(Part 2) Best venture capital books according to redditors
We found 365 Reddit comments discussing the best venture capital books. We ranked the 62 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Articles from reputable sources are a decent source of knowledge, but some quality business books will get you an infinitely better understanding of concepts. Here is my personal business book list if you want to get a "universal generalist" understanding of business:
I am graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce Honors degree in May and I can easily say that one of these books (average price ~25$) has significantly more content than most individual classes I have taken (~600$). However, keep in mind that business knowledge and business acumen are two entirely different things. Knowledge is easily obtainable through books like these, and acumen is the result of applied experience with decision making. In short, it is one thing to be book smart, but it is another to get out there and actually apply it. No one can give you that in the form of an article or book - you have to do that yourself.
edit: added links to amazon
There is no one book. What you are looking for is perspectives.
My suggestion, first up: Start with The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
It is a great book for people who are currently employed, and are struggling to understand why business owners think the way they think. Also, it introduces some basic lean thinking concepts (Theory of Constraints) that are very useful regardless of whether you are trying to be an entrepreneur or not. If you plan to hire people, this should be required reading for all of them. Remember, the book was written in the last century, some culture shock is expected.
Next: I would highly recommend reading The Lean Startup. It's a bit dated now, and newer refinements are available, but every other book kind of builds upon this book.
Now you should be able to relate to whether your business idea is sound or not. Next you want to understand, how other people became successful, for this, you need to read Nir Eyal's Hooked. The book is an eye opener for how various online businesses keep making us coming back for more.
Now you are close to building your product, but maybe you need to understand if you are onto something worth selling or not? The Lean Startup will tell you to do a Smokescreen MVP or a Concierge MVP. An even better approach is defined in Sprint. This approach allows you to test business assumptions in a highly structured manner.
After all of this, hopefully, you will someday reach a stage, where you will need to go and pitch your idea to investors. Get Backed teaches you to put together a presentation for investors, and how to handle the presentation.
At the end of all of this, you might be feeling very optimistic about life and stuff, but to keep yourself grounded, read up on Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It is one of the most humbling books you could ever read, and once in a lifetime kind of a book that is as profound as the Chicken Soup books.
Apologize if this is not exactly what you’re looking for, but I just finished it - truly enjoyable. Bad Blood is a story about how a Silicon Valley startup cheated its investors and a bit more. Give the sample a try to see if it’s your thing!
Say no more, fam.
You don't need a degree to run a business. Having your own business allows you to experiment with these books first hand instead of taking some professor's word for it. Professor's usually just read what the book says. If they were actually good at running a business they'd probably be doing that.
I was inspired by this, but can't make salad dressing. And White Man's Burden is breadpig required reading ;)
i'm not quite a CFO but i do work in tech / at a startup / in finance. i can give a quick list of stuff I'd recommend to someone making the jump:
i think great CFOs for early stage can run the finance side but also kick in with the Ops stuff and have a good handle on product. You're more of the grease, and your job is to keep things humming and get out of the way to let people build.
In general, when it comes to things like SEO, SEM, etc you are better off sticking with blogs and content sites like SEOMoz, Marketing Sherpa, and Danny Sullivan/Search Engine World. By the time a book is written it's usually out of date in these fields.
It is written by Dr. Julian Hosp - Cryptocurrencies simply explained -> https://www.amazon.de/Cryptocurrencies-simply-explained-Co-Founder-Decentralization-ebook/dp/B077GPKK2Q/ref=nodl_
Read this by one of my old professors. Why? Because maybe 1% of the time a great idea will sell itself. The other 99% of the time YOU will need to sell it. Learn how.
The Art of the Pitch
It's in this book (I borrowed it from the library and don't have it on hand):
http://www.amazon.com/Portable-MBA-Entrepreneurship/dp/0470481315/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265683415&sr=8-1
The book is on entrepreneurship and they were referring to real entrepreneurs.
In general, startup founders in areas such as biotech, telecommunications (optical, wireless, infrastructure) and any field where an advanced degree is required tend to be older -- are you familiar with trends in any of these areas?
I can provide many examples of this but I provided two in my earlier post that almost everyone is familiar with.
EDIT: Here's a more pertinent link: http://www.cra.org/wp/index.php?p=152
"After surveying 500 engineering and technology companies established between 1995 and 2005, the authors found that the median age of U.S.-born tech founders was 39 (with twice as many aged over 50 as were younger than 25) and that 92% of them held at least a bachelor’s degree."
Here are three books that I've read within the past year that I loved:
​
Rand Fishkin's Lost and Founder
April Dunford's Obviously Awesome
Verne Harnish's Scaling Up
​
Of the three, only Dunford's book is marketing specific but they all offer such excellent insights that you need to think about marketing as an element of a company, not a stand-alone function. Fishkin is the founder of SEO firm Moz, and his book is a page-turner.
​
Good luck!
The Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki
Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur - Dermot Berkery
Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on Your Terms - Jeffrey Bussgang
And not specifically about the "money part," but an absolutely invaluable book:
Four Steps to the Epiphany- Steve Blank
And don't neglect reading Paul Graham's Essays, Fred Wilson's Blog, Ask The VC, and Feld Thoughts.
This short, terrific book tells the tale:
In Pursuit of the Common Good: Twenty-Five Years of Improving the World, One Bottle of Salad Dressing at a Time.
It was co-written by A.E. Hotchner, Paul's best friend and co-founder of Newman's Own. Hotchner was also pal with Ernest Hemingway. Needless to say, he is a hell of a writer. I highly recommend it. There is a lot of humor and when they write about opening the Hole in the Wall camps, it's very moving and inspiring. It's a memorable portrait of Paul, too. Great book.
Wazzup!
I am a huge fan of the Lean Startup methodology.
Basically, create the most basic version of your idea possible and then try to sell it to people. If they buy it, then iterate and make your product better.
That's how I started Fringe.
I thought- "I bet I could sell CrossFit equipment to people over the internet."
Then I thought, "What is the cheapest way I could test if people would buy gear from me online?"
Answer: throw up a Shopify store with one product and see if people buy.
So I bought some gymnastics rings, started a store on Shopify, and sold them.
Then I thought, "These people bought rings from me, would they buy kettlebells too?"
So I sourced kettlebells and sure enough, people bought.
In other words, I think your heart is in the right place, but I would advise a different approach.
I always tell people to be real hard nosed about whether they want to start a business or they just need an expensive hobby.
But, to answer your specific questions.
As for communities that can help, check out the Tropical MBA podcast- that can be a great jumping off point into the world of crazy ass entrepreneurs.
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.
Lol. The first sentence of the review names a co-writer (Jared Cohen), and there are repeated mentions of "the authors," not just "the author":
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Digital-Age-ebook/dp/B00ALBR2N6
Just to build on this:
I couldn't make up my mind either, so I searched for these on the Amazon US site since I don't use Goodreads to see how reviews looked, etc. The resulting links, with the smile. prefix for charity aspect in case you make a purchase, are below. YMMV.
The Other F Word: 3.4
Business Development for Dummies: 3.5
Startup Mixology: 4.27
Starting a Tech Business: 2.67
The 4 Lenses of Innovation: 3.62
StartupLand: 4.01
All in Startup: 4.18
The Customer Funded Business: 3.73
Trend Driven Innovation: 4.38
Monetizing Innovation: 4.20
The Ways to New: 3.84
Startup Checklist: 4.10
The Art of Startup Fundraising: 4.11
Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 4.26
.
Not in the original list:
The Art of Opportunity: How to Build Growth and Ventures Through Strategic Innovation and Visual Thinking
In my experience, the only way this would work if you're still in the idea stage is if you have a pre-existing personal relationship with the lawyer in question who is willing to do some pro-bono legwork for you or work on contingency.
Lawyers cost money. Like investors, it is very unlikely that they want to invest their limited time on you unless they can see a clear benefit to themselves. If you have the money, it is better spent elsewhere during the idea phase.
Echoing what I said earlier, and what jashs103 said below, at the very minimum you are going to need a well thought-out business plan, preferably with financial projections... and your first investors will likely be angel investors (family, friends, etc) who are willing to pony up some money while you refine your idea and strategy.
Go to the library and check out some books on writing business plans and raising money. One book that is pretty helpful is Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur.
I've read a lot of the books recommended so far in the comments, and IMO a lot of them wouldn't really apply to OP and what he's looking for.
For the financial analysis stuff you're looking for, I would recommend ["Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits"] (http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Numbers-Straight-Talk-Profits/dp/1608320561/ref=pd_sim_b_52?ie=UTF8&refRID=1S8HGR7A61EGGQWPC28R).
I would also second "The Personal MBA" as someone already posted here. I also liked ["E-Myth Mastery"] (http://www.amazon.com/E-Myth-Mastery-Michael-E-Gerber-ebook/dp/B000RO9VIQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419395662&sr=1-1&keywords=e-myth+mastery) for the company structure and organization that you're looking for -- if you can get past the waffling and storytelling crap Gerber is so fond of, there's actually good information within those pages.
Lastly, "Street Smarts" is also a great book on business strategy for those with more experience like you.
Venture Deals is great and I'd also strongly recommend Mastering the VC Game by Jeff Bussgang. It's a really easy read and brings a lot of clarity to the subject of equity financing.
Amazon link
https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1119594820/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
Is probably the standard intro text.
There are several "phases." It varies from company to company but generally looks like the following:
You want each round of funding to be at a higher valuation than the last, that way each previous investor can claim a better and better balance sheet and the company gets increasingly large injections of cash to fuel growth (you get your next round of investors on growth).
If subsequent rounds are valued less than before, previous investors (and founders) get screwed and lose a lot of control + ownership. But at that point it is usually preferable to getting no money and going out of business (most startups have large burn rates and not a good monetization strategy).
Each round founders and previous investors give up some control of the company to new investors. So early investors usually have the right of first refusal. They can continue to invest in each round and keep their control for additional money.
I cannot stress how hype driven this is. When a company seems great, everyone wants in. If a company seems to be struggling, it becomes hard to raise money very quickly).
This is why you see successful startup CEOs are often natural hype machines. Its a necessary survival skill. Technical and personal skills are somewhat less so
​
*Could also be known as seed phase
** Exit means buyout by larger company, like Google. Or an IPO on the stock market. This is where investors make back money, in theory
More info: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/102015/series-b-c-funding-what-it-all-means-and-how-it-works.asp
If you really want a good guide book, I would suggest this one: https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Deals-Smarter-Lawyer-Capitalist/dp/1119594820/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=venture+deals&qid=1571807378&sr=8-2
Not particularly useful if you are just casually curious, but if you want the nuts and bolts on how the process works, its a good one.
I have the Personal MBA and while I haven't read it in it's entirety, I will say I never plan to because the few chapters I've read I've found lacking in depth. Seeing as this is posted in r/entrepeneur, I would recommend The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship (link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470481315/)
Hijacking this for a humble plug for the best book I've ever read on presenting / took 4 months of courses with this guy. He's insanely talented and led some of the best presentations the advertising world has ever seen. Five stars on Amazon.
Read this book, Art of the Pitch. It's amazing when it comes to this stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Pitch-Persuasion-Presentation/dp/0230120512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371748354&sr=8-1&keywords=art+of+the+pitch
Hi Jawilson2, here's a few books I've read in the past that helped prime me. I guess at the minimum these books helped me understand who was a bullshitter and who wasn't when they claimed they "knew the business side."
Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur - Fund raising basics. Key if you ever plan to raise money. You'd be stupid to try without reading this first.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071496025/
Business Model Generation - This book helps you think through the business model issues most "hacker" type entrepreneurs skip. Makes you think more holistically.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470876417/
The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law - Basics about legal issues you should be aware exist. I haven't read through it all at once, but it's a good guide when I run up against areas I'm murky on.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Entrepreneurs-Guide-Business-Law/dp/0324204930/
📅 2018-04-23 ⏰ 15:25:19 (UTC)
>I'm doing an AMA on Reddit tomorrow for the launch of https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup/dp/0735213321. Hope to see lots of you there, asking tough Qs 😅
>— Rand Fishkin ✅ (@randfish)
>🔁️ 17 💟 111
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