Customer Reviews

Financing the New Venture

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

"... make a commitment to relax and surrender to the reality that the emerging business capital market is limitless and that this book can show you how to get ready to receive your fair piece of the capital pie." pg. 39

I think the above quote speaks for itself. I bought this book together with "Fundamentals of Venture Capital" and "Start-Up" and read all three. Compared to the others, this book is full of inane, unsubstantiated, or simply mystifying concepts (many of which are trademarked).

I really don't know enough about raising capital to state that this book is nonsense. But if there is valuable information in this book, the author has done a remarkable job of hiding it.

Mark Long has completed over 700 successful securities offerings. In this phenomenal book he reveals his 10 step process for raising money for your new venture without credit or collateral. Mark's approach is practically guaranteed to get you the money you want because of his strategic approach and in-depth analysis of your options. Rather than just focusing on raising money, Mark starts off by explaining what it really takes to create a pheonomenal business. By designing success into your business plan, you can attract capital rather than chase it. .

Mark's approach is radically different than the traditional way entrepreneurs try to raise money. He explains a systematic and methodical process that has proven to be wildly successful for his clients. You won't find a more practical guide for developing and refining your step-by-step money raising process

I bought this book based upon the positive reviews I read on this site. I was sorely disappointed. This book is inane and borders on the insulting to the informed reader. Worse, it is misleading to the uninformed reader. Pity the poor entrepreneur who approaches a professional investor spouting the trade-marked nonsense espoused in this book.

This book provides in-depth information about raising capital through use of venture capital, banks, investors & angels. It discusses the motivation behind each, what they expect, and how to structure your business plan to the specific financing you seek. Every person who has seen it in our entrepreneurial library has liked it. We are purchasing additional copies to meet demand!

Unlike the reviewer from Boston, who only "skimmed" this book, I have read it and re-read it with enthusiasm. The message contained in this book is, without a doubt, more relevant today than ever. If entrepreneurs spent more time developing a "phenomenal business", rather than just focusing on raising money, they might have far more to offer their investors. Mark Long's book presents valuable reasons for doing precisely this, as well as providing useful tools for designing success into the business from the outset. Just one of the many benefits to this approach, for today's visionary business builder, is the ability to attract capital rather than having to chase it. Having spent the last 15 years working with high tech companies - both large and small - all over the world, and having worked with many early stage internet companies, I found the book offers a fresh alternative to the current venture capital approach to investing in early stage companies. Summary: This book sets the stage, and provides valuable tools and insights, for business building in the New Economy - period.

I'm a business consultant and help to launch start-ups and new (growth) products for existing companies. Almost without exception, most companies I see need capital. I read "Financing the New Venture" a while back and found it to be the most insightful book on how to finance new ideas I have ever seen. In fact, I now make it madatory reading before I even begin discussions with a potential client. Like Warren Buffet, I am very concerned about the current financing enviroment; and don't invest in (or conuslt with) technology companies that don't make traditional investment sense. This book perscribes a sane step by step process for accessing short and long-term financing. The reason for this review is that an associate brought to my attention the book review from the reviewer in Boston, who "skimmed" the book and found the book only relevant for donut shops. If that reviewer had actually read the book, the reviewer would have discovered the author's business model is not only relevant to high tech, but that THIS MODEL will be the only model worth investing in when the internet-style investment behavior of Venture Capitalists plays itself out.

... I have started businesses, I have secured financing and I have read this book.

This book is extremely difficult to read as it is full of cumbersome sentences, unexplained catch phrases and unnecessary acronyms.

I don't dispute that the author presents some good ideas but they are hardly innovative - old standards gilded with unending lists and inane, obscure illustrations. This book is far from revolutionary as some of the "reviews" here suggest.

Don't bother!!

As an attorney in the world of venture capital financing, I picked this book up in hopes that it would lend insight into the world my clients live in and work in. I was extremely disappointed to find page after pages of trademarked and CAPITALIZED terms which were unhelpful and distracting. The layout of the book, including the graphics and charts, is extremely poor and lends nothing to the text. Try something else. Anything else.

While there are a few interesting tidbits of information in it, pass this one by. I've never seen a book before with so many trademarked phrases and words. The "TM" appears on almost every page, and often many times on a page. Phrases like "Investor Financing (TM)" and "Capital Relations (TM)" appear so often as to distract. This book is excellent at showing someone how to use the superscript "TM" symbol religiously.

The content of this book is complicated, and the complex process they suggest is generally impractical to use in any way. Perhaps the partners at the author's investment company are skilled at facilitating such a process, but I believe the "K.I.S.S." technique (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is more likely to get you financed rather than this unusual process.

The book begins well and there are a few thought-provoking ideas, but they disappear one-third of the way through. There are too many useless tables and charts. They illustrate little and add nothing to the book's message.

The ideas in this book come from Mark Long's *The Money For Business Builders Clinic.* There are an overwhelming number of acronyms and catch phrases, some of which are trademarked. The book was difficult to follow because of these acronyms; they overwhelmed many of the pages. I had trouble remembering them and, consequently, could not understand much of the book's message.

Again, the book starts well enough, but degenerates into such low-brow methods for raising capital as tactic #53: The Legal Records Tactic. "Legal cases are open to the public. Review recent divorce cases for the details of the settlement. One or both of the parties may be prospective investors." There are more like this, believe me.

This book is intriguing and then it is boring. In the afterword, the author thanked me for reading his book, which I appreciated; then he invited me to one of his seminars.

In this book, the way you apply for funds (Mark Long's nearly patented approach) is more important than getting the funds. I recommend High Tech Start-Up by Nesheim.