WHAT IF YOU HAD AN ANGEL ON YOUR SIDE? "Terrific advice from a master of the angel investing game. Brian Cohen reveals the art and craft of raising angel money. An investment in this book will pay off a thousandfold." -- DR. HOWARD MORGAN, founder and partner at First Round Capital When you connect with the right angel investor, it's like finding a new best friend--you just have to know what makes him or her happy. Smart funding is waiting for smart founders. Raising funds is all about connecting with the investor who's right for you--and What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know shows you exactly how to succeed. Veteran early-stage investor Brian Cohen knows how to spot a great company destined for success, and in this groundbreaking book he offers soup-to-nuts guidance for any entrepreneur seeking to launch an invention, a product, or a great new idea into a receptive marketplace. As chairman of the board of directors of the New York Angels, Cohen is one of the most engaged angel investors out there today. The first investor in Pinterest, he describes exactly what angels want to see, hear, and feel before they take out their checkbooks: A clear exit strategy before the startup even launches Facts that turn "due" diligence into "do" diligence Authenticity--"save your spinning for the fitness center" Proof that you "live inside the customer's head" Cohen gives invaluable insight into how the most successful angels view due diligence, friends and family money, crowdfunding, team building, scalability, iteration, exit strategies--and much more. This one-of-a-kind book provides a rare look inside the minds of people who are in the business of funding businesses just like yours. Read What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know to get your best shot at funding for your product after your very first pitch. PRAISE FOR WHAT EVERY ANGEL INVESTOR WANTS YOU TO KNOW: "Brian Cohen is truly the entrepreneur's best friend. Cohen and Kador haven distilled their first-hand experiences into an intensely personal, highly readable journey into the mind of angels that should be kept at the bedside of every startup CEO." -- DAVID S. ROSE, founder, New York Angels, and CEO, Gust "Meet one of the fundamental building blocks of the entrepreneurial scene. In one easy-to-read package, readers now have the wisdom of Brian Cohen, perhaps the most well-connected investor/entrepreneur in New York." -- MURAT AKTIHANOGLU, founder and managing director, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator "What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know gives you an actionable checklist for success in fund-raising and entrepreneurship. Cohen and Kador provide an exhilarating ride for those who want to pilot their own business." -- REED HOLDEN, serial entrepreneur and author of Negotiating with Backbone "Personal insights from a seasoned angel investor. An important addition to the reading list for today's entrepreneurs." -- SCOTT CASE, CEO, Startup America Partnership "What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know is a must-read for entrepreneurs and investors who want to fi nance startup dreams--an accessible, jargon-free, practical primer." -- WHITNEY JOHNSON, author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream and cofounder, Rose Park Advisors

40 leading venture capitalists come together to teach entrepreneurs how to succeed with their startup The Entrepreneurial Bible to Venture Capital is packed with invaluable advice about how to raise angel and venture capital funding, how to build value in a startup, and how to exit a company with maximum value for both founders and investors. It guides entrepreneurs through every step in an entrepreneurial venture from the legalities of raising initial capital to knowing when to change tactics. Andrew Romans is the co-founder and general partner of Rubicon Venture Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in privately held technology companies and enables its investors to co-invest along side the fund on a deal-by-deal basis via innovative sidecar funds right up to IPO or M&A exit. Romans is also the founder and general partner of The Founders Club, a venture capital equity exchange fund and investor in later stage liquidity transactions.

Schwab's revolutionary approach to success in the face of adversity Since its founding in 1973, Schwab has led the full-brokerage market by stressing customer service. Today, Schwab has established itself as a company with a unique identity: old-fashioned integrity meets technology-empowered financial services. Charles Schwab tells the compelling story of this organization's uncanny ability to reinvent itself around an unchanging set of core values. This book is organized into five sections, each representing a critical juncture for the company when it was forced to reinvent itself or be consumed. Along the way, Kador highlights Schwab's immutable laws, direct from the Chairman and CEO: 1) Create a cause, not a business; 2) the corporate vision is only as good as the values of its culture; 3) welcome upheaval. In the whirlwind economic environment we currently face, Charles Schwab provides readers with valuable lessons on how businesses can survive and thrive in any situation.

Entrepreneurs who dream of building the next Amazon, Facebook, or Google can take advantage of one of the most powerful economic engines the world has ever known: venture capital. To do so, you need to woo, impress, and persuade venture capitalists to take a risk on an unproven idea. That task is challenge enough. But choosing the right investor can be harder still. Even if you manage to get backing, you want your VC to be a partner, not some adversary who will undermine your vision in order to make a quick return. Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. By his early thirties, he had helped build two successful start-ups-one went public, the other was acquired. Now he draws on his experience and unique perspective on the "other side" as a venture capitalist helping entrepreneurs bring their dreams to fruition. Bussgang offers detailed insights, colorful stories, and practical advice gathered from his own experience as well as from interviews with dozens of the most successful players on both sides of the game, including Twitter's Jack Dorsey and LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partnership that works for everyone. An insider's guide to the secrets of the world venture capital, Mastering the VC Game will prove invaluable for entrepreneurs seeking capital and successful partnerships.

Crack the Funding Code demystifies the world of angel investing, venture capital, and corporate funding and lays out a strategic pathway for any entrepreneur to secure funding fast. Lack of funding is one of the biggest reasons small businesses fail. In 2016 in the United States alone, more than 31 percent of small business owners reported that they could not access adequate capital, and the lack of capital prevented them from growing the business/expanding operations, increasing inventory, or financing increased sales. This book will show you how to find the money, create pitches that attract investors, and then structure fair, ethical deals that will bring them new sources of outside capital and invaluable professional advice. Crack the Funding Code gives you the broader perspective on: how funding works, how investors think, and what they need to hear to put their money where your mouth is. Every entrepreneur who reads this book will get easy-to-follow deal checklists, a roadmap of where and how to locate the best funding resources and top business mentors for their industry or geographical location, and a step-by-step process to create pitches that make their idea or business irresistible.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

An engaging guide to excelling in today's venture capital arena Beginning in 2005, Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson, managing directors at Foundry Group, wrote a long series of blog posts describing all the parts of a typical venture capital Term Sheet: a document which outlines key financial and other terms of a proposed investment. Since this time, they've seen the series used as the basis for a number of college courses, and have been thanked by thousands of people who have used the information to gain a better understanding of the venture capital field. Drawn from the past work Feld and Mendelson have written about in their blog and augmented with newer material, Venture Capital Financings puts this discipline in perspective and lays out the strategies that allow entrepreneurs to excel in their start-up companies. Page by page, this book discusses all facets of the venture capital fundraising process. Along the way, Feld and Mendelson touch on everything from how valuations are set to what externalities venture capitalists face that factor into entrepreneurs' businesses. Includes a breakdown analysis of the mechanics of a Term Sheet and the tactics needed to negotiate Details the different stages of the venture capital process, from starting a venture and seeing it through to the later stages Explores the entire venture capital ecosystem including those who invest in venture capitalist Contain standard documents that are used in these transactions Written by two highly regarded experts in the world of venture capital The venture capital arena is a complex and competitive place, but with this book as your guide, you'll discover what it takes to make your way through it.

Author Paul Getty has seen thousands of brilliant founding CEOs present to angel investors, venture capitalists, and institutional investors. And he has seen thousands of them fail in their quest for the money they sincerely believed would lead to entrepreneurial success and riches for all. Again and again, he watched would-be tech titans fail to create a good first impression, deliver poor presentations, tell lengthy stories that put investors to sleep, and fail to address the critical issues sophisticated investors are most eager to hear about. If only they'd read The Twelve Magic Slides: Insider Secrets for Raising Growth Capital. Getty's slide topics—developed while coaching hundreds of company founders to fundraising success—cover each of the twelve key themes investors want to know about in depth before they part with their hard-earned money: the problem you see, your solution to it, the resulting business opportunity, the amount of money you need to grow the firm, and the potential returns for investors, among others. Getty, managing director of Satwik Capital Advisors in San Jose, California, shows that properly developing each slide—and the thinking behind it—can get you the investment capital required to vault your company to the next level. But The Twelve Magic Slides is more than a book about how raise money from professional investors. It presents a whole new way of how to think about and develop a successful startup. Regardless, it will show you better ways to accomplish your goals and increase the chances you’ll get the green light from investors. Whether you are seeking startup funding from the angel down the street, or trying to convince investment bankers to help take you public, The Twelve Magic Slides provides a clear step-by-step process that will enable you to: Identify the key elements of the business that must be developed to attract external capital Understand the critical dos and don’ts CEOs must know to sell their story to investors in a quick and efficient manner Create twelve perfect slides and a presentation that secures investor interest from the start and gives them plenty of reasons to write you a check You need to find money to fund your company’s growth. Investors need to find entrepreneurs and ideas they can believe in. The Twelve Magic Slides presents a proven method for attracting funds from angel investors, venture capital firms, private equity firms, and institutional investors. It will give you the knowledge and confidence you need to ask for—and receive—the capital you need to launch or grow a business.

"Readers should have a box of Kleenex handy when they read this book. It is emotional, to say the least .... [The Life O'Reilly] is a heartwarming tale of discovering life, love, and legacy ... a love story filled with drama and emotions. There are plenty of shocking events which make this a page-turner and a very sentimental novel." - Suite101.com [A] riveting and deeply emotional work. The Life O'Reilly keeps the reader turning the pages as author Cohen displays a vivid touch with the everyday details of working life. Nashville Book Festival Brian Cohen clearly has the gift of story in this riveting debut. His ability to plumb the depths of the human heart, and its capacity to change forged in a modern, gritty, yet sophisticated New York shines through in this estimable work. The mark of a great novel is one that is impossible to put down on its final page. Cohen's book reaches that bar. New York Times bestselling author Michael Christopher Carroll "The Life O'Reilly is a fascinating read that will warm hearts." Midwest Book Review "...this is the way life should be lived. To be able to stop at any moment and say, I am proud of and very much at peace with who I am." Brian Cohen's first novel is an affecting and haunting story that captures the attention of the reader and holds it throughout, lingering long after the final page is turned.... Cohen has a fluidic writing style. His story is well paced and his characters have dimension and distinctive personalities. It is inspiring to watch Nick's heroic battle for survival as he evolves into the kind of man (and life) that will leave a lasting and impressionable legacy. It is not often that a work of fiction leaves the reader contemplating his or her personal outlook on life. The trials that Nick endures are easily applicable to reality. His story gives us pause to think, leaving us grateful for having made Nick's acquaintance. The US Review of Books At once a bittersweet love story and a young lawyer's journey of self-discovery, this auspicious debut delivers an emotional wallop and will move readers in unexpected ways. On the outside, Nick O'Reilly has it all: a high-flying legal career, as a partner of an elite Wall Street law firm, and financial security, with an apartment overlooking Central Park. Having grown up in a working-class family, as far back as Nick can remember this was his dream. But at the age of thirty-six, after several years of sacrificing his personal life for professional gain, Nick has started to ponder his future and consider the mark he wants to leave on society both professionally and personally his legacy. After being chastised in the press for turning a cold shoulder to the community, the firm calls upon Nick to help rehabilitate its image by handling its first pro bono case. Nick is asked to represent Dawn Nelson, a domestic violence victim who is fighting for custody of her young son, Jordan. A far cry from Nick's specialty of defending the misdeeds of Corporate America, it is up to Nick to set Dawn and Jordan on a path to a better life. But Nick gets much more than he signed on for, as Dawn forces him to reassess his life choices and, ultimately, be true to himself. Only when Nick finally realizes what is truly important in life does he face his toughest and possibly final challenge: a battle for his own survival. Exploring the flaws of being human and the importance of controlling one's own destiny, The Life O'Reilly reminds us of how precious life is and how quickly and tragically it can change. Written with great empathy, The Life O'Reilly is an emotional and unforgettable tale that will challenge one's expectations of the modern love story and introduces a poignant and sensitive new voice in fiction.

A comprehensive companion to Entrepreneur's long-time bestseller Start Your Own Business, this essential guide leads you through the most critical startup step next to committing to your business vision—defining how to achieve it. Coached by a diverse group of experts and successful business owners, gain an in-depth understanding of what’s essential to any business plan, what’s appropriate for your venture, and what it takes ensure success. Plus, learn from real-world examples of plans that worked, helping to raise money, hone strategy, and build a solid business. Whether you’re just starting out or already running a business, to successfully build a company, you need a plan. One that lays out your product, your strategy, your market, your team, and your opportunity. It is the blueprint for your business. The experts at Entrepreneur show you how to create it. Includes sample business plans, resources and worksheets.