High Tech Start Up, Revised and Updated: The Complete Handbook For Creating Successful New High Tech Companies

You've got a hot idea for a new dot-com, and you're itching to join the folks who regularly show up on CNBC and at the Lexus dealerships in Silicon Valley. But you also know your odds of big-time success are about as long as Bill Gates's position in MSFT. What do you do? John Nesheim, an adjunct professor at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, who has personally structured over $300 million in new-venture deals, lays out the step-by-step skinny in High Tech Startup. Incorporating some two dozen case studies spanning the technology spectrum, he presents info specific to this industry that will help you get from concept to IPO. It begins with a 14-phase schedule itemizing time requirements, necessary assistance, typical participants, major costs, main risks, and desired results for each step. It then details all the critical stages (i.e., forming the company, preparing the business plan, assembling the team, dealing with venture capitalists and other funding sources). Nesheim focuses on practical strategies that should certainly improve your chances, but don't start prepping for that on-air interview with Mark Haines just yet: Only six out of 1 million high-tech ideas, he notes, ever become successful companies that go public. --Howard Rothman