Term Sheets & Valuations - A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Term Sheets & Valuations (Bigwig Briefs)

When I first received this book, I was disappointed because of its short length (106 pages). I could not have been more wrong, the book is very comprehensive. I bought this book because I was involved in a Private Equity transaction on the entrepreneur side of the transaction. We had received a term sheet from the investor and I needed to get educated about this stage of the transaction. The investor that submitted the term sheet was not using one of the 5 typical formats, so Wilmerding's approach of describing the various clauses in the term sheet and the effects on the parties was of critical importance to our transaction. As the other reviewers have mentioned, the author describes the various clauses as investor favorable, middle of the road, or company favorable. This approach was helpful in developing several ideas for "push backs" in our negotiation. The author also helped highlight "red flags" to be aware of and described their significance. The author also highlights where it is important to retain experienced council to avoid legal pitfalls.This book is a step by step cookbook for navigating the first critical steps in each round of financing a new company will do. Ignore his advice at your own financial peril.

This is a basic book that works very well in conjunction with many of the examples you find on the internet. If you have never dealt with term sheets, as I hadn't, this is a perfect guide to understanding what is important, the skew of the language and why the document flows the way it does.

It is very expensive to read this book but it was well worth it. Get into specifics into every clause of the term sheet. And the advice given whether it is pro-investor, pro-entrepreneur or middle of the road makes life very much easier understanding the term sheets.Get this book if you are an entrepreneur or a VC trying to get the best deal for yourself.

The author takes standard term sheets and analyzes each key section according to what is investor favorable, company favorable, or neutral. This is a great approach, as it enables to explore the potential extremes in a term sheet section.The examples are indeed boilerplate, but it nevertheless serves as an excellent introduction to term sheets. I've been able to apply the concepts discussed in the book to the analyses of term sheets at our firm...a testament to this book's utility. Overall, an excellent value.

This is a good book if you are working in Direct Investments

The world of the term sheet is a foreign language to most. You need to utilize good attorney but this wil help you talk to your attorney and understand what the options are. Well formatted and written

Term Sheets and Valuations analyzes the finer details of VC term sheets within a framework of what are "investor favorable", "middle-of-the-road", or "company favorable" elements. While this format is helpful, the excerpts are sometimes a bit hard to follow. Not being an attorney, I found this a somewhat arduous read, especially for such a short book.A better format would have been to include three separate term sheets properly marked up to highlight key differences. This would have required four documents: the book and three separate term sheets. Despite the increased printing costs, it would have been well worth it.Another problem with the book is the lack of valuation information. Given the title, I would have expected extensive valuation examples. There really aren't any, sadly. This appears to have been done for extreme brevity.The author does deserve credit for distilling a subject into a rather brief text. Given the limited population that would truly be interested in the nuances of term sheets, his attempt at this book was rather admirable.

Anyone going into private equity or angel investing needs to read this book. All of our associates will take it home and read it before they get on a deal.