Entrepreneurial Finance

Rating:
Summary: An Invaluable Resource!
Review: An excellent read for anyone seeking to become an entrepreneur or a serious finance student. A new approach to valuing new ventures which incorporates simulation to explore the uncertainty surrounding new ventures. The book provides many great case examples and valuation templates to assist. I found this book very useful to my finance education. I would highly recommend this book to anyone considering a new venture or anyone serious about finance. A great resource for professionals in the venture finance community as well!

Rating:
Summary: Ammo for the "Shark" Infested Waters
Review: For those interested in "venturing" into the shark invested venture capital (venture cannibals?)waters, don't go without first arming yourself with this practical, how-to guide. Entreprenurial Finance is unique in that it REALLY can be used by all investment players: entrepreneurs, bankers and VC's. Further, this is not just a book, but is accompanied but an Internet site that "holds your hand" through on-line spreadsheets for some of the scarier parts of finance, like valuations, but does not exclude the basics, like business plan spreadsheets. The Internet site is easy to use and self explanatory.

The book and Internet site set the standard for how educational tools should be designed. In sum, a book every entrepreneur, student and investor should have on their bookshelf and bookmarked on their computer.

BRAVO !

Rating:
Summary: The rational of financial economics and venture financing
Review: In this book the authors have blended business finance and economics in a unique way to help entrepreneurs understand the relationship between venture finance and evaluation of business risk. This book covers some important issues like financial projections, risk evaluation, financial valuation, investor diversification and contract negotiation. This book provides a framework for financial management using complex economic theories (ex. portfolio theory, capital asset pricing model) through simple and user friendly spreadsheet templates. The valuation framework with spreadsheet templates is one of the highlighting factors of this book. The valuation templates with their underlying assumptions help reduce the ambiguity that palgues venture financing today. This book comes with an access to Entrepreneurial Finance website where authors walk the readers through spreadsheet templates and sample business cases evaluated by them in the book. This book is a must buy for entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and academics.

Rating:
Summary: Good textbook structure - mediocre quality of online section
Review: The book has a good structure and has good chances to become a standard textbook in MBA classes or for industry newcomers. However, to make it a real classic it badly needs a second edition. First, there are too few (good) case examples. Second, the online tools are far from complete (something like this should never be published!). Third, the exercises need revising and are partly inconsistent or reptitive. (Comments based on online tools and materials as of June '01)

Rating:
Summary: A Major Disappointment
Review: The first edition of this text has a tendency to get too theoretical with betas and CAPM as they apply to private companies, make too many distinctions between individual and personal required rates of return without a discussion of any empirical data to back up the opinions, not explain the implications of the SML theory to private investments that well, not fully explain the theory and computations behind the models they use or why they use escalating discount rates in the models. To try to understand the models, you have to go to the web site and dissect the Excel spreadsheet. I have the impression the authors bring no practical experience to the text, only the attempt to force complicated corporate financial theory into the realm of privately held business.

As a business appraiser, I found most of the quantitative theoretical information useless and its application to privately held businesses tenuous, at best. Alternative theories and approaches were not really discussed. The concepts of expected value and simulation have some real good application possibilities, but not much time was spent on how to do it in a way usable for small entities with limited budgets and a staff with basically no statistical background. I feel that the authors' agenda was to impress the readers with what they know (or think they know), without regard to conveying their ideas in an easily understood, supportable and workable format. I found chapters 8-11 to be especially frustrating. To top it all off, there are also errors in the answers to the end of chapter questions.

On the positive side, the book was well organized and there were references to studies, papers and other texts that make further reading and investigation into the topics easier.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read in Today's New Venture Economy!
Review: This book explores the entire new venture process. A must read for anyone serious about starting a new venture or anyone interested in the new venture process. The book is easy enough for the financially-challenged and yet still interesting and challenging to the more advanced reader. The book also explores simulation and an accompanying Excel add-in, Venture.Sim, carries out the simulation. I highly recommend this book to finance students and professionals, well worth the investment!