It seems crazy and presumptuous to say that the multi-hundred billion dollar startup investing industry does business all wrong, but it is nonetheless true. Not that the idea of investing is startups is crazy, as history has clearly shown there is value in that effort for both entrepreneurs and investors. Rather, it is crazy in the manner of the emperor parading around town wearing an invisible suit, with his nobles and all the press touting how wonderful and splendid his clothing. If you are an Angel investor or operating a small venture capital fund, you are likely blindly following the models set by the emperors. Meanwhile, you don't notice that it is you and not them who are naked. THE NEXT STEP for INVESTORS: Revenue-based investing explains an alternative style of investing, one that doesn't need the exceedingly rare 10x return to make money for investors, introducing a set of structures for investing in revenues rather than exits. Structures that span debt, equity, and forms in-between. Structures that benefit both entrepreneurs and investors alike. Structures that don't follow the historic norms, but which work for entrepreneurs and investors alike.

The financial services industry has a dark secret, one that costs global investors about $2.5 trillion per year. This secret quietly drains the investment portfolios and retirement accounts of almost every investor. In 1900, French mathematician, Louis Bachelier, unsuspectingly revealed this disturbing fact to the world. Since then, hundreds of academic studies have supported Bachelier's findings. This book offers overwhelming proof of this, and shows investors how to obtain their optimal rate of return by matching their risk capacity to an appropriate risk exposure. A globally diversified portfolio of index funds is the optimal way to accomplish this. Index Funds is the treatment of choice for wayward investors. Below market returns in investment portfolios and pension accounts are the result of investors gambling with their hard earned money. This 12-Step Program will put active investors on the road to recovery. Each step is designed to bring investors closer to embracing a prudent and sound strategy of buying, holding, and rebalancing an index portfolio.

Nine out of every ten startups will fail. Want to avoid their mistakes and become part of the 10% that succeed? THE NEXT STEP is the first series to take entrepreneurs step-by-step through the process from raw idea to operational startup. Each step includes a set of key questions designed to help you build a business plan and pitches for potential investors and customers. Book 3: A Guide to Building a Startup Financial Plan covers the whole process from projecting revenue to estimating expenses, developing a cash flow statement, and analyzing your break-even point. Step by step, from a blank spreadsheet to a five-year financial model. Whether you're a seasoned professional looking to make a change, a new college graduate with a big idea, or a small business owner in need of more structure, this must-read series from serial entrepreneur Luni Libes will help make your idea a profitable reality.

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.

Financial Planning?The Next Step: A Practical Approach to Merging Your Clients' Money with Their Lives focuses on the way to structure a practice to ensure financial planners are focused on their clients' needs. A specialist in financial life planning, Diliberto challenges the notion of asset-centered financial planning in favor of the client-centered approach. He uses stories, personal examples, and wisdom from his career to discuss how to plan holistically from the starting point'who is your client and what are their personal goals and needs?Not focused solely on the relationship with the client, Diliberto shines a bright light on the practice itself. He examines how a firm is structured, who is part of the financial planning team, compensation, and effective and reasonable marketing for the financial planning firm.

Explanations to the inner workings of one of the least understood, but arguably most important, areas of business finance is offered to readers in this engaging volume: venture capital. Venture capitalists provide necessary investment to seed (or startup) companies, but the startup is only the beginning, there is much more to be explored. These savvy investors help guide young entrepreneurs, who likely have little experience, to turn their businesses into the Googles, Facebooks, and Groupons of the world. This book explains the often-complex methods venture capitalists use to value companies and to get the most return on their investments, or ROI. This book is a must-have for any reader interested in the business world.

The small investor's step-by-step plan for low-risk, high-return investing, revised and updated to reflect recent changes in tax laws.