Customer Reviews

Attracting Investors: A Marketing Approach to Finding Funds for Your Business

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This book is a little like a football play that looks great on the blackboard in the locker room but doesn't quite deliver once the players take the field. The concept is excellent: adapting marketing theory and techniques to the business of acquiring investment capital for your firm. Unfortunately, authors Philip Kotler, Hermawan Kartajaya and S. David Young spend too much time reviewing basics, such as potential sources of capital, and not enough on the marketing techniques themselves - which they don't begin discussing until about two-thirds of the way into the book. This shortcoming (and the lack of case histories) is balanced, however, by the authors' keen, market-oriented analysis of the characteristics that appeal most strongly to the various types of investors. This book outlines a smart, methodical approach to finding investors. We recommend this book despite its problems, believing that even an incomplete marketing approach to financing is better than chaos in the huddle.

This book is a mix between a light marketing text patched with dated web articles. It might do some good to people thinking about entrepreneurship; it will not be useful to people looking for funding.
I ordered the book ($30 !!) in August 2009 and hoped to find strategies and tactics on how to approach European vs East Coast vs West Coast VC. Instead I've found about the history of VC and about FFF sources of money. Cover to cover: less than 15 minutes. I felt the authors took $30 from my wallet.

Kotler's name on the cover is the main marketing piece of this book.

Buy "Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur" instead.