Funds Flow: The Founder's Guide to Raising Capital, Exiting Big, and Navigating Investment Bankers, PE, VC, and Private Debt

You sell a company once. Everyone else at the table does it for a living.

The banker is paid when the deal closes, on a percentage that shrinks as the price rises. The private equity fund has a clock set by its investors, not by you. The venture fund needs one company in twenty to return the whole fund, and a business that merely makes you wealthy is, to its model, a disappointment. The lender, the lawyer, the accountant, and the corporate development executive across the table are each paid...