#tag
Valuation & Equity
What your company is worth and who owns it.
4 guides · 3 tools · 37 books
Simple guides
Fundraising basics
Raising money means selling part of your company. Understand the terms before you sign.
Bootstrapping & staying small
Building a business with your own money and customer revenue instead of investors.
Term sheets, explained
A term sheet is a short document setting out the key terms of an investment before the legal paperwork.
Valuation basics
Early-stage valuation is a negotiation about price, driven by traction, team, market and competition between investors.
Free tools
Essential sources
Books in the library
The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building
by Matt Mochary & Alex MacCaw & Misha Talavera
A tactical, no-nonsense guide to building and scaling companies from Silicon Valley's most sought-after CEO coach. Matt Mochary shares the systems, processes, and leadership tools he uses to coach CEOs at companies like Coinbase, Reddit, Brex, and OpenAI.
Extreme Ownership
by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
Extreme Ownership instills founders with leadership lessons from Navy SEALs on total accountability, no-excuse culture, and decentralized command for superior team building and execution under pressure. Key principles include lead up and down the chain, prioritize and execute, and simplify plans for team alignment. Vs High Output Management, it delivers battle-tested discipline and ownership mindset over factory-style optimization.
Powerful
by Patty McCord
Patty McCord shares Netflix's culture of freedom and responsibility. Treat employees like adults, hire only high performers, and cultivate radical honesty.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
by Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz shares practical wisdom from his experience as a CEO and VC, covering the toughest challenges of startup leadership, including hard decisions, managing turmoil, and building resilient companies.
The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
by Robert Iger
Bob Iger shares Disney's revival through Pixar/Marvel acquisitions, tech embrace, and global pushes, distilling principles like optimism and curiosity for navigating crises. Founders apply tactics for bold M&A, talent empowerment, and quality focus to avoid legacy traps like tech resistance. Vs Elon Musk's intensity, it advocates balanced leadership; superb for media/consumer inspiration and decisiveness training.
What You Really Need to Lead: The Power of Thinking and Acting Like an Owner
by Robert Steven Kaplan
Robert Steven Kaplan’s book arguing that effective leadership starts from an ownership mindset, offering tools and techniques to align actions with personal and organizational aspirations. This is particularly relevant to startup founders who are literal owners and must cultivate owner-like thinking across their teams.
Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
by Tony Fadell
A practical startup and product-building book by Tony Fadell that shares hard-won lessons from building world-changing products at Apple, Nest, and other ventures. It covers how to go from idea to product, lead teams, navigate investors, and make products that truly matter—highly relevant for startup founders learning to build and ship things people love.
Built Not Born
by Tom Golisano & Mike Wicks
Tom Golisano shares his entrepreneurial journey, offering lessons and insights into building resilient businesses from the ground up.
Founder Fallout: 100 Must Ask question Before you share the equity
by Jeremy Barker
Startup-focused book by Jeremy Barker that guides founders through 100 critical partnership and equity questions they must address before formalizing co-founder relationships or splitting ownership—aimed at preventing misalignment, conflict, and costly founder fallouts.
Get Up And Get On It: A Black Entrepreneur's Lessons on Creating Legacy and Wealth
by Dana Frank
A business and entrepreneurship book by Dana Frank that shares practical lessons from a Black entrepreneur on building companies, creating generational wealth, and establishing a lasting legacy. It is relevant for startup founders seeking real-world guidance on ownership, scaling, and wealth-building from a founder’s perspective.
How I Built This
by Guy Raz
How I Built This by Guy Raz offers insights into the journeys of successful entrepreneurs. Based on the popular podcast, it shares stories of innovation, challenges, and triumphs, providing a comprehensive look at the entrepreneurial journey.
How the Hell Are You Doing This?
by Parker McCumber
A leadership and personal development book by Parker McCumber that shares battle-tested strategies for taking control of your future, framed through the story of Captain Parker McCumber. While not exclusively about startups, it offers practical lessons on leadership, resilience, and success that are highly applicable for startup founders building and leading teams under pressure.
How the Hell Are You Doing This?: A Manual on Life and Leadership from the Story of Captain Parker McCumber
by Parker McCumber
A leadership and personal development book by Parker McCumber that shares battle-tested strategies for taking control of your future, making better decisions, and leading effectively. While not exclusively about startups, its practical guidance on resilience, ownership, and high-performance leadership is directly applicable to startup founders building and leading early-stage teams.
How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets
by Felix Dennis
Felix Dennis offers an unvarnished account of what it actually takes to build significant personal wealth through entrepreneurship. Mixing memoir and practical advice, the book explores motivations, mindset, risk-taking, ownership, and the trade-offs required to create and scale a successful business—highly relevant perspective for startup founders focused on both company-building and wealth creation.
Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
by Rand Fishkin
Rand Fishkin’s candid memoir shares his 15-year journey building Moz and SparkToro, offering blunt insights into startup highs and lows, venture capital pitfalls, and lessons learned from failure.
Before I Won
by Tomas Veres
Tomas Veres' Before I Won shares an entrepreneur's raw pre-success struggles and mindset shifts, teaching personal growth through failure, persistence, and self-belief for startup founders facing rejection. Key use case: overcoming repeated failures to achieve breakthroughs. Vs Atomic Habits, it provides narrative-driven inspiration over systematic habit-building.
Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game
by Walker Deibel
A practical guide to “acquisition entrepreneurship,” arguing that founders can often create more value by buying and growing existing small businesses instead of starting from scratch. Covers sourcing deals, financing, due diligence, and operating acquired companies—highly relevant for startup-minded founders considering alternative paths to ownership.
Spark: Take Your Business From Struggle to Significance
David A. Hilton shares tactics for founders to ignite business transformation through leadership alignment and process optimization for scaling teams beyond survival mode. Key use cases include performance dashboards and goal alignment metrics for hypergrowth transitions. Vs Blitzscaling, it focuses on internal spark-building for sustainable significance over rapid market capture.
The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup
by Noam Wasserman
Noam Wasserman's research-based guide to founder decisions. Based on studying 10,000 founders—essential for avoiding common traps.
Start Your Own Business
Comprehensive guide covering business planning, funding sources, and marketing basics for aspiring entrepreneurs. Updated to 2025 edition to provide practical steps for launching a startup. Essential resource for beginners navigating the initial stages of business ownership.
The Founder’s Dilemma
by Noam Wasserman
Written by Noam Wasserman, this book explores the critical decisions faced by startup founders, such as equity splits and hiring. It provides data-driven insights into the common pitfalls and challenges in the early stages of a startup.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
by Ben Horowitz
Authored by Ben Horowitz, this book provides practical wisdom for startup founders facing difficult decisions. It covers real-world challenges like firing friends and poaching talent, offering insights into the mindset of venture capitalists and the realities of business ownership.
Build
by Tony Fadell
Written by Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod and Nest, this book shares lessons on product development and leadership. It offers insights into building innovative products, making it a great resource for product-driven founders.
The Mechanics of Private Equity: Demystifying Private Equity Fundamentals and Leverage Buyout (LBO) Valuation Modelling for Startup Founders, Entrepreneurs, Fund Managers, and Investment Bankers
An introduction to private equity fundamentals and LBO valuation modeling, written explicitly for startup founders and entrepreneurs. Helps founders understand how PE funds work, how buyouts are structured and valued, and how to speak the language of investors when exploring growth capital, exits, or acquisition strategies.
Equity Crowdfunding
by Nathan Rose
Written by Nathan Rose, this book serves as a comprehensive guide to equity crowdfunding, offering insights and strategies for startups looking to raise capital.
A Very Public Offering
by Stephan Paternot & Andrew Essex
Stephan Paternot shares his personal journey through the dot-com boom, offering lessons on business success and the challenges of entrepreneurship in a rapidly changing market.
Delivering Happiness
by Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh shares his journey as CEO of Zappos, offering insights into creating a company culture that prioritizes happiness and customer satisfaction, crucial for startup success.
Founder Fallout
by Jeremy G. Barker
A practical guide for startup founders that outlines 100 critical partnership and equity-splitting questions to address before formalizing co-founder relationships. It focuses on avoiding common equity and partnership pitfalls, aligning expectations, and creating a solid foundation for an early-stage startup, making it a useful must-read reference for founder agreements and co-founder dynamics.
The Angel Philosopher
A startup-focused book that shares insights, lessons, and reflections from the perspective of a seasoned startup investor, aimed at helping founders understand how investors think and make better decisions when building and funding their companies.
The Long and the Short of It
by John Kay
Founders-focused personal finance and investing primer that explains how financial markets, investment products, and risk work in plain language, helping startup founders make smarter decisions about their own capital, equity proceeds, and long‑term wealth outside the company.
It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy
by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff
By Captain D. Michael Abrashoff (2002, Grand Central Publishing), this memoir describes how he transformed the USS Benfold, one of the Navy's worst-performing ships, into one of its best by pushing decision-making down to his crew and genuinely listening to them.
Slicing Pie: Funding Your Company Without Funds
by Mike Moyer
By Mike Moyer (2012, self-published, multiple editions), this book proposes a dynamic equity-splitting model for early-stage startups, where each founder's share grows based on the actual time, money, and resources they contribute rather than a fixed upfront split.
Term Sheets & Valuations: A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Venture Capital Term Sheets & Valuations
by Alex Wilmerding
By Alex Wilmerding (2006, Aspatore Books), this short, focused guide breaks down venture capital term sheets clause by clause, explaining what each provision means and how it affects founders' ownership and control.
Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation
by Andrew Metrick and Ayako Yasuda
By Andrew Metrick and Ayako Yasuda (2010, 2nd/3rd editions, Wiley), this textbook covers the mechanics and economics of venture capital — how funds are structured, how deals are valued, and how VC returns actually work.
Founder's Pocket Guide: Startup Equity
by Stephen R. Poland
By Stephen R. Poland (2015, 1x1 Media), this short reference guide explains how startup equity works in practice: cap tables, vesting, dilution, and option pools, aimed at first-time founders making early equity decisions.
Equity: Why Employee Ownership Is Good for Business
by Corey Rosen
By Corey Rosen, John Case, and Martin Staubus (2005, Harvard Business Review Press), this book makes the research-backed case that broad-based employee ownership — stock options, ESOPs, profit sharing — improves both company performance and employee outcomes.