Startup to Ipo: How to Build and Finance a Technology Company

Rating:
Summary: Clearing Startup Financing fog
Review: Startup To IPO is focused on the new entrepreneur but more experienced practitioners will find the book useful. Technology ventures are often started by intelligent individuals with no experience of how to finance a startup. Like cruising sharks venture capitalists pursue unwary victims with bags of cash. It is not a fair contest. Donald MacAdam draws on substantial direct experience as a senior officer or director at more than twenty companies in the electronics, software, automation, communications, and biotechnology industries to create a practical handbook for a technology entrepreneur.

MacAdam was a business associate of Adam Osborne for more than a decade. Osborne developed Osborne Computer in the early 1980s and arguably the first "guru of the microcomputer age". Drawing on vast experience MacAdam lays out a process the entrepreneur can use to even out the negotiation between VCs and their prey. I prescribe this book to entrepreneurs to make them aware of their financing options and objectives. Several clients have purchased this book.

MacAdam starts with priorities for Startups, including recruiting professional talent, protecting intellectual property, incorporating, selecting a name, handling initial capitalization, establishing proposed product feasibility, establishing an intellectual property position, and highlighting financial realities of a Startup.

MacAdam delivers advice on cash flow, product development, preparing for and negotiating venture capital. The book contains wisdom about biotechnology startups, liquidity through growth periods, stock options, hiring an investment bank, and finally the Initial Public Offering or IPO - i.e. when do you cash out?

Scenarios in the book are real examples of disruptive business issues. As a former commercial banker on the lending side of the equation I can see value in learning from this small book what actually happens and action entrepreneurs can take to achieve advantageous financing objectives.



James Van Slyck MBA, CMC
Waterloo, Ontario Canada