A comprehensive handbook to the financial decisions that founders of technology companies must make, strengthened by a...
A guide to the financial aspects of entrepreneurship, both personal and corporate.
In this debut business book, Franklin draws heavily on interviews with veteran entrepreneurs willing to share the lessons they’ve learned. She also makes use of her own accounting and financial planning background to explore the areas entrepreneurs need to consider as they attempt to expand their businesses. The book breaks entrepreneurship into a three-phase cycle, from the initial idea to realizing the dream. Much of Franklin’s advice is focused on the “liquidity event,” the merger, acquisition or IPO that generally means a significant windfall for the founder. The book guides readers through the financial structures of such events, explaining both the contractual restrictions, e.g., stock vesting, as well as the tax implications of the large payouts. The extended sidebars and the main narrative incorporate advice from experienced entrepreneurs, some of whom have founded and sold multiple companies, as they share both their mistakes and their successes. The book’s audience is a relatively narrow one: Franklin restricts her discussion to technology companies, nearly all in the Silicon Valley area, and there are frequent references to entrepreneurs’ tendencies to work long days for little initial pay, driven by passion and/or the expectation of an eventual financial return. Readers who don’t fall into those categories might see limited value in the book. But those in the early stages of their own startups will find the book a useful tool, with its discussion of everything from key points to cover in negotiations with venture capitalists to reasons why founders should diversify their holdings as soon as they are able to begin selling the stock they hold in their companies.
A comprehensive handbook to the financial decisions that founders of technology companies must make, strengthened by a knowledgeable author and extensive expert interviews.Pub Date: June 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991617227
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Rubydon Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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