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Entrepreneurs know the tradeoffs of external capital. The money enables faster growth and infrastructure, but the price is control and occasional chaos. In these 12 books, founders, investors, and academics share the good and the bad.
World Eaters: How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy
World Eaters
by Catherine Bracy
Bracy, founder of the nonprofit organization TechEquity, contends that the venture capital model of “hyper maximalist growth” has far-reaching negative impact and isn’t a good fit for most startups. Congressman Ro Khanna calls the book “important and insightful,” while Publishers Weekly says it’s a “convincing call for change.”
Raising Capital with Confidence
Raising Capital with Confidence
by Darin H Mangum, Esq.
The author leads a law firm specializing in securities, with clients including private investment firms and funds. He explains deal structures, how to find the right investors, legal compliance, and more, offering a practical guide to help readers avoid common financing pitfalls and meet their unique business needs for sustainable growth.
The Startup Lifecycle: The Definitive Guide to Building a Startup from Idea to Exit
The Startup Lifecycle
by Gregory Shepard
According to Shepard, nine out of 10 startups fail within five years, often due to common and avoidable mistakes. He has built and sold a dozen businesses and provides a roadmap to every phase of the startup lifecycle, from initial vision through growth and successful exit.
Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. Serial Entrepreneurs’ Secrets Revealed!
Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.
by Colin C. Campbell
Campbell combines his decades of experience as a serial entrepreneur with insights distilled from interviewing more than 30 entrepreneurs and experts to create a multi-award-winning guide to building, growing, and selling a business.
Exit-Ready Marketing: The 9-Step Framework to Maximize Your Valuation
Exit-Ready Marketing
by Shiv Narayanan
Unpredictable revenue can be an obstacle to attracting investment. Narayanan focuses on simple but sophisticated data-driven marketing strategies that create predictable revenue necessary for planning and investing in your business’s growth and increasing its value to private equity investors.
The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth
The Venture Mindset
by Ilya Strebulaev, Alex Dang
Strebulaev is the leading academic on venture capital; Dang is a senior tech executive, having worked at firms such as McKinsey and Amazon. In this national bestseller, they share key venture capital principles to improve decision-making, identify emerging trends and opportunities, and spark innovation.
Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, Inequality
Behind the Startup
by Benjamin Shestakofsky
The author, a sociologist, spent a year and a half conducting experiential research inside a successful Silicon Valley startup. He explores how the intense pressure from funders to scale rapidly creates problems for the organization and, ultimately, society at large.
Founder vs Investor: The Honest Truth about Venture Capital
Founder vs Investor
by Elizabeth Joy Zalman and Jerry Neumann
A two-time founder and a veteran venture capital investor reveal an insider’s view of how the differing motives and incentives of founders and investors — “those with the vision and those with the money” — often result in chaos in the early stages of fast-growing startups.
Two and Twenty: How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win
Two and Twenty
by Sachin Khajuria
Once an investing niche, private equity now has a vast global influence. The author, a former partner at a leading private equity firm and longtime investor, offers what Fortune calls “a true insider’s account of the industry” through stories of real-life dealmaking.
The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
The Power Law
by Sebastian Mallaby
Mallaby, a bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer finalist, examines how the nature of venture capital shapes innovation in Silicon Valley and beyond. He delves into the lesser-known aspects of the success and failure of firms such as Apple, Uber, and WeWork, blending storytelling and analysis.
Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups
Super Founders
by Ali Tamaseb
Tamaseb interviews top founders and investors, and shares inside stories from PayPal, Instacart, Sequoia Capital, Lyft, Founders Fund, ByteDance, and SpaceX, among others. The result is surprising revelations — for example, being first to market with an idea isn’t necessary for success.
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist 4th Edition
Venture Deals
by Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson
The authors have decades of experience as entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors to founders. Drawing on their involvement in scores of venture financings, they explain term sheets, negotiating strategies, legal considerations, types of debt, and how to build supportive and collaborative relationships between entrepreneurs and investors.
