Real Venture Capital (PDF)

RICHARD THOMPSON is a Cambridge science graduate who subsequently qualified in both chartered engineering and management consultancy. He has been the co-founder and chairman of several successful venture capital firms over a thirty year span and is still active in the sector. He has a wide experience of international business.

' Richard's book is the best and most wide ranging study of venture capital that I have read. His analysis of the key factors involved in successful venture capital is masterly. His description of the essential relationships between the venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, Boards of directors, academics, investors and others, is a model of perception and clarity. Richard's extensive experience of US venture capital has enabled him to explain the importance of, and the way to achieve, international growth especially for British and European science- and technology-based companies. He makes an unanswerable case for a major increase of resources to support venture capital, particularly companies established to exploit the results of the outstanding science and technology research in the UK.

Real Venture Capital is a unique and highly readable guidebook for all those involved in venture capital, or aspiring to be so, and it should have a place on the desks, not only of venture capitalists, but also of institutional investors, academics, ministers and civil servants, financial journalists, angel investors and large technology company executives.

As the international markets for new science and technology-based businesses expand in future not least in major markets in the Far East, Real Venture Capital provides a practical and comprehensive source of good advice both on what to do and what to avoid.' - Roger Brooke O.B.E. Founder, Chief Executive and then Chairman of Candover Investments plc. 1980-99

'Richard Thompson has been at the coal face of British venture capital for over thirty years. Combining his analytical training as an engineer and a management consultant with a deep knowledge of the technology and health care industries, he has achieved a formidable long-term record. Helping grow businesses in these areas is both more difficult and more exciting than mere financial engineering, however fashionable, which has catapulted private