Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
Portfolio, 2019

Summary: 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 a startup into the next unicorn.

Praise: “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 is the definitive book on navigating VC as part of that.” —Eric Schmidt, former executive chairman and CEO of Google and executive chairman of Alphabet