Venture Capital Handbook: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Raising Venture Capital, Revised and Updated Edition

Product Author Bios

DAVID GLADSTONE, one of America's leading venture capital executives, serves as Chairman of Gladstone Capital Corporation (NASDAQ: GLAD). He has more than 25 years of experience making investments in small and medium size businesses. Until 2001 he was Chariman of American Capital Strategies, a billion-dollar LBO fund. Before that, Gladstone was Chairman and CEO of Allied Capital a large venture capital fund, joining that fund when it had only $9 million in capital, and grew it to over $750 million in assets. He is author of Venture Capital Handbook and Venture Capital Investing (both Prentice Hall PTR). Gladstone holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

LAURA GLADSTONE, a principal with Gladstone Capital Corporation, has more than 10 years' experience investing and lending to businesses. Prior to joining Gladstone Capital, she was with HSBC as a loan officer and with ING Barings as a analyst. She was also with Allied Capital Corporation.

In Venture Capital Handbook: Revised and Updated Edition, leading venture capitalist David Gladstone and Laura Gladstone walk you step-by-step through the entire VC funding process, showing exactly how to get funded fast -- without the trauma. This end-to-end update of the classic VC guide covers the latest techniques, tax rules -- and, above all, marketplace realities.

Online Sample Chapter

Creating a Proposal for Raising Venture Capital

Table of Contents

Introduction.


Acknowledgments.


1. Anyone Can Raise Ventura Capital.

Preface

Introduction

This book has been great fun to write, and, with this revision, it is ready for another 15-year run. One of the teachers currently using the book in her class calls it a classic. When the book was written almost 20 years ago, there was no indication that Venture Capital Handbook would become a classic. But with the tremendous increase in venture capital and the many new and young businesses looking for VC, the book has proved its worth by filling a need for guidance in this field.

The chief strength of the book is that it is a "nuts and bolts" approach on how to raise venture capital. It talks about the process in straight talk without a lot of theory or war stories. It shows the reader how to win the game of raising venture capital.

It has been gratifying to see Venture Capital Handbook be so useful to so many entrepreneurs and small business owners. Some entrepreneurs, in letters to the author have claimed to have raised great sums of money using this book. It is wonderful that there are so many business schools that use the book today, and it is gratifying to know that so many people are studying how to raise venture capital. It would be fun to know how many billions of dollars have been raised by venture capital firms by using this book. It would be quite a rush to know exactly how many businesses came into existence because of this book.

We know the book is having an impact because our venture capital friends make snide comments to us about "giving away the secrets of the business." It seems that we have made it more difficult for them to gain the advantage over the entrepreneur. But we are sure that this book has also made it easier for them to work with some of the entrepreneurs who have read it because the book gives the reader some insight into the world of the venture capitalist.

In this second edition, we have a father-daughter team doing the revision and updating the book for the current times. It has been easy to update the book because so much of the business of raising venture capital has not changed. We both work at a new fund we created called Gladstone Capital Corporation. Our Web page is www.gladstonecapital.com. Come visit our Web page and learn about our fund and more about venture capital.