Over the past couple of decades, the word “startup” has become insanely trendy, and for most people, it’s synonymous with the promise of inevitable success. We know dozens of stories where an ordinary student started a business in a garage that later turned into a multibillion-dollar company. Everyone wants to try on that role for themselves. To help them, there’s an abundance of books explaining how to create the company of your dreams, refine your idea, and build something people truly need. Even in my blog, I’ve reviewed several such books (for instance, “The Art of the Start“ by Guy Kawasaki and “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future“).
Of course, few people mention that for every success story, there are thousands of failures, but who’s interested in those? Everyone wants to look up to the best (this tendency is known as “survivorship bias”). Moreover, not all authors tell you that often, to launch a successful and rapidly growing business, you need funding. At best, they give advice on how to structure your presentations for potential investors. But what comes next… few will shed light on that.
The book “Venture Deals” is one of the rare few that focuses specifically on communicating with investors, the rules of drafting investment deals, and all those details that a future owner of a successful company must know and understand—unless, of course, they want to end up with nothing, even if their business turns out to be groundbreaking. The book’s subtitle is “Be SMARTER Than Your LAWYER and VENTURE CAPITALIST”. And it’s written by none other than those very venture capitalists who’ve mastered the art of such deals.
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