Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It

by Scott Kupor

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Kupor, manageing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, pulls back the curtain on how venture firms actually raise, invest, and exit, explaining LPs, fund economics, and the mechanics of term sheets from the VC's own vantage point. He argues that founders who understand VC incentives (fund lifecycles, reserves, power-law returns) negotiate better deals and pick better partners, and he walks through governance, down rounds, and IPO/M&A outcomes in plain language.

Published:: 2019
Pages:: 304

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In the Conversation

In this collection, Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It references 4 other books.

It draws on The Lean Startup, The Hard Thing About Hard Things and Zero to One.

Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.

What This Book Draws On

The books Kupor references and why each one mattered to the argument.

Foreword is written by Eric Ries, and Kupor repeatedly uses Lean Startup concepts (MVP, pivot, validated learning) as the shared vocabulary between founders and VCs when evaluating early traction

References

The Lean Startup

by Eric Ries

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Cross-references Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things on founder CEO decisions, since Horowitz is Kupor's co-founder at a16z and the two books are explicitly designed as companion reads

References

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

by Ben Horowitz

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Builds on Thiel's Zero to One argument about power-law returns to explain why VCs structure portfolios for outlier outcomes rather than average returns, shaping everything from check sizes to reserves

References

Zero to One

by Peter Thiel

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Echoes Wickman's Traction on the importance of a disciplined operating cadence, mapping it to the board reporting and KPI discipline VCs expect post-investment

References

Traction

by Gino Wickman

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What Other Authors Say About It

No books citing this title yet.

Intellectual Lineage

How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.

Builds on (2 layers deep)

Directly cites

The Lean Startup

The Hard Thing About Hard Th...

Zero to One

Traction

2 steps back

The Innovator's Dilemma

The Innovator's Solution

The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Crossing the Chasm

High Output Management

Good to Great

Unexpected Connections

Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.