دانلود کتاب ارزش ساختمان – تجارت سرمایه خطرپذیر

It might seem a strange question to ask at the beginning of a book about venture capital, where so much of the culture of the start-up industry appears to focus on ‘doing the next raise’. Of course, start-ups raise capital, that’s what they do, isn’t it? We are sometimes led to believe that the only goal for entrepreneurs or start-up CEOs is to raise money from venture capitalists (VCs). But ask yourself a fundamental question: Why? In the old days, entrepreneurs didn’t always do that, so why now? In the early part of the 20th century, companies which started small ended up being global corporations without huge amounts of capital being injected into them. With a sometimes limited number of informal backers, their management teams reinvested cash generated from hard-won sales to build companies step by step, often failing and restarting along the way. Was there a different entrepreneurial mentality necessitated by the scarcity of resources? Can we learn something important from the old ways? Reading even a small amount of literature on the history of business can be illuminating when seeking an answer to these questions. The Ford Motor Company was a start-up once. Henry Ford began small with a few investors to form the Detroit Automobile Company. The company failed. The assets were bought out of administration by some of the investors, who allowed Ford to carry on as the Henry Ford Company. The company failed for a second time. For Henry Ford it was a case of third time lucky; the Ford Motor Company was formed with investments totalling $28,000 in 1903. The early investors in the Ford Motor Company included a successful Detroit coal merchant and the director of a well-regarded bank. These individuals were not professional VCs, they were private investors with a sense of adventure and a vision of the future. The company operated with very little resource; Henry Ford himself didn’t take a salary and was adept at persuading others to work for very little. This approach, raising money where he could and stretching very limited resources, eventually led to the successful global corporation we know today. The early investments into Ford’s various attempts to launch were not from modern-style venture capital funds, but piecemeal investments from a group of business owners and managers who took a chance and eventually made remarkable returns (Brinkley 2004). Tight financial control and careful business practices were the secret to Ford’s early success, before the exponential growth of the Model-T powered the business to profit. Countless other early 20th-century success stories took decades to become the global corporations they are now. Throughout history, ‘start-ups’ (before they were really called that) often grew slowly and organically, and sometimes independent of a financing industry that was simpler and more limited in scope than it is today. By injecting substantial amounts of external funding, the modern venture capital industry confers upon start-ups the ability for time travel, accelerating through the difficult early years of product development and business model experimentation. It affords start-ups the ability to try designs and test markets and business models via trial and error or the scientific method now termed ‘lean start-up’, and build world-class management teams to execute aggressive growth plans, including the acquisition of smaller competitors or suppliers. Technology means that the pace of innovation is quicker than it was in Henry Ford’s day, and the race to conquer unique business opportunities before others is conducted at break-neck speed. The venture capital industry provides the fuel to grow fast…