Book Review: Zero Gravity 3*

Zero Gravity: Riding Venture Capital from High-Tech Start-up to Breakout IPO

I read this book years ago when it first came out (in 2000). I sometimes like to read these types of books again, just to gain perspective.

There is so much in this book that is just second nature to people now such as what an Angel is, or the concepts of valuations and dilutions. In terms of pure content, there is not much in this book that is not readily available elsewhere, and is actually fairly basic.

It is interesting to read the perspective of the companies to model after such as Yahoo, Ebay, InfoSpace. The listings of Venture Capital and Startups have a ton of companies that are no longer around, but the interviews in general are still very interesting to read. There are some funny tidbits such as “Always carry a bunch of floppies with a copy of your business plan to hand out”.

On the other hand interviews with Marc Andreessen and John Doerr are pretty good and stand the test of time. They are pretty consistent with similar remarks I have seen by both of them recently as well.

Not a must read – but definitely great as a historical reference. That’s why I gave it 3 stars rather than just 2.