Buy: Holloway, Bookshop, Amazon, Amazon UK
First published online in 2019, The Holloway Guide to Raising Venture Capital, was a collaborative effort I led with 60+ founders, investors, and industry experts. Having moved to Silicon Valley from Ohio (and having grown up on the border of suburbia and rural Pennsylvania), I found the language and process of fundraising to be opaque and tough to navigate as an outsider. I wrote this book to help others fast forward through a learning journey that took me years.
I'm particularly proud of two things in this book: one; how the book encourages people to assess whether venture capital is right for them and their business in the first place and two; how we sat down with Michael Brown from Fenwick (he bills at over $900 / hour) for 10+ hours to write clear descriptions of all the terms in a term sheet so founders can save themselves a few $900 / hour phone calls once a term sheet lands in their inbox.
On top of that, here's a bit more of what you can expect to learn:
“Founders shouldn’t have to figure fundraising out the hard way when they can learn from those who have already been through the process. The Holloway Guide to Raising Venture Capital is full of practical advice that will be helpful to any entrepreneur.” —Brad Feld (Managing Director, Foundry Group)
“Though it’s getting better, venture capital has traditionally been a fairly closed, blackbox field. This Guide democratizes and demystifies the VC ecosystem, which is an important step toward building a more diverse and inclusive industry.” —Lindsay Knight (Partner, Chicago Ventures)
“We need more startups. But many never get the funding they need to fulfill their true potential. This Guide is designed to empower founders with the insights and strategies to find investors that share the same convictions as the founders themselves.” —Ryan Hoover (Founder, ProductHunt; Investor, Weekend Fund)