Books and blogs: growth and exits

Here are a few resources I've come across over the last couple weeks.

I visited the facilities of ATP Innovations earlier this week and am impressed with the level of innovation happening there. Along the way, I came across a related blog calles Successful Innovation which emphasizes events and podcasts by ATP Innovations' bizBetClub.

While at the last Angel Forum, I picked up a copy of Basil Peter's latest book: Early Exits.

"This book is about the large number of other exits - the ones that are not driven by the VCs. Exit opportunities have changed dramatically in the past few years. Today, it's more likely that a company will be sold without ever having an investment from a venture capitalist.

Exits are also happening much earlier than before. The largest number of exit transactions today are in the under $30-million valuation range. These exits are often completed when companies are only two or three years from startup.

The goal of this book is to help entrepreneurs and angel investors have more successful, more frequent and more profitable exits."

I also recently had the pleasure to preview and provide a review for Tom McKaskill's latest book: Raising Angel & Venture Capital Finance. In a private email from him, he mentions the book is available free and may be distributed and put on my website, even though it costs $25 on his. Well .. here goes: FREE. Tom writes about his book:

"The objective of this book is to show the entrepreneur how they can create a business which assists the Angel Investor or VC fund to achieve their objectives. In doing so, there is a high probability of raising finance."

Overall, both books provide great overviews of the current state of privately funded startups (read not publicly listed). I highly recommend both for entrepreneurs who want to start companies, keeping in mind how they want to structure their business to attract the support of angels. While the ultimate goal is presented as a successful exit, the intermediate goal is just as clear: build a profitable business with high-growth potential.

PS: I have added a google calendar bar to the blog to highlight upcoming events related to innovation and entrepreneurship. Thankfully the events can easily be imported into other calendars without requiring manual transcription, and there's a separate RSS feed, too.