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Venture Deals by Brad Feld is probably what you are looking for.
+1 on feld's book. also check out The Business of Venture Capital by Mahendra Ramsinghani
Came here to post the same two mentioned above. Besides those, the third I might add is 'Mastering the VC Game' from Bussgang at Flybridge.
Currently half way through and can 2nd this! Awesome read for like what $8 on Amazon?
This book just came out this week. It is more entrepreneur focused, but it is supposed to be good.
http://www.amazon.com/Get-Backed-Perfect-Launch-Venture/dp/1633690725
Is there a Venture Capital equivalent to Rosenbaum/Pearl's Investment Banking? (Originally Posted: 04/02/2014)
Rosenbaum/Pearl's book was my initial go to for understanding valuation methodology in the world of IB. Is there a similar resource for Venture Capital? Maybe it doesn't focus on valuation the entire time, but is there a similar a resource that is considered "must-read" literature for VC? Specifically I'm looking to understand the process VC firms go through when selecting investments, how they structure their equity contribution, key growth/valuation metrics they pay attention to, etc.
Thanks!
I like "The Business of Venture Capital" http://www.amazon.com/The-Business-Venture-Capital-Practitioners/dp/047…
Has more or less what you're looking for, I believe.
Man, Wiley is dominating the financial reference market.
This is the best one I know of:
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/07/venture-deals-be-smarter-than-y…
Also, check out Brad Feld's other blog askthevc.com as it has a ton of great information.
I concur. Feld is a great resource. He wrote a book called "Be smarter than your venture capitalist", which basically takes all the content from his blog posts and puts it into book format. A good resource. Although it won't teach you in detail waterfall modelling taking into account multiple share classes, preferences, etc...
The Dark Side of Valuation by Aswath Damodaran might also be good for VC. I think he might also have a PDF of it on his website.
'Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur'
Great, thank you! Will check these out
Any good VC-oriented valuation books? And would any early stage VCs here mind PMing me? (Originally Posted: 11/13/2014)
I was wondering if there were any good books on VC (seed, series A) valuation similar to what the Rosenbaum & Pearl text is to banking (detailed, highly recommended for beginners, a good study/reference guide etc). I've gathered some of the "basics" to valuing early stage stuff through the search function here but was wondering if there was anything more in depth I could read.
I also have a specific question: if anyone here at an early stage fund wouldn't mind PMing me I'd be very grateful (confidentiality assured). Thanks.
Step 1) Reverse sign on Free Cash Flow Step 2) Multiply by 100x
.... But seriously, I really don't think it would be possible to write a book on early stage valuation, as there's not enough standardization for there to be a formal process (definitely not a consistent one). Would be interested to hear if I'm wrong though
Valuing Young, Start-up and Growth Companies: Estimation Issues and Valuation Challenges - Aswath Damodaran
http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/pdfiles/papers/younggrowth.pdf
No, there is none. VC financial methods are not that standardized and change wildly over time. The best book would be Brad Feld's Venture Deals, but the "bible" on early-stage investing is just following the blogs of early stage vcs and entrepreneurs - avc, feld's, chris dixon's, etc.
I would so back this up - follow the blogs of early stage VCs
More about identifying potential breakout. This is a combination of market sizing and assessing execution. Learning the right metrics for execution is a sector thing, thus the VC blogs. What you can learn from books is the process / term sheet piece, I wasted a lot of time puzzling out the economic implications of subscription agreements via logic before I realized everyone uses the same 20-30 constructions with different numbers.
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