The fascinating life of a Talented Capitalist developing Venture Capital
343689
This book is smoothly and professionally written. It also covers a fascinating life - Georges Doriot was born in France and just after the end of World War I - emigrated to America. He expected to attend MIT, but a chance introduction led him to Harvard. A student and a practitioner of business,
he was a enthusiast for matching each employee to the best-fitting job. He was a polymath, working in the US Army, and also Dean of Harvard Business School, and helping set up an equivalent B-school in France, INSEAD. His work at the interface of innovators and capitalists was historic, helping formalize the world of Venture Capital.
3740122
If you come to this book familiar with the start-up scene in India youll probably have a lot of questions in mind. Is India the next (and last) China? Is that what all the fairly recently-arrived global VCs think? Why are the average entrepreneurs who have received large funds and who have scaled so quickly so young? When are Indian start-ups going to start seeing real exits? etc. etc.

What you should know in advance is that this book won't have any simple answers. Make sure you read the introduction and pay attention when the author makes this clear: The book will not lay out the answers on a platter for you to consider and then accept or reject. Instead, it will tell you several true stories that you probably haven't heard before, and in reading those stories, you will discover many of the answers yourself. As you read them, the author does a fantastic job of casually hinting at mental paths you should wander down at your leisure and you'll enjoy doing so. You'll also find idea threads throughout the book that youll pull and then have to put the book down and think about for however long necessary before you can return to the narrative. The result is that rare and extremely pleasing mix of reading and thinking that makes a book feel thoroughly rewarding.

The stories themselves are fascinating and cover a whole lot of ground. Very occasionally the author lets the stories become awkwardly soft or harsh on the relevant characters and it seems like the deviation might stem from his relationships with those characters. For example, he shares some frustrating experiences hes had with Rahul Yadav, the co-founder of Housing.com.  And that frustration then seems to leak over into some carefree assertions about Housing the startup (rather than about Rahul the person). At one point he claims that Housing hired using the formula give them [employees] a 3x multiple of the last offer. That just isn't an accurate description of hiring at Housing. Thankfully its a rare case of getting carried away with making a point. The book otherwise gets full marks for seriousness and dispassionate and persuasive criticism and commentary.

I do wish that some of the stories had incorporated a more well-rounded account of at least one or two of the startups covered. Generally the book closely focuses on founders and a few key persons who the author knows personally. That makes sense since the author was a founder himself so many times. And it makes a great story. However its not the full story. To return to Housing, since Im closely familiar with that example, the founders form only a part of what gave the startup so much of its potential. A huge part of its story was made by all the incredibly talented and hard-working young people who made Housings mission their own for the first couple of years of their careers.

I think this resonates with an observation the author makes toward the end of the book: Generally in the Indian tech environment, employees feel they are undervalued - that they work tough hours in a highly competitive market only for the employers to get richer. They feel that employers turn a blind eye to their cautions about lack of fundamentals and broken systems. This is excellently put. Theres no material Id take out of the book. It just would have been nice to see a little more material on the perspectives and roles of startup employees. I guess that book(s) remains to be written.
'
If you don't know much about start-ups in India, then you can just settle in for an excellent narrative mix of first-person memoir and economic and technology history of the last couple of decades. Kashyap weaves his own story with broader trends to make a book that will entertain and inform. Im very glad he wrote it.
691527
Great read, and insight into Corporate Venture Capital ; must buy this and Andrew Romans, ENTREPRENEURIAL BIBLE TO VENTURE CAPITAL.
202132
As a non-professional investor, I found this book fascinating.  In it, Guy Spier recounts his journey from a brash young investment banker fresh out of Harvard Business School and Oxford to a more mature investor, one who like the rest of us wants to make money, but also has learned to be more concerned for his shareholders and others than for himself. The value of this book comes from the author's realization that there is more to life than money.  He tells of the valuable lessons learned from Warren Buffett and Mohnish Pabrai about surrounding yourself with people that make you better.  He learns that giving and serving others is what gives meaning to life.  He learns that after a certain point, money does not buy happiness.  Mr. Spier admits, almost ashamedly, that he enjoys his wealth.  But he also has learned to enjoy using it to the betterment of others. Perhaps if all of the 1% were like Mr. Buffett, Pabrai and Spier, there would not have been an "Occupy Wall Street" movement.
This is not a "how-to" book on value investing, but a "why" book. If,like me, you are tired of brokers moving your money around solely for their own profit. Or if you are tired of the financial entertainment "experts" predicting astronomical levels for the Dow one day, and financial doom the next, then value investing may be for you. This book provides numerous references in a bibliography for the "how-to" piece of value investing, if you are so inclined.
3910739
Fantastic book by someone I have a lot of respect for. The book is a page turner and I devoured it in one sitting. It is a well researched, articulate,  and entertaining account on various facets of the Indian Startup ecosystem. A must read for entrepreneurs, Investors and anyone who is interested in the Indian startup space. Thanks Kashyap.
722381
Brad and Jason take you by the hand through a detailed, upfront and direct walkthrough the ins and outs of Venture Deals. Apparently complex terms and docs are taken apart, with very helpful indication of what matters (spoiler, control, economics !), peppered by funny (and true) remarks on lawyers ;-).  I wish I had read this book when I was a budding entrepreneur, and could not be happier to have read it as an angel investor.
4934583
I'm a recent college graduate and am working for a prominent member of Congress.  In my role I hear so much about the challenges of finding jobs and about how hard it is to access capital for funding ideas that have the potential to grow into companies that create job opportunities for millions of Americans.  This book by Lou Gerken is a great read for anyone interested in turning their own dreams, or the dreams of others by means of investing, into a lucrative business.  It is my hope that more understanding of how VCs can serve as a valuable tool for economic growth will lead to a stronger economy and a better country for us all.
2943789
Guy Kawasaki has some keen insights on Silicon Valley and the tech industry that is worth reading. He is funny and entertaining. I enjoy watching his irreverant youtube videos.

What Guy lacks is in-depth analysis of his observations. He doesn't really try hard to answer "why?". Therefore, I can't say his conclusions are based on high caliber analysis.

Guy's intuition on the inner workings of Silicon Valley, entrepeneurs, and start-ups is very different. He can see the big picture and can think outside of the box. So if you want the street-smart guide to the tech industry (especially getting VC funding), then this is the right book to read.

Guy has wonderful advice into getting VC funding, how to be successful in a start-up, marketing, presentation, and the value of engineering talent. He is a strong advocate that the most successful tech entrepeneurs are those who want to make the product they want themselves want to use and also would change the world in the process.

Scholastic breakthrough this book is not. But worthy street-smart guide to tech-startup this book is.
3133249
An American Hedge Fund is the entrepreneurial story about a young investor who learned to play the stock market and quickly outperformed Wall Street's best hot shots.  As a high school student, Timothy Sykes invested his $12,000 savings in the stock market.  By observing the way small cap stocks trade in a media frenzy, Sykes devised a technique to trade his small investment to well over a million dollars.

The strategies that made him a success were extremely risky, betting nearly his entire portfolio on a single stock at a time and hoping that the price would move in the right direction.  But there was much more than luck involved.  Between the lines, many of the same lessons of other famous books such as Market Wizards are reiterated.  Like the most successful traders, he used a strictly defined set of rules to screen stocks and know when to get out.  Most of his unsuccessful trades occurred when he deviated from this formula.

Skykes's great gusto for the thrill of the market really shines through in his trade-by-trade accounts of each stock play.  Through the anecdotes, Sykes shows how the Pink Sheets market is akin to a "Wild West" of the stock market where fortunes can suddenly be made and lost through supply and demand inefficiencies.  Sykes also effectively describes the hurdles of starting a hedge fund and exposes the charlatans and con-artists of the prime brokerage industry.  This makes it a worthwhile read for any ambitious person with a goal of starting a fund.

Although exciting and informative, I only give it 4 out of 5 stars mainly because of the sour tone in its ending.  I think he blames too much of his hedge fund's failure on SEC regulations and the status quo.  Considering his fund was in the same boat as other funds that blossomed to billions, I attribute the difficulties to operational errors such as not proofreading a faulty prospectus before handing it to clients.

American Hedge Fund is the kind of story that makes the stock market such an exciting arena.  I could tell it was written with the sincerest intention of helping other fellow retail investors make it big.  The lesson to be learned is that if Tim Sykes can compound a small bank account into fortunes, so you can you!
3637281
This is an excellent story of a successful start-up by an extremely articulate and amusing writer. Charles must be a fun guy to know as a friend but a terror to work for. Echoing most of the reviewers, this book  is essential for anyone contemplating a serious start-up of a tech company.  It's now clear to me that venture capitalists make attorneys look generous  in looking after their own interests.
3410075
Written with superb pacing and coherence, Unwound is a page-turner about the life and death of startups.  The author provides a candid assessment of startup life, and himself, as well as clear summaries of the applied lessons of current behavioral economic research.  Through this inside look at how highs and lows are not always what they seem to be, Unwound provides an honest account of both failure and redemption in life's fleeting moments.  A must-read.
3948409
In the world of investment professionals, the rather unpleasant truth is that few of those who claim to put investors first actually do. But there are those few who walk the talk, and Man in the Arena is a book about one of them - John C. Bogle.  This book chronicles his decades of investing innovations from the struggles of Vanguard's early years to what is today, the largest investment fund company that ever existed.

The book is part tribute to Mr. Bogle, part history, and part investment wisdom.  The breadth of the tributes extends beyond the finance world of managers and writers, to heavy weight economists, such as Paul Volcker, and all the way to a former resident of the White House, Bill Clinton.  The history spans the time period from the founding of Vanguard and its unique mutual ownership, to the launching of the first no-load mutual funds and index funds.  I personally loved the poster that declared "Index funds are un-American."

For me, the best part of the book is that it contains the wisdom from all of Mr. Bogle's work - 10 books, 575 speeches, 14 academic articles, and more than a dozen op-eds in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.  That wisdom has always been the basis of my investing, especially when markets plunge and courage is in short supply.

In full disclosure, though I am a contributor to this book, I didn't profit in any way.  Perhaps you'll regard my review as biased, but read the book anyway for the important lessons it imparts about both character and investing.
2697705
This book is a really interesting and quick read. It is really broken down into two sections.  The first is an overview of Ben's history with Netscape, Loudcloud, and Opsware.  There are lots of great anecdotes and tales of narrow escapes and hard decisions.  If you worked in the industry at this time its a very interesting story.  The second part is some advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and CEOs.  While most of this advice seems to target VC backed tech startup CEOs and businesses,  I found that I could still translate most of the sentiment to apply to a smaller boot strapped business as well.

All in all, I'd highly recommend this as an entertaining and insightful read.
4863683
Author Adam Cohen presents the story of eBay in a clear, flowing style, depicting the growth from a modest beginning to the giant the company has become.  What I enjoyed the most, unexpectedly, were the many stories of businesses that spawned from eBay, such as the gal who generated a business selling packaging materials to eBay sellers.  Without fail, these spawned business germinated, not from a grandiose scheme with a formal business plan, but rather from the seed of a slightly creative idea, which, once put into practice, gained momentum.  Perhaps a valuable paradigm can be found here for the self-help crowd, most of whom maintain that success must start with a grand, large-scale idea.
3191243
An amazing Silicon Valley narrative. The funny thing about geeks is, they turn out to have a lot of personality. This book will introduce you to several such geeks and teach you a little bit about their craft and ethic. You'll also meet the businessmen and laywers who were instrumental in Napster's rise and fall (and learn about their craft and ethic as well). The book puts these characters in an amazingly well-researched and well-recalled narrative, clearly establishing the relationships and roles of the characters in this great story. In particular, John Fanning, Shawn's petulant and self-serving uncle, is singled out as a large contributor to the downfall, and one foil to the tale's numerous "good guys."

The book also gives a great picture of the whole dot-com bubble and its mentality. A LOT of time is spent detailing how Napster scraped together the money needed to start and run its ever-growing enterprise. Highly recommended book!
2390144
When looking for capital to grow your small business, remember that it's a jungle out there: "Vultures" and "Dragons" abound, so try to get an "Angel" on your side. That's what veteran venture capitalist Simon Acland recommends. In his breezy, occasionally irreverent, but always informative guide to the ways of venture capitalism, Acland portrays its characters in colorful terms. But don't mistake the book's insouciance for lack of substance. The stakes for both business owner and investor are high. Your investor could lose millions, and you could lose your company. Or you both could be creating the next Microsoft or Yahoo. getAbstract recommends this guide on how to approach venture capital to all entrepreneurs (or "Lions") looking to ascend to the next level. Just beware of the creatures that can eat your company - and your dreams.
3692826
I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by Ted himself. Ted's story is an epic 12 hour journey through his remarkable life. It's entertaining because Ted is a candid and engaging reader who tells it like it is (or at least how he thinks it is).

Normally I buy business biographies because I hope to learn about the secrets of the person's success. Ted doesn't spend a lot of time talking about what you need to do to be successful. He tells his story and you learn by his example that success comes through hard work, planning ahead, thinking outside the box and persevering through the tough times. Ted smashes the idea many people grow up with that you need to get a college degree, an MBA and certifications and licenses to be successful. They're great if you want to be an employee or follow the typical career path. The key to being a success on the level of a Ted Turner is to just GO OUT AND DO IT. Stop wasting time planning what you're going to do before you start your career. No one cares about all your college degrees. People buy your idea and your vision and your passion.

Ted was fortunate because he inherited a solid business from his father and his father mentored him on how to run a business. So in a way, this is the Ed and Ted Turner story. So while Ted started CNN and was in debt and struggled to pay the bills, CNN was in debt and struggled. Ted never struggled the way someone who's starting a business often struggles. He rarely had to worry about losing his house or if he could pay his own bills. But Ted discusses his father's work ethic and how his father worked hard to make his company successful. The reader gets the sense that if Ed (and later Ted) started a business today, they wouldn't spend hours a day cruising the internet or playing video games. Ed and Ted worked their ----- off following their passions and didn't stop until they were successful and even when Ted found success, he moved on to the next thing.

The book discusses most of the major business ventures Ted started and how he executed his plan. He discusses TBS, TNT, CNN, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, selling to Time Warner, selling to AOL. He talks candidly about the struggles he encountered as his company grew and then as he combined with Time Warner and AOL. Ted also takes time to discuss his successful sailing career which led to winning the America's Cup and owning the Atlanta Braves and seeing them win a World Series but most of the book is about his media companies. Ted talks about his private life and his rocky personal life with his father and how his marriages failed. He discusses how his failed marriages, busy work life and rough upbringing affected him.

I very rarely give 5 star reviews but this book is worthy of 5 stars. It's interesting. It's engaging. It's entertaining. It has all the qualities of the kind of epic miniseries Ted was seeking to put on one of his networks.