Week 8: Reading Reflection (Chapter 8)

1). The most surprising thing to me was how easy the financing continuum broke down typical funding of start-ups for me. When I first read the title of the chapter, I sort of cringed because I don’t like finance and often have to study in-depth to really understand detailed concepts. By the first diagram, I actually understood the direction of the chapter and an overview of funding. It provided an outline from the beginning that laid a foundation for terms and concepts to follow.

2). There are many different terms in this chapter that are important to differentiate from one another. Although the book does a good job defining each one, I found myself having to go back and look many of them up again just because there are so many of them that they all ran together at certain points. It is just confusing to have all of these financial terms introduced at once because I found myself having to pause and look up the definition again which slowed down the reading.

3). My first question would be where he came up with the five myths about venture capitalists? Although I understand the larger purpose was to explain that that these are not the case, I was unfamiliar with the majority of the myths he had listed. I am by no means a finance expert, but I found it interesting that those were the five he decided to list when I would have never even thought of most of them. My second question would be how he determines the essential elements for a successful presentation to a venture capitalist? Many of them are common sense such as know the competition, be able to adapt, and have a unique product. My question would just be how he specifically assembled his list in particular and what made those factors be of extra importance than others.

4). There was nothing that I disagreed with in this chapter. This was one of the most detailed chapters in my opinion in terms of systematically explaining a new concept that many people are extremely unfamiliar with. Explaining finance and capital can be very complicated, but I thought the author did a good job going into just enough detail to make it thorough, yet understandable to someone potentially reading it in-depth for the first time.