Venture Capital Investing The Complete Handbook for Investing in Private Businessesfor Outstanding P Rofits

Introduction This book has been great fun to write, and with this revision it is ready for another 15-year run. More than 500 venture capital, buyout, and mezzanine funds are using the book to enlighten their new investment officers, associates, and analysts. When the book was written 15 years ago, there was no prediction that Venture Capital Investing would become so widely used by professionals in the industry. However, with the tremendous increase in venture capital and the many new employees, the book has benefited by filling that need. Please note that throughout this book, we use the term venture capital to cover the areas often called private equity investing. Under this general term, venture capital, we are lumping investing in leveraged buyouts, investing in startups, and providing growth financing (mezzanine finance). The chief strength of the book is that it is a "nuts-and-bolts" approach about how to invest in venture capital and should illustrate to you the pragmatic process of investing in venture capital. The style is in plain English about the basics and does not have a lot of theory or war stories. It shows you how to win at the game of investing in venture capital. It has been gratifying to see the book become so useful to so many people in the venture capital industry. Some people have claimed to have gained great insight into a particular investment and helped the venture capital fund make extraordinary returns. (We are waiting for some of those big winners to send us the commissions!) It would be fun to know how many billions of dollars have been made from venture capital firms by using this book. We know the book is having an impact because some of our venture capital friends make comments to us about "giving away the secrets of the business." It seems that we have made it more difficult for them to gain the advantage over some of the new funds that have been entering the venture capital marketplace. In addition to professionals, more than 60 business schools use this book in their classes on either investing or entrepreneurship. It is wonderful that there are so many business schools that use the book today. It is gratifying to know that people are studying how to invest in venture capital. Background on the Authors For this new edition, David has teamed up with his daughter, Laura Gladstone, to rewrite this edition. We are authors by night, but both of us have day jobs as managers of a fund we created called Gladstone Capital Corporation (NASDAQ: GLAD). Our website is www.gladstonecapital.com. Come visit our website and learn about our fund and some more about venture capital. We have one warning to readers about the authors. Every person is the total of his or her experiences. Each of us brings to every situation intellectual "baggage" in the form of prejudices and preferences, inherited and learned from past experiences. Therefore, to understand what this book is about, you need to know something about the background of the writers. All of the experience of the writers has come from lending to and investing in small- and medium-sized businesses. Neither of the writers of this book have been a professional in any other area, such as the arts and letters or politics. David Gladstone's experience has come from investing in small- and medium-sized businesses since 1973. He has invested in all stages of the process, from startup to later-stage and, in some cases, small public companies. He is the past chairman of the group of companies that are now consolidated under the name of Allied Capital Corporation, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ALD). As the chairman of that company, he gave investors an annual return of 22.4 percent compounded per year for 15 years. That company increased dividends and distributions to shareholders every year while he was in charge of its investments. He invested in more than 500 companies anGladstone, David J. is the author of 'Venture Capital Investing The Complete Handbook for Investing in Private Businessesfor Outstanding P Rofits', published 2003 under ISBN 9780131018853 and ISBN 013101885X.