll also teach you how to use "the friendship loop", a step-by-step process that can be used to initiate and build relationships with anyone, from investors to potential cofounders. And, most of all, they'll help you create a pitch deck, building on the real-life examples of 15 ventures that have raised over $150 million.
What's in the book?
• The original pitch decks and fundraising strategies of 15 ventures that raised over $150 million
• Email scripts that will get you a meeting with angel investors, venture capitalists, and potential board members
• Pitching exercises developed by startup talent beds like Stanford University's d.school and Techstars
• A breakdown of the 10 essential pitch deck slides, how to create them, and what questions you should answer with each
• An overview of the 5 main funding sources for startups, the pros and cons of each, and who the big players are
• A crash-course in visual and presentation design that will make any deck beautiful
• Templates for 4 stories every entrepreneur should know how to tell
- The above description is provided by the publisher
How do venture capital deals come together? This is one of the most frequent questions asked by each generation of new entrepreneurs. Surprisingly, there is little reliable information on the subject. No one understands this better than Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson. The founders and driving force behind the Foundry Group—a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage information technology companies—Brad and Jason have been involved in hundreds of venture capital financings. Their investments range from small startups to large Series A venture financing rounds. The new edition of Venture Deals continues to show fledgling entrepreneurs the inner-workings of the VC process, from the venture capital term sheet and effective negotiating strategies to the initial seed and the later stages of development.
Fully updated to reflect the intricacies of startups and entrepreneurship in today's dynamic economic environment, this new edition includes revisions and updates to coverage on negotiating, gender issues, ICO’s, and economic terms. New chapters examine legal and procedural considerations relevant to fundraising, bank debt, equity and convertible debt, how to hire an investment banker to sell a company, and more.
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist is a must-have resource for Any aspiring entrepreneur, venture capitalist, or lawyer involved in VC deals as well as students and instructors in related areas of study.
- The above description is provided by the publisher
Read this book right now so you can look your potential VC in the eye with confidence." -David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PRFinding the right venture capitalist to back your start-up is a challenge. Even if you manage to get backing, you want your VC to be a partner, not some dictator who will undermine your vision and take control of your life's work.
Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. Now he draws on his unique perspective to offer high-level insights, colorful stories, and practical advice gathered from his own experience as well as from interviews with dozens of the most successful entrepreneurs and VCs. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partnership that works for everyone.
- The above description is provided by the publisher
The books you need to read before pitching investors.
If you're reading this, you are likely considering raising money for your business. We have some great tools to help you simplify the fundraising process, but we recommend you also check out the books below to help you get ready. Remember, the fundraising preparation process can take a long time, so completing these reads before you start pitching investors should be doable. We guarantee you will be thankful you did.
Often downplayed in the excitement of starting up a new business venture is one of the most important decisions entrepreneurs will face: should they go it alone, or bring in cofounders, hires, and investors to help build the business? More than just financial rewards are at stake. Friendships and relationships can suffer. Bad decisions at the inception of a promising venture lay the foundations for its eventual ruin. The Founder's Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team.
Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them. He looks at whether it is a good idea to cofound with friends or relatives, how and when to split the equity within the founding team, and how to recognize when a successful founder-CEO should exit or be fired. Wasserman explains how to anticipate, avoid, or recover from disastrous mistakes that can splinter a founding team, strip founders of control, and leave founders without a financial payoff for their hard work and innovative ideas. He highlights the need at each step to strike a careful balance between controlling the startup and attracting the best resources to grow it, and demonstrates why the easy short-term choice is often the most perilous in the long term.
The Founder's Dilemmas draws on the inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, while mining quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders.
People problems are the leading cause of failure in startups. This book offers solutions."
- The above description is provided by the publisher
"What are venture capitalists saying about your startup behind closed doors? And what can you do to influence that conversation?
If Silicon Valley is the greatest wealth-generating machine in the world, Sand Hill Road is its humming engine. That's where you'll find the biggest names in venture capital, including famed VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, where lawyer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-VC Scott Kupor serves as managing partner.
Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VCs think. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Kupor explains exactly how VCs decide where and how much to invest, and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal and make the most of their relationships with VCs. Kupor explains, for instance:
• Why most VCs typically invest in only one startup in a given business category.
• Why the skill you need most when raising venture capital is the ability to tell a compelling story.
• How to handle a "down round," when startups have to raise funds at a lower valuation than in the previous round.
• What to do when VCs get too entangled in the day-to-day operations of the business.
• Why you need to build relationships with potential acquirers long before you decide to sell."
- The above description is provided by the publisher
"Get Backed isn't just about startup fundraising. It's a handbook for anyone who has an idea and needs to build relationships to get it off the ground.
Over the last 3 years, entrepreneurs Evan Loomis and Evan Baehr have raised $45 million for their own ventures, including the second largest round on the fundraising platform AngelList. In Get Backed, they show you exactly what they and dozens of others did to raise money—even the mistakes they made—while sharing the secrets of the world's best storytellers, fundraisers, and startup accelerators. They'll also teach you how to use "the friendship loop", a step-by-step process that can be used to initiate and build relationships with anyone, from investors to potential cofounders. And, most of all, they'll help you create a pitch deck, building on the real-life examples of 15 ventures that have raised over $150 million.
What's in the book?
• The original pitch decks and fundraising strategies of 15 ventures that raised over $150 million
• Email scripts that will get you a meeting with angel investors, venture capitalists, and potential board members
• Pitching exercises developed by startup talent beds like Stanford University's d.school and Techstars
• A breakdown of the 10 essential pitch deck slides, how to create them, and what questions you should answer with each
• An overview of the 5 main funding sources for startups, the pros and cons of each, and who the big players are
• A crash-course in visual and presentation design that will make any deck beautiful
• Templates for 4 stories every entrepreneur should know how to tell
- The above description is provided by the publisher
How do venture capital deals come together? This is one of the most frequent questions asked by each generation of new entrepreneurs. Surprisingly, there is little reliable information on the subject. No one understands this better than Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson. The founders and driving force behind the Foundry Group—a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage information technology companies—Brad and Jason have been involved in hundreds of venture capital financings. Their investments range from small startups to large Series A venture financing rounds. The new edition of Venture Deals continues to show fledgling entrepreneurs the inner-workings of the VC process, from the venture capital term sheet and effective negotiating strategies to the initial seed and the later stages of development.
Fully updated to reflect the intricacies of startups and entrepreneurship in today's dynamic economic environment, this new edition includes revisions and updates to coverage on negotiating, gender issues, ICO’s, and economic terms. New chapters examine legal and procedural considerations relevant to fundraising, bank debt, equity and convertible debt, how to hire an investment banker to sell a company, and more.
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist is a must-have resource for Any aspiring entrepreneur, venture capitalist, or lawyer involved in VC deals as well as students and instructors in related areas of study.
- The above description is provided by the publisher
Read this book right now so you can look your potential VC in the eye with confidence." -David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PRFinding the right venture capitalist to back your start-up is a challenge. Even if you manage to get backing, you want your VC to be a partner, not some dictator who will undermine your vision and take control of your life's work.
Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. Now he draws on his unique perspective to offer high-level insights, colorful stories, and practical advice gathered from his own experience as well as from interviews with dozens of the most successful entrepreneurs and VCs. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partnership that works for everyone.
- The above description is provided by the publisher
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