The man Fortune magazine dubbed "the San Francisco Venture Capitalist" brings entrepreneurs, investors, and interested readers of every stripe inside stories from the front line, stories of the perils and the payoffs of the most at-risk game in the business world.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Venture capital is money invested at high risk by millionaires, individually or through organzed funds, to develop commercially the dreams and scientific breakthroughs of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs of Apple Computer. Kunze, who heads the California-based Life Science Ventures, here explains the process. Case histories describe the pangs of creating a product prototype, refinancing for factory production and sales development, patent worries, unanticipated equipment glitches and potentially devastating conflicts among managers and personnel--or between the majority-owning venture capitalists and the originating entrepreneur. Such hazards can lead to a desperation sale or merger, or outright failure with millions lost, but successes such as Genentech, Microsoft, Digital, Intel and others keep the venturers coming back for more. This is an enlightening look at fast-track American enterprise, and a first-class cautionary guide. Fortune Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This book examines the system that "not only invests risk capital in a new business but also nurtures that fledgling company until it grows and becomes profitable." Apple, Microsoft, Genentech, and Lotus are among the companies that started with venture capital backing. Successful venture capitalist Kunze discusses the history of venture capital, how to become a venture capitalist, characteristics of successful entrepreneurs; the selection process for business proposals; and venture capital in Europe and Japan. Additionally, he offers readers case histories of his own experiences as a major investor and board member in seven start-up companies. He describes business proposals he considered but did not invest in. Kunze "wrote this book not as an expose but to share some of the texture and flavor of venture capital, to demystify the process, and to give one venture capitalist's point of view." In this he admirably succeeds. Highly recommended.
- Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good "war stories" based overview of an exciting business,
By A Customer
This review is from: Nothing Ventured: The Perils and Payoffs of the Great American Venture Capital Game (Hardcover)
Kunze does an excellent job of overviewing the industry, from its origins, growth and key success factors, to a somewhat weaker prediction of the future. The real strength is that Kunze provides new entrants to venture capital with his arsenal of war stories that provide a nice back drop to all the theory and abstract advice. The author, at times, is a bit corny in his attempts to make himself seem like the ultimate nice guy even as he needs to fire his 10th entrepreneur. But behind all that is insight into how the pros find deals, analyze them, fund them, manage them and, most importantly, make money off of them. A highly recommended read
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very good anecdotal review of the VC process,
By EquesNiger (Prague, Czech Republic) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Nothing Ventured: The Perils and Payoffs of the Great American Venture Capital Game (Hardcover)
Compared to several other no less valuable VC "how to" texts, Robert Kunze's "Nothing Ventured" is unique in the fact that it is almost entirely anecdotal, filled with numerous war-stories (some won, some lost) that illustrate venturing concepts in a much less dry, textbook format. In fact, some of these illustrations are down-right riveting! When the book was published, Kunze, a senior, ambassador-like figure in the VC community, was in the thick of high tech investing. While other texts may better illustrate, (granted in their dryer, less engaging way), the basic essentials of general VC investing, Kunze's work gives better insight into the decision making process in high tech investing. No textbook to date has satisfactorily dealt with this exciting, high-wire industry, and it seems that Kunze's "case study" method may in fact be the best method to tackle it. While the technologies of the companies he reviews may no longer be cutting edge, the review process and problems encountered are still the same as today. While the dryer texts may provide the skeletal and musculature systems of VC investing, "Nothing Ventured" adds a bit of the heart, mind and soul to the picture.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
