Finance Secrets of Billion-Dollar Entrepreneurs: Venture Finance Without Venture Capital

by Dileep Rao Narrated by Sam Devereaux

Overview

Take Control of Your Startup-and Watch it Grow
An analysis of success: By learning from both the mistakes and achievements of those before us, we can better craft our own approach to success. Award-winning professor of entrepreneurship Dileep Rao presents readers with a detailed guide to success through his interviews and analysis of billion-dollar entrepreneurs (those who built a venture from startup to more than $1 billion in sales and valuation) and 100 million-dollar entrepreneurs (startup to $100 million).

Build your business without venture capital (VC) funding: While starting a business without outside help seems difficult, Rao is here to show entrepreneurs that not only is it possible, but it could very well lead to a more successful business. Rao shares how more than 90 percent of America's billion-dollar entrepreneurs in the VC era (since 1946) avoided or delayed VC, and instead used finance-smart expertise-skills that combine business-smart, capital-smart, and leadership-smart strategies.

The right mix of internal and external financing: It takes more than one person to grow a business from the bottom up. But that doesn't mean we have to sacrifice control of the venture in the process. Armed with 23 years of experience as a financer, Rao shows readers how to optimize internal financing so as to attract external financing. By keeping control of the venture, entrepreneurs keep more of the wealth, as well.

Dileep Rao's Finance Secrets of Billion-Dollar Entrepreneurs shares with readers:

Pre-financing, financing and post-financing skills and strategies of finance-smart entrepreneurs
The ins and outs of venture finance, applicable to anyone looking to start a business
Tips on increasing capital productivity and attaining financially sustainable entrepreneurship
If you've enjoyed entrepreneurship-focused titles such as The Lean Startup, The $100 Startup, and Venture Deals, then Rao's Finance Secrets of Billion-Dollar Entrepreneurs is the next book for you.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177745671
Publisher:	Everand Productions
Publication date:	11/17/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION (Excerpt)

There is not enough venture capital (VC) to satisfy the world’s entrepreneurial dreams. Even with VC, more ventures fail than succeed. But all entrepreneurs can benefit by getting the expertise to take off without VC – and then decide whether or not to use VC. With shows like Shark Tank and the constant publicity drumbeat of Silicon Valley, nearly all entrepreneurs have been deceived into thinking that they need angel capital and venture capital to build a giant venture. But this is not true. I wrote this book to show you the reality from the entrepreneur perspective – how more than 90% of America’s billion-dollar entrepreneurs financed their ventures and took off without venture capital and nearly 80% never used it.

Can you create a billion-dollar business without taking a penny of venture capital? 76% of America's unicorn-entrepreneurs did just that; and 18% received VC after they had already built their venture and proved their leadership potential – allowing the entrepreneurs to control the venture capitalists instead of the other way around.

If you are the owner of one of the millions of businesses succeeding every day without VC, this book will teach you how to dominate your industry and scale your business without losing control of the venture.

Two key questions are: Can you avoid VC? Or can you delay VC till take off, and still succeed?

A prevailing and quite popular belief is that entrepreneurs need venture capital (VC) to grow. With 23 years as a financier (in equity, debt, and leases), including success managing five turnarounds, I too at one time believed in the importance of financiers.

But when I interviewed seven billion-dollar entrepreneurs and 23 one hundred-million-dollar entrepreneurs , and analyzed the strategies of 80 billion-dollar entrepreneurs my thinking shifted. I found that more than 90 percent of America’s billion-dollar entrepreneurs in the VC era (since 1946) had avoided or delayed VC. In Silicon Valley, most delayed VC. Outside Silicon Valley, most completely avoided it.

They used finance-smart expertise to link their business and finance strategies to grow more with less, to finance for control, and to launch before the end of the runway. This book offers their proven strategies that help to link business and finance, to grow without VC or with delayed VC, and to control the venture and wealth created.

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