Secrets of Sand Hill Road

What Hacker News says

1. mchinenSep 2024
   All the 'founder attitude' book recs are probably a good idea, but I would recommend supplementing with some VC and investing vehicle stuff, such as Secrets of Sand Hill Road and The Power Law, especially if that seems unimportant and tedious. Understanding your options and what the incentives are for investors will help you better understand where you are likely to be aligned and where you have to be careful.
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2. alephnerdJan 2024
   > Is there academic research on this by any chance

   Read "Secrets of Sand Hill Road".

   It's written by Scott Kupor - one of the Managing Partner at A16Z - and explains in depth how the VC model works.

   It's also required reading if you want to interview at a VC fund, and highly recommended by other founders to learn how to better strategize when raising funds.

   Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Monetizing Innovation, and Working Backwards are the only books you need to successfully understand how to raise and build a VC funded startup. The pricing strategy guide by I think Sequoia is also useful.

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3. alephnerdApr 2023
   "Secrets of Sand Hill Road" by Scott Kupor (Managing Partner @ A16Z).

   Was recommended to read this by VC friends to prep for Investment Associate interviews a couple years ago

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4. lansteinMar 2023
   Advice to Founders and CEOs

   - Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders’ Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) - The Entrepreneur’s Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) - Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great CEO Within (Matt Mochary)

   Finance

   - Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w... - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and Joe Knight)

   Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-setting)

   - The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham)

   Legal

   - Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Law and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy)

   Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit)

   - Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore) - Only the Paranoid Survive (Andy Grove) - Blitzscaling (Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh) - The Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton Christensen) - Good to Great (Jim Collins) - Playing to Win (A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin) - Tape Sucks (Frank Slootman) - Strategy vol. 1&2 (Harvard Business Review)

   Pricing

   - Monetizing Innovation (Georg Tacke and Madhavan Ramanujan) - Confessions of the Pricing Man (Hermann Simon)

   Startup Phase

   - The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) - The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank) - Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

   Management/Leadership

   - The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) - Managing Humans (Michael Lopp) - The Art of Leadership (Michael Lopp) - High Output Management (Andy Grove) - Managing Oneself (Peter Drucker) - Essentials: Management (First Round Capital) - The Making of a Manager (Julie Zhuo) - The Powell Principles (Oren Harari) - Radical Candor (Kim Scott) - Leading Matters (John L. Hennessy) (fantastic book list in the coda) - Turn the Ship Around (L. David Marquet) (this is THE book on delegation) - Principles (Ray Dalio)

   COO/Succession Planning

   - Riding Shotgun (Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles)

   People Performance/HR/Culture

   - Powerful (Patty McCord) - No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer) - Netflix culture deck - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) - Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock) - It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (DHH and Jason Fried) - The Culture Map (Erin Meyer) - The Talent War (Mike Sarraille and George Randle) - Great People Decisions (Claudio Fernández-Aráoz) - The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring (Ozzie Osman) - Punished by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)

   Purpose, Passion, and Self

   - Start with Why (Simon Sinek) - What You Do is Who You Are (Ben Horowitz) - Drive (Daniel Pink) - Mindset (Carol Dweck) - Grit (Angela Duckworth) - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)

   Fundraising/VC

   - Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Scott Kupor) - Venture Deals (Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson) - Raising Venture Capital (Andy Sparks) - The Business of Venture Capital (Mahendra Ramsinghani) - Done Deals (Udayan Gupta) - The Power Law (Sebastian Mallaby) - VC (Tom Nicholas)

   Board

   - Boardroom Excellence (Paul Brountas) - Startups Boards (Brad Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani)

   M&A

   - Winning (Jack Welch) - M&A chapter - Connecting the Dots (John Chambers) - M&A chapter

   Marketing

   - Data-Driven Marketing (Mark Jeffery) - Positioning (Al Ries and Jack Trout) - Scientific Advertising (Claude Hopkins) - Traction (Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares) - Behind the Cloud (Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler) - Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy) - Marketing High Technology (William Davidow)

   Psychology

   - Influence (Robert Cialdini)

   Negotiation

   First, read Influence (under Psychology), then, in order

   - Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) - Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher and William Ury) - Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss) - The Bald Truth (David Falk)

   Self

   - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)

   Design and UX

   - Creative Confidence (Tom Kelley and David Kelley)

   AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning/Neural Networks)

   - Andrew Ng's AI for Everyone course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone](https://www....

   Growth (Data Science, etc.)

   - Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown)

   Graph Theory

   Product

   - Inspired (Marty Cagan) - Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)

   Customer Loyalty/Customer Success

   - Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh) - Setting the Table (Danny Meyer)

   Finding a Startup Job

   - Entering StartupLand (Jeffrey Bussgang)

   CIO as ICP

   - The CIO Paradox (Martha Heller) - Be the Business (Martha Heller)

   Stories

   - Made in America (Sam Walton) - Shoe Dog (Phil Knight) - The Everything Store (Brad Stone) - Built from Scratch (Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank) - Hard Drive (James Wallace) - Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson) - Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) - Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull) - The Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger) - Valley of Genius (Adam Fisher) - The Idea Factory (Jon Gertner) - Dealers of Lightning (Michael Hertzik) - Idea Man (Paul Allen) - Pour Your Heart Into It (Howard Schultz)

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5. deanalevittAug 2019
   The new book Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor is slightly newer, a little more readable, and talks a lot about dilution, but otherwise covers almost the same ground.

   Both books are great in understanding the space and motivations of various players.

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6. rahimnathwaniJul 2019
   It depends on the terms agreed with investors.

   Typically this agreement says the board seat is allocated to the CEO role, not to the individual. So, if the CEO leaves the company, she loses her board seat. She could be appointed to a different seat, e.g. as an independent director chosen by the other members of the board, or as a board member voted by shareholders.

   But which of these outcomes is possible likely depends on her negotiating position at the time(s) she raised funds.

   The book 'Secrets of Sand Hill Road' has useful guidance on this. See the first 10 pages of chapter 10.

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