This book is organized into two section. Section one starts with and introduction of why shareholder value is important, what influences early-stage company value, and in the process, which of these influences the entrepreneur can control and which ones cannot. Successive chapter of Section One walk the entrepreneur through the remainder of the planning and fundraising processes: financial planning, capital planning, investor targeting, alternatives to equity financing, understanding term sheets and due diligence. Twenty-one myths about funding are given as a final recap of the section.
Section two focuses on the key financial execution issues confronting the entrepreneur--maximizing the benefit from and allocation of financial resources with a view towards intelligently staffing the early-stage company, stock options traps and tricks, steps to establishing a baseline financial control structure, and a concluding discussion of seven hard learned lesson.