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Rating: 
Summary: Looking to get funded? Well, first learn how to FUND!
Review: A great introduction to those completely unfamiliar to the world of Venture Capital. For experts, it just provides one other perspective, because of the age of the book - I'm afraid it's only usefulness is...If you are an entrepreneur and are looking to get funding for your nascent startup, you better learn what VC's look for. Although this book is a bit dated, it still lays out the fundamentals of HOW TO INVEST IN GOOD COMPANIES FROM THE VC'S PERSPECTIVE. "If you want to catch a crook, you have to think like one" - if you are pitching to VC's, learn what they look for in their investments. I bought it when I was trying to get funding for my startup and it helped me immeasurably.
Rating: 
Summary: Start With A Strong Foundation
Review: After reading some previous previews, I thought it would be appropiate to respond. One reader stated that the material in the book was updated with old school material and a lot of check off list and did not focus on the big ticket deals. Well, no one book will contain every little detail of the business in all reality as some may desire. This books provides a great foundation or a starting point for the industry of venture capitalism. Anyone that masters with basic material will have no problem using common sense to build upon this knowledge with current issues of today. Besides, the author enclosed contact information for getting more information about venture capital training or information within the book. Let me close with this, if you are serious about learning about the venture capital industry then this is a SUPERIOR book to begin with. And if you become an astute student of venture capital industry then obviously this book will only be the beginning stage of your venture capital education. And also this book is great for entrepreneurs!(Understand those whom you plan to deal with$$$)...
Rating:
Summary: Start With A Strong Foundation
Review: After reading some previous previews, I thought it would be appropiate to respond. One reader stated that the material in the book was updated with old school material and a lot of check off list and did not focus on the big ticket deals. Well, no one book will contain every little detail of the business in all reality as some may desire. This books provides a great foundation or a starting point for the industry of venture capitalism. Anyone that masters with basic material will have no problem using common sense to build upon this knowledge with current issues of today. Besides, the author enclosed contact information for getting more information about venture capital training or information within the book. Let me close with this, if you are serious about learning about the venture capital industry then this is a SUPERIOR book to begin with. And if you become an astute student of venture capital industry then obviously this book will only be the beginning stage of your venture capital education. And also this book is great for entrepreneurs!(Understand those whom you plan to deal with$$$)...
Rating: 
Summary: Conservative, old-school material, mostly checklists.
Review: I need a book in spanish, the autor is david Gladstone.
Rating:
Summary: VC Basics
Review: Much updated from previous editions, David Gladstone's useful text provides a very cursory survey of deal and investment techniques, albeit for slightly later than "sexy" stage deals. However, as this book is designed for the novice, and as Lipper's text has fallen out of print, this sadly remains the only general text on VC investing for the inexperienced, and is useful in context of the level which it is designed to educate. While the many checklists may be somewhat annoying to seasoned VCs, they are probably indispensable to the novice investor, since they provide a summary framework when working through deal and business terms. And while the book is designed more for later stage (through certainly not LATE stage, as some have alluded to) deals, the book is, again, designed to educate the novice venture investor, who really shouldn't be doing high tech start-ups anyway. Irrespective of that, anyone who presumes to write a text on investing in high tech start ups would likely find his text applicable only for the next few months after printing. Ours is an industry that evolves very quickly, and changes rapidly in accordance to the latest trends. No one can teach you how to pick the winners in the trend that hasn't happened yet. Getting the basics from a text like Gladstone's, however, can give you the fundamentals on which to build that "knack".
Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners, not those serious about private equity
Review: This book is good for beginners who want to know more about the VC process, but it needs to be updated for modern practices. It also needs to be edited for gramatical errors, which I found unacceptable given the price of the book. If you are truly interested in private equity either as a student, angle investor, or professional, then I recommend a book by Josh Lerner: "Venture Capital & Private Equity - a Casebook". It is very thorough and modern.
Rating:
Summary: A highly useful presentation of the investor's perspective
Review: You might not expect a book published 12 years ago to be all that useful in creating your zippy new high-tech Internet-based business plan. But because it describes the perspective of the investor who is considering the commitment of other people's money into a small business, this book is indeed extraordinarily useful and well worth the price. The book does not tell you how to create a sure-fire business plan -- that kind of information needs to come from a source that relates to your industry and type of business. What this book does do, and very successfully, is compile the enduring fundamentals: including 80 pages of questions used in due diligence, 40 pages of sample investment documents, to name two examples. And these are just the appendices that follow 250 pages of investor-to-investor discussion of what to look for and what works on the front lines of venture capital investing. This book is not written for the entrepeneur, which is exactly why it is so useful if you are writing a business plan. If you are an entrepeneur who is good at thinking through both sides of business deals, this book gives you a lot to work with in trying to understand how you and your proposals will be considered by a venture capital investor.
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