[.ca] Venture Capital and Private Equity: A Casebook (ISBN 0471230693)

Perhaps the only book available on the subject matter:
Over the past few years the institutional private equity market has exploded. Riding on the backs phenomenal public markets and a wave of technological innovation, private equity in general and venture capital has become one of the most sought after investments. However, given the rash of recent publicity, stellar performance, and a balooning assets, there's surprisingly little research available about the institutional private equity market. Profs. Lerner and Gompers currently account for probably half of all academic research in this market. The institutional private equity market is quite different from angel investments. The majority of the capital at the institutional level flows from large investment institutions like public pensions, endowments and insurance companies. Moreover, the personal investing into private companies do so professionally. More than anything, the book serves as a primer to the institutional private equity market. The book was intitially meant for HBS and other MBA students. Thus, almost all the content is in case study form. In a lot of respects this is advantageous. In general, a book either has the option of being a primer or providing high level analysis on a very specific topic. Clearly this book is the former. In my opinion, the downfall of most primers are the oversimplification of topics and useless generalizations. Given the early stages of the institutional private equity market, generalizations are especially questionable and difficult. On the other hand, the case method presents users with numerous situations and predicaments facing the participants. As a result, readers gain an understanding of the issues facing this market from a number of perspectives. This books provides useful information on key topics such as investing and analyzing private equity funds from an institution's perspective, fund of funds, forming a private equity fund, and the direct investments into companies by the private equity funds, along with many other topics. Whatever level the private equity professional is functioning, understanding each of these components I imagine is key. This casebook provides an very good overview of the institutional private equity market. Likewise, to the best of my knowledge, this is the only book covering this topic.

Large investment in time for little payback in information:
If you are interested in quickly learning about how to raise a VC fund, save your time and money. This book does not offer many clues.

Good But Nothing more:
The book is quite good,but suffers from the case approach pitfalls- too much details for specific cases, and less generally applicable information. Thsi might be useful in the context of an MBA case study class, but certainly not as a useful reading book on the industry. The actual notes are very short and lack suficient details to be useful.

Get This Book!:
A must for anyone wanting to know how VC firms work, structure themselves, and considerations for funding. This is an excellent case study that ought to be in a graduate program! It's as close as you'll get without working for a VC firm. I would suggest reading "The Venture Capital Cycle" first to get a general feel for VC and how it works. Then read the case study!

Another Great Book!:
Want examples of how funding works? Want to know how Venture firms set up their business? Want to know everything about practical application of VC firms? This may be as close as you'll get without actually working in one. This ought to be a text book in graduate school. I'd suggest "The Venture Capital Cycle" as the first book to get an overview of VC's. Then, read this one and you'll be pretty proficient in terms of being an outsider. Great Case Study!