Financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech company, including risk analysis, business models, U.S. securities law, financial accounting, tax issues, and stock options, explained accessibly. This book offers an accessible guide to the financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech business in such areas as engineering, computing, and science. It explains a range of subjects—from risk analysis to stock incentive programs for founders and key employees—for students and aspiring entrepreneurs who have no prior training in finance or accounting. The book begins with the rigorous analysis any prospective entrepreneur should undertake before launching a business, covering risks associated with a new venture, the reasons startup companies fail, and the stages of financing. It goes on to discuss business models and their components, business plans, and exit planning; forms of business organization, and factors to consider in choosing one; equity allocation to founders and employees; applicable U.S. securities law; and sources of equity capital. The book describes principles of financial accounting, the four basic financial statements, and financial ratios useful in assessing management performance. It also explains financial planning and the use of budgets; profit planning; stock options and other option-type awards; methodologies for valuing a private company; economic assessment of a potential investment project; and the real options approach to risk and managerial flexibility. Appendixes offer case studies of Uber and of the valuation of Tentex.

This revised and updated edition of Nesheim's underground Silicon Valley bestseller incorporates twenty-three case studies of successful start-ups, including tables of wealth showing how much money founders and investors realized from each venture. The phenomenal success of the initial public offerings (IPOs) of many new internet companies obscures the fact that fewer than six out of 1 million business plans submitted to venture capital firms will ever reach the IPO stage. Many fail, according to start-up expert John Nesheim, because the entrepreneurs did not have access to the invaluable lessons that come from studying the real-world venture experiences of successful companies. Now they do. Acclaimed by entrepreneurs the world over, this practical handbook is filled with hard-to-find information and guidance covering every key phase of a start-up, from idea to IPO: how to create a winning business plan, how to value the firm, how venture capitalists work, how they make their money, where to find alternative sources of funding, how to select a good lawyer, and how to protect intellectual property. Nesheim aims to improve the odds of success for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and offers an insider's perspective from firsthand experience on one of the toughest challenges they face -- convincing venture capitalists or investment banks to provide financing. This complete, classic reference tool is essential reading for first-time high-tech entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs already involved in a start-up who want to increase their chances of success to rise to the top.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

This book examines the adverse effects of complexity, information asymmetries, transaction costs, and uncertainty on investors’ decision making. It suggests mitigating those effects using appropriate and matching signals, and analyzes a sample of 903 German startups to quantitatively highlight the distinct financing patterns and characteristics of high-tech startups. It then investigates the reasons for these patterns on the basis of a qualitative study that includes 34 interviews with investors and entrepreneurs in the US and Germany and an international expert panel. Lastly, it presents a framework that matches complexity factors with appropriate productive signals.

This book is written primarily for people who are creating the future high-tech world by designing, building, and marketing innovative products. More specifically, it is for all engineers, engineering managers, entrepreneurs and intapreneurs. The book provides insight into the problems entrepreneurs face and gives a model for successful startup companies in a formal checklist.

“An incisive history of the venture-capital industry.” —New Yorker “An excellent and original economic history of venture capital.” —Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution “A detailed, fact-filled account of America’s most celebrated moneymen.” —New Republic “Extremely interesting, readable, and informative...Tom Nicholas tells you most everything you ever wanted to know about the history of venture capital, from the financing of the whaling industry to the present multibillion-dollar venture funds.” —Arthur Rock “In principle, venture capital is where the ordinarily conservative, cynical domain of big money touches dreamy, long-shot enterprise. In practice, it has become the distinguishing big-business engine of our time...[A] first-rate history.” —New Yorker VC tells the riveting story of how the venture capital industry arose from America’s longstanding identification with entrepreneurship and risk-taking. Whether the venture is a whaling voyage setting sail from New Bedford or the latest Silicon Valley startup, VC is a state of mind as much as a way of doing business, exemplified by an appetite for seeking extreme financial rewards, a tolerance for failure and experimentation, and a faith in the promise of innovation to generate new wealth. Tom Nicholas’s authoritative history takes us on a roller coaster of entrepreneurial successes and setbacks. It describes how iconic firms like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia invested in Genentech and Apple even as it tells the larger story of VC’s birth and evolution, revealing along the way why venture capital is such a quintessentially American institution—one that has proven difficult to recreate elsewhere.

Financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech company, including risk analysis, business models, U.S. securities law, financial accounting, tax issues, and stock options, explained accessibly. This book offers an accessible guide to the financial aspects of launching and operating a high-tech business in such areas as engineering, computing, and science. It explains a range of subjects—from risk analysis to stock incentive programs for founders and key employees—for students and aspiring entrepreneurs who have no prior training in finance or accounting. The book begins with the rigorous analysis any prospective entrepreneur should undertake before launching a business, covering risks associated with a new venture, the reasons startup companies fail, and the stages of financing. It goes on to discuss business models and their components, business plans, and exit planning; forms of business organization, and factors to consider in choosing one; equity allocation to founders and employees; applicable U.S. securities law; and sources of equity capital. The book describes principles of financial accounting, the four basic financial statements, and financial ratios useful in assessing management performance. It also explains financial planning and the use of budgets; profit planning; stock options and other option-type awards; methodologies for valuing a private company; economic assessment of a potential investment project; and the real options approach to risk and managerial flexibility. Appendixes offer case studies of Uber and of the valuation of Tentex.