Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist Hardcover – January 1, 2013

I read Brad & Jason's outstanding treatise, Venture Deals, from my own context as a guy with many billions of dollars, and multiple decades, of deal experience - but in a very different context (international oil, gas and minerals deals, typically in harsh political environments), i.e. that of corporate and project finance rather than Brad/Jason's context of "venture deals," as they wonderfully describe in their treatment. This difference of financial/deal perspective is important, I believe, in what I wish to say in giving my view of the relevance and usefulness of Venture Deals.Whether "smaller" venture deals - of the, generally, under-$1 billion scope that Brad and Jason address - or the $10 billion to $100 billion scope of deals inherent to the global extractive resources space, the FUNDAMENTALS of financial, economic, legal, human, strategic, tactical and negotiations considerations are substantially the SAME.It is these fundamentals that Brad and Jason so well, accurately and constructively describe in this fine book. Furthermore, as is obvious to anyone familiar with the significant achievements of Boulder-based Foundry Group, the narrative offered in Venture Deals is underlain by the voices of deep, well-tested and hardened experience in mobilizing real capital for real deals. So, save yourself, say, one to four graduate-level courses at places like Stanford or MIT Sloan, and instead, do these two things: i) give a good reading of Venture Deals; and then, ii) re-read, and deeply study, this same superb text with the critical eye of a person who's paying one's own way through any of the great, and expensive, graduate schools that purvey any of Finance, Law, or other related disciplines. These guys have really nailed it! And, your ROI for both time and money will be hugely rewarded.

This book has a 5-star rating with 141 reviews so far - why write another one?A mentor at an event called Startup Weekend Pittsburgh first told me about the book Venture Deals when I asked him for legal advice. Since I knew that I wasn't the only person with questions about venture capital, I decided to live-tweet excerpts from the book to my Twitter followers while reading: [...]Jason Mendelson tweeted back to me: "Thanks for the support. Hope you liked the book!"I loved the book. It taught me all about term sheets, VC firms, lawyers, and how to pitch investors. However, I still had a few specific questions about my new startup. In the Authors' Notes at the end of the book, Brad and Jason encourage readers to email them about anything that is unclear. I decided to email Jason very early on a Sunday (Mother's Day to be exact). Within a few hours, he emailed me back to answer my questions (with the disclaimer that he is not my lawyer and he is not giving me legal advice). I was so thankful for his reply, and it really helped to clarify my thoughts.Jason and Brad are definitely two of the most generous VCs on the planet giving their time, attention, and advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. Thank you both.Learn from them! Buy Venture Deals!

This book is a MUST-HAVE for entrepreneurs. I'm currently a founder of a startup (www.CareerDean.com) funded by an accelerator in Silicon Valley. Since I am a first-time entrepreneur, there was a lot I had to learn, especially in regards to fundraising.I've read everything you can possibly read online, but nothing is as good as Venture Deals. Fundraising is hard, but they explain the process in a simple manner. The book not only explains fundraising concepts, but they present strategies as well.I was a bit hesitant at first because the authors are investors. They could have very well written the book to help themselves instead of the entrepreneurs. After reading the book, I'm fully convinced that this book was written to give the entrepreneurs a leg-up, and not the other way around. Why do I think this? Because since reading this book, I have talked to countless investors and VCs. What I've learned has given me an advantage.As a first-time entrepreneur, you'll make mistakes when raising money from investors. That's inevitable. But this book will help you make less mistakes.I'll be honest. I tried to find a pirated PDF online (I live on a startup budget...). I reluctantly bought it when I couldn't find any (though I'm sure you could if you tried hard enough). I don't regret it one bit. Even if you find a pirated version, you should buy this book because you'll want to keep referencing back to it.With the help of Venture Deals, our startup has already raised a good amount of money. I consider this one of my best investments.