Secrets of Sand Hill Road

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
By Scott Kupor
Published in June 2019
320 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

The Secrets of San Hill Road is a concise overview of how the Silicon Valley VC industry works. The book is written by Scott Kupor, the managing partner of legendary VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

I learned a lot from this book, and appreciated the writing style. It is easy to understand, even for novices. A few minor things annoyed me, such as the use of the femine (rather than gender neutral) “she / her'' to describe everyone - this made things confusing at times. The positives far outweighed the negatives.

Most interesting was the discussion of who LPs are, and what sort of incentives LPs have. Learning more about the internal structure of VC funds, and the different roles everyone has is interesting. My favorite part of this section was the part where Kuport discusses LPAs.

I also enjoyed reading about the contents of contracts between VCs and investees. The key takeaway is that properly understanding the incentives is key. Kuport includes many case studies that are highly memorable.

The most major issue that I had with the book wasn’t Kupor’s fault: I simply was not the target audience.

This book is written for entrepreneurs seeking VC funding who also don’t know much about how VC consulting work. I am not seeking VC funding, and actually am a consultant for several VC funds. As someone sitting on the other side of the table who already knew much of the information presented, this wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

That being said, if the above description of a target audience corresponds for you, then this is a must read book.

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