Rating: 
Summary: Large investment in time for little payback in information
Review: A must for anyone wanting to know how VC firms work, structure themselves, and considerations for funding. This is an excellent case study that ought to be in a graduate program! It's as close as you'll get without working for a VC firm. I would suggest reading "The Venture Capital Cycle" first to get a general feel for VC and how it works. Then read the case study!
Rating: 
Summary: Get This Book!
Review: A must for anyone wanting to know how VC firms work, structure themselves, and considerations for funding. This is an excellent case study that ought to be in a graduate program! It's as close as you'll get without working for a VC firm. I would suggest reading "The Venture Capital Cycle" first to get a general feel for VC and how it works. Then read the case study!
Rating: 
Summary: Forming a Venture Capital Fund
Review: As an investor in small start ups, I had to read this book twice. The first read, the book didn't seem relevant at all. The second, somewhat more methodical read, the picture became clearer--The book is written for MBA students who think they might go to work someday for a firm that forms venture capital investment groups. That's nice, if you are thinking of working for a big venture capital company. But for the investor $300k - $3M investor wanting to understand issues like how much of the company is my investment worth, what percentage of equity should I take, can I treat my investment as a loan and still expect equity, (if yes) how does the loan repayment work so it does not strip the company of working capital and much needed startup cash, what controls do I have over management, how can I be sure they are doing with the money what they are supposed to be doing and not squirreling cash away, what happens to my equity if management needs more funding, how is management paid a salary, how is management rewarded vis a vis the investors--who is in line first, middle and last--and how do I get out early and late, this book provides answers to some of these questions buried in the case studies. You read a case study teasing out the rules of thumbs by what the investors and ownwers did in a particular case situation. In the process, the reader looks for guidelines, principles, and rules of thumb -- but these are mostly buried deep in the paragraphs or found between the lines of a case study or discussion of a case study. What to do, the rules of thumb for the middling-sophisticated investor are hard to comke by, suggesting this is a textbook meant to supplement classroom lectures and discussions. Richard Gladstone's Guide to Venture Capital is a much better primer, but the book that takes Gladstone to the next level and answers the questions I posed above has not been written by Lerner.
Rating:
Summary: Large investment in time for little payback in information
Review: If you are interested in quickly learning about how to raise a VC fund, save your time and money. This book does not offer many clues.
Rating:
Summary: Best & Most Modern Book on Private Equity/VC Available
Review: In my opinion this is best and most comprehensive overview of modern VC practices available. Dr. Lerner is cleary the nation's leading authority on VC research and his experiences are detailed in this book.The case study format is organized into 4 themes (paraphrased): 1. Raising & Structuring Funds, 2. Making Investments, 3. Exiting Invesments, 4. Other forms of VC funds. so the lessons of each individual case study support a larger and organized theme. Furthermore, the case study format makes the book more entertaining than academic texts tend to be. If you are somewhat knowledgeable about private equity then this is a "must read". If you are a beginner make sure you become familiar with the ins & outs of private equity/venture capital before reading or else you may miss a lot of the value of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Best & Most Modern Book on Private Equity/VC Available
Review: In my opinion this is best and most comprehensive overview of modern VC practices available. Dr. Lerner is cleary the nation's leading authority on VC research and his experiences are detailed in this book. The case study format is organized into 4 themes (paraphrased): 1. Raising & Structuring Funds, 2. Making Investments, 3. Exiting Invesments, 4. Other forms of VC funds. so the lessons of each individual case study support a larger and organized theme. Furthermore, the case study format makes the book more entertaining than academic texts tend to be. If you are somewhat knowledgeable about private equity then this is a "must read". If you are a beginner make sure you become familiar with the ins & outs of private equity/venture capital before reading or else you may miss a lot of the value of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great introduction and overview!
Review: Lerner has collected and arranged case studies to a very comprehensive and enjoyable book on venture capital, from an academic standpoint. However, the book is never dry as it contains real cases throughout. A great introduction.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the only book available on the subject matter
Review: Over the past few years the institutional private equity market has exploded. Riding on the backs phenomenal public markets and a wave of technological innovation, private equity in general and venture capital has become one of the most sought after investments. However, given the rash of recent publicity, stellar performance, and a balooning assets, there's surprisingly little research available about the institutional private equity market. Profs. Lerner and Gompers currently account for probably half of all academic research in this market. The institutional private equity market is quite different from angel investments. The majority of the capital at the institutional level flows from large investment institutions like public pensions, endowments and insurance companies. Moreover, the personal investing into private companies do so professionally. More than anything, the book serves as a primer to the institutional private equity market. The book was intitially meant for HBS and other MBA students. Thus, almost all the content is in case study form. In a lot of respects this is advantageous. In general, a book either has the option of being a primer or providing high level analysis on a very specific topic. Clearly this book is the former. In my opinion, the downfall of most primers are the oversimplification of topics and useless generalizations. Given the early stages of the institutional private equity market, generalizations are especially questionable and difficult. On the other hand, the case method presents users with numerous situations and predicaments facing the participants. As a result, readers gain an understanding of the issues facing this market from a number of perspectives. This books provides useful information on key topics such as investing and analyzing private equity funds from an institution's perspective, fund of funds, forming a private equity fund, and the direct investments into companies by the private equity funds, along with many other topics. Whatever level the private equity professional is functioning, understanding each of these components I imagine is key. This casebook provides an very good overview of the institutional private equity market. Likewise, to the best of my knowledge, this is the only book covering this topic.
Rating:
Summary: Good But Nothing more
Review: The book is quite good,but suffers from the case approach pitfalls- too much details for specific cases, and less generally applicable information. Thsi might be useful in the context of an MBA case study class, but certainly not as a useful reading book on the industry. The actual notes are very short and lack suficient details to be useful.
Rating:
Summary: Another Great Book!
Review: Want examples of how funding works? Want to know how Venture firms set up their business? Want to know everything about practical application of VC firms? This may be as close as you'll get without actually working in one. This ought to be a text book in graduate school. I'd suggest "The Venture Capital Cycle" as the first book to get an overview of VC's. Then, read this one and you'll be pretty proficient in terms of being an outsider. Great Case Study!
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