Gary Rivlin > Quotes

“If you are looking to better understand the nitty-gritty of venture finance, there’s no better book than Venture Deals by Brad Feld, one of the venture world’s more well-respected practitioners, and Jason Mendelson, one of his partners. The book offers a readable primer on everything from the basics of a venture term sheet to negotiating tactics to the specific issues likely to come up at every round of funding. I’ll quote Dick Costello, the former CEO of Twitter, who said in an endorsement of the book that he wished this book had been around in his time to save him from having to learn “all the tricks, traps, and nuances on my own.”
― Gary Rivlin, Becoming a Venture Capitalist

“That’s what’s scary about being a venture capitalist and also what makes it so fascinating a world. “This is a business about risk,” Ibrahim observed. “The people who are rewarded are the ones who stick their neck out, not the people happy in the pack.” The braver the VC, the dumber he or she is likely to look after making a mistake. “Part of being a VC is the risk of making a really stupid investment,” she said.”
― Gary Rivlin, Becoming a Venture Capitalist

“Modern communication isn’t about truth, it’s about a resonant narrative. The myth about PR is that you will educate and inform people. No. The public wants to be told in a story who to like and who to hate.”
― Gary Rivlin, Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. - How the Working Poor Became Big Business