In Andrew Metrick’s Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation, future and current venture capitalists will find a useful guide to the principles of finance and the financial models that underlie venture capital decisions. Assuming no knowledge beyond concepts covered in first-year MBA course, the book will familiarize you with:

• The relationship between risk and return in venture capital
• Historical statistics on the performance of venture capital investments
• Total Valuation - the data and methods used to value a high-growth company
• Partial Valuation – how to analyze the special features of VC transactions such as convertible preferred stock, participating preferred stock, payment-in-kind dividends, and liquidation preferences
• A framework for modeling investment in "research and development"
• The relationship between strategy and finance
• Cutting-edge techniques such as Monte-Carlo analysis, real options, binomial trees, and game theory

About the Author:

Andrew Metrick is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation. Dr. Metrick received a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Yale and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard. Dr. Metrick has received numerous teaching awards and distinctions, including recognition by BusinessWeek as one of the best teachers at Wharton.

"This book is an excellent bridge between finance theory and venture capital practice. Metrick presents cutting-edge financial tools, creatively apllied to venture capital and R&D investing. It is destined to become the required reading for all students and practitioners in the field."
—Paul A. Gompers, Eugene Holman Professor of Business Administration & Director of Research, Harvard Business School

"Despite the increasing importance of the venture capital industry, until now there was no reference that could provide practitioners with a specialized grounding in finance. With clear explanations and practical models, Metrick’s book can fill this gap. I enthusiastically recommend this book to all venture capitalists."
—Ted Schlein, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

"Investors in young, fast-growing companies have a new way to calculate their value without regard to the prices of other companies’ stocks. This is an important advance, because most other appraisal methods for start-ups are based on relative valuation, which – as we saw at the top of the Internet bubble – grossly overvalues a new company when comparable companies in the same industry are also overvalued."
—Mark Hulbert, The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2006