Need a good book on private equity and venture capital

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Wanting to learn more as I explore the area.

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What do you want to know.

You won't find much on this because they are pretty secret about what they do and their methods for investing.

Do something else for a few years then recruit. Most new PE associates come from banking.

The only people I know who do either began (life) as millionaires. I was under the impression most jobs in this area were IB positions.

The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital

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Do something else for a few years then recruit. Most new PE associates come from banking.

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Yeah. It's pretty difficult to get into PE unless you have 2-3 work experience as an analyst at a good investment bank.

There are other ways to break in of course. Somebody mentioned commercial lending experience, and I know that some corporate lawyers make the transition into VC/PE on occasion, but it's not that easy, as I've found out this year--and this is after I got 7 months of PE experience last year from being hired for an internship that was based mostly on a large project related to arranging PE investors for an expansion of an unusual business operation.

Also, like many recent articles in the financial media have noted (see e.g., " The Shame of Alternative Investments"), there is a kind of bloat in the number of PE & VC firms out there right now. It's simply a matter of too much money chasing too few investments.

It's a point that I've tried to make on this board all the time for years (that rather than suffering from too little saving, the developed world actually has a glut of too much savings that is causing the value of investments to erode), but I guess maybe that's a tangential point to just keep in the back of your mind.

There are tons of books on VC & PE out there, and most of them are very expensive and also very useless. Typically, there's a lot of breezy talk about the VC cycle or whatever. If you really want to improve your game and make yourself a better potential analyst or associate at a VC or PE firm, then what you are going to need to do is bone up on the gritty nuts & bolt specifics of legal provisions (more for the VC side) and financial modeling skills (more for the PE side).

If you want a cheap book that can give you a survey of the different types of legal provisions used in investment contracts by VC investors, check out Joseph Bartlett's " Fundamentals of Venture Capital."

If you want resources to help you learn financial modeling better, check out the books webpage from ModelOff's website at LINK.

Ideally, I would like to work for an PE firm or hedge fund that specialized in LBO deals and distressed investments for firms going into bankruptcy or reorganization plans (which is why it's a good idea to take those boring bankruptcy law courses if you go to law school), but that's a story for another time...

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Do something else for a few years then recruit. Most new PE associates come from banking.

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this. next to impossible to get into unless you come from IB or have VERY good industry specific experience of the target investment of the PE firm.

it's not easy to get into. it's not like becoming and accountant and you can just sign up and there are big 4 hiring thousands of people a year. if you aren't already on the path it's probably too late.