Author: Clinton Richardson

Publisher:

Published: 2013-12

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780991247523

From the back cover: Expert advice for entrepreneurs and private company investors. Grow your business with this expanded and updated 5th edition of a resource that has been hailed by company executives, investors, business school professors and others in the know as a "masterpiece," "the best corporate finance guide on the market" and an "incredibly comprehensive resource." Own the resource that entrepreneurs and private company investors praise for its accessible, in-depth counsel on key business issues companies face when they seek funding, finance growth and deal with the challenges of expansion. Learn to attract capital, negotiate terms, evaluate funding proposals and structure financings. Discover techniques to retain key employees and protect company secrets. Get help structuring public offerings, private placements and joint ventures. Hear from a "veteran legal practitioner" who "knows his stuff" without paying the hourly rate. Tap into the experience of someone who has advised entrepreneurs and venture capital firms, sat on venture-backed boards and made angel investments. The rest is up to you. Just like it was for the author's grandfather, pictured on the cover with his management team in 1923 as they opened the world's largest coal mine. Pulled out of school in the third grade to work in the mines, he used grit, determination and street smarts to succeed. Get some street smarts here as you venture out to create something great! More about the book: Richardson's Guide answers the questions most frequently asked by owners and operators as they search for funding, negotiate financing terms, and address other critical issues. It helps venture investors and company executives understand how deals are structured and the ramifications of the compromises made in funding negotiations. The Guide starts with an introduction to private company investing, exploring key issues companies face before fundraising, why investors invest in private companies, the challenges operators and investors face, and how private company financings are priced and structured. The heart of the Guide is a 250+ strategy-packed, key-term venture finance encyclopedia. Detailed, practical and informed with decades of firsthand experience, these entries describe the investors who invest in private companies, how companies attract investors, and ways to evaluate funding proposals. They include strategies for negotiating with investors and methods for valuing privately held businesses. They discuss ways to protect and license technology, attract and keep key people, and how to structure strategic partnerships and joint ventures. How financings are structured and the implications of key terms are explained. In the third part of the Guide, we provide a fully annotated Series A Stock Purchase Agreement of the sort used by venture investors to invest in privately held companies. This provides the more serious reader with a look at the actual terms investors use to structure their investments. Past editions of the Guide have been used to train venture fund managers. Technology accelerators use the book to help their entrepreneurs. Business schools on the East and West coasts have used the Guide in the entrepreneurial and finance classes. A Dutch venture capital fund used it as an organizational resource. The Guide was even used, for a time, by a Soviet Union ministry as part of a program to prepare Soviet businesses for impending market changes brought about by Glasnost. Readers have praised the Guide for its breadth of practical content, readability and ease of use. The series has been called everything from "highly valuable" to "top notch" to "full of tips and strategies" by leading enterprise resources and publishers. One French reviewer went so far as to declare the Guide to be "la bible du venture capital." Check out the author's web site at www.growco.com for more information and background.