THE VC WAY: Investment Secrets From the Wizards of Venture Capital. - Review - book review

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, August, 2001 by Robert Frick

BOOKS | The secrets of ventures capitals are still safe

If only you knew how venture capitalists scored their stock-market-beating returns, think how you could punch up your portfolio. Unfortunately, Jeffrey Zygmont's The VC Way: Investment Secrets From the Wizards of Venture Capital (Perseus Publishing, $26) offers no such revelations. Zygmont gives lots of details about VC players, but precious few about how they analyze and invest in fledgling firms. And there's no critique of why the VC industry funneled millions of dollars into dot-coms that turned out to be losers.

The author laments that if Toysmart had been funded by VCs, it might have had a chance. But eToys was lousy with VC money and directors, and it tanked anyway.