Secrets of Sand Hill Road

Venture Capital and How to Get It

By: Scott Kupor, Eric Ries

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

What are venture capitalists saying about your startup behind closed doors? And what can you do to influence that conversation?

If Silicon Valley is the greatest wealth-generating machine in the world, Sand Hill Road is its humming engine. That's where you'll find the biggest names in venture capital, including famed VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, where lawyer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-VC Scott Kupor serves as managing partner.

Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VCs think. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Kupor explains exactly how VCs decide where and how much to invest, and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal and make the most of their relationships with VCs. Kupor explains, for instance:

• Why most VCs typically invest in only one startup in a given business category.
• Why the skill you need most when raising venture capital is the ability to tell a compelling story.
• How to handle a "down round," when startups have to raise funds at a lower valuation than in the previous round.
• What to do when VCs get too entangled in the day-to-day operations of the business.
• Why you need to build relationships with potential acquirers long before you decide to sell.

Filled with Kupor's firsthand experiences, insider advice, and practical takeaways, Secrets of Sand Hill Road is the guide every entrepreneur needs to turn their startup into the next unicorn.

*Includes a PDF of graphs and a glossary

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Scott Kupor and Eric Ries (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Worth far more than its cover price... I wish I'd had it available to me when I was first looking for startup funding." (Eric Ries, best-selling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way, from the foreword)

"As someone who’s helped a small company become a huge, valuable company, I know firsthand the power of the startup ecosystem and entrepreneurship. This book is the definitive book on navigating VC as part of that." (Eric Schmidt, former executive chairman and CEO of Google; technical advisor, Alphabet)

“I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to create something important and to achieve outlier success. Kupor’s book takes founders who want to do both through everything from how VCs raise money and evaluate deals, to how to think about term sheets and set up boards. It’s a valuable resource for any founder who wants to work with VCs.” (Sam Altman, partner and president Y Combinator; co-founder of OpenAI)

Great Insights for Entrepreneurs

I enjoyed this book very much and found Scott’s analysis of startups and VC’s quite insightful. I’m a lawyer with over 30 years’ experience in business law and working with technology startups. Scott’s deep knowledge of what happens “behind the scenes” at VC firms was quite illuminating. His discussion of the typical provisions of a term sheet and their practical impact will be very helpful for entrepreneurs. It should also lead them to understand why they need to work collaboratively with an experienced business lawyer to protect their interests.

Great background and detail

Great book to get anyone up to speed on the process of raising VC.

Must read

Undoubtedly a must read for entrepreneurs, and VCs, and angel investors, and tech executives, and startup employees….. well, everyone in the world of startups.

hard to listen must read

it's a book you have to read rather than listen to. still pretty good book.

Great Primer

As someone who has been working as an executive in PE and VC for the last 6 years, I found this book to be a great refresher / primer on the realities of the motivations of the various players. I highly recommend.

Great foundation!

Great foundation for a basic understanding of venture capital. Easy listen and great tempo! Excellent!

Great listen on the mechanics of funding startups with VC

I really liked the narration, content is solid. So glad I listened as a former employee at multiple startups and current founder.

definitely a good read

it is a good read for someone who is interested in building a business and growing it into something great.

Useful summary; nothing new if you’re in the ecosystem

This is a great summary of how the venture capital world functions, the incentives and behaviors that drive decisions and things to keep in mind while navigating all of it. Given its publication date in 2019 though there’s a handful of books that pretty much have covered all the content in this book. Plus if you have been reading the author’s blog over the years you have also gotten all the content albeit in small pieces at a time. Not sure I learned anything new.

Outstanding! Wish I’d this had this book years ago.

I wish I had read this book when I first started our start-up. This book gives you the answers your are looking for. From the pitch deck, to the term-sheets (you’ll need to muscle through this part if you’re sanguine like me but it is worth every second). If you are raising capital, plan to raise, or are just interested in learning about the startup/VC dynamic. GET THIS BOOK!