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Rating: 
Summary: A great overall picture
Review: As a serious investor, from a long line of entrepreneurs,I feel that Steve Harmons Zero Gravity delivers key insights on the BIG picture of venture capital. This book is especially helpful for the "NEWBY" to the venture world because of Steves inside scoops and the relationships he built with the giants of the web world before they were giants. I have follwed Steves award winning analysis since '96 and have personally profitted as much as 300% returns by acting on his insights...few can boast this kind of return. I am looking forward to Steves next book to help me make sense of the new web economy as only Steve can explain it...with no hype!
Rating: 
Summary: yet another bubble is bursting book
Review: Given Harmon's background as an internet economy pundit, I expected a lot more from this book. I've ridden this roller coaster all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom so i was fully expecting to really relate to what was going on in the book. I fell asleep about halfway through and never picked it up again. The Internet Bubble was THE book on this topic in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: good basic data and insightful pieces, but buy version 2.0
Review: HAVING READ BOTH EDITIONS of this book (Zero Gravity and Zero Gravity 2.0 published in June 2001) cover to cover it is refreshing to see the practical and candid advice in version 2.0 in the new environment where venture capitalists are slower to commit investments. More than ever, entrepreneurs need insights into venture capital SINCE most venture capitalists are extremely careful about new investments.Walking into a venture meeting without any kind of idea of what to expect is a sure-fire way of not getting funded, if you get a meeting at all. This book arms new entrepreneurs with what to expect and how to deal with some of it. Harmon revised the book in version 2.0 since the environment changed for financing startups. eBay, Yahoo and others built themselves on the approaches in Harmon's first book. The second generation of tech startups will benefit from the new tougher approach described in Zero Gravity 2.0. Harmon has kept up with the changes, alerting entrepreneurs to the new landscape. The book's core foundation is the same in any era. The data, interviews with successful entrepreneurs and methodological approach to approaching venture capital is more important now than ever. The book IS NOT an encyclopedia unabridged HOW-TO guide. Harmon cautions entrepreneurs in Zero Gravity 2.0 with some sound advice on building a company relying on profits rather than an endless supply of venture capital. Zero Gravity 2.0 IS a great primer for the necessary steps in getting funded. It is PART of getting ready to start a company.
Rating:
Summary: A few helpful tidbits, not much else
Review: I originally bought this book because John Doerr was a "co-author". He only wrote the foreward, a few hundred words at most. Most of the book is filler and anecdotal examples, like "a good vc is important, just look at Netscape..." The valuation section does does not really even talk about methodology, but gives a list of deals from the VentureOne database. About a quarter of the book is a venture capital directory. This will be moderately useful but there are plenty available on the web. The only real value I got out of the book is the interviews with some good VCs. This book had a lot of potential, but the value could be condensed into ten pages. I was disappointed in that I expected much more.
Rating:
Summary: Good insights
Review: Key insights from several of the best venture capitalists in the world and some of the entrepreneurs. For $20 it can save any would-be entrepreneur a lot of time in preparing for meeting the venture firms. The chapter on valuations is interesting of itself, since too many people don't know much about the stages of company growth at what valuations -- and too many got burned in the April stock market correction becuase they don't understand valuations. That chapter alone is worth $20
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful!
Review: This book is a must-read for those who have an idea that they would like to develop into a business, but who have no idea where to start. Steve Harmon writes with the same passion he says entrepreneurs must show when they seek funding from venture capital firms. Harmon senses when his information might be overwhelming and regularly offers encouraging words to budding entrepreneurs. He has enlisted the support of several high-profile individuals who have "breakout IPO" experience. Throughout the book, readers share snippets of Q & A conversations with industry leaders such as Jerry Yang of Yahoo! and Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape. One chapter features interviews with venture capitalists from the largest firms. If your idea serves a big market, and could grab a large market share, then we [...] recommend this book to you, particularly if you are a beginner at seeking funding. It introduces you to the world of venture capitalism and helps you understand what the key players in the VC game are seeking.
Rating: 
Summary: Has Some Gravity
Review: Those who have never been part of the fund raising process do not know what to expect when they go hat in hand to the venture capitalists. Trying to figure out how to approach them and what they want to see can be like solving a rubic's cube. How do you get the color green to come up? Even as a former investment banker, I myself have to admit that things look different from the other side of the table when you are asking for money instead of advising people how to raise it. (Not to mention that my time in investment banking was spent looking at high yield and mezzanine deals--not venture capital). That being the case, a book like Steve Harmon's Zero Gravity comes in handy if you are trying to understand the mentality of the venture capitalist. Harmon had access to friends and acquaintances of his in the industry, such as famed VCs John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad, who he queries on such things as what they look for in an investment. You also get to hear some short war stories on their investments in companies such as Excite. Among Harmon's best advice is that you study the VCs as carefully--if not more carefully--than they are going to study you. Do you know what kind of companies each VC firm likes; do you know who their partners are? Zero Gravity has many pithy axioms that the entrepreneur will find helpful. Certain things about the book are annoying, though. For one thing, Harmon plugs his web site so often, you might think that you were viewing a particularly annoying pop up ad on the Internet. The book also has a lot of charts and tables that honestly are more filler than anything else, especially since a lot of the same information is available on the Internet for free. Still, the book is a quick read and probably one of the more accessible books on venture capital on which an entrepreneur can get his hands.
Rating: 
Summary: Must read -- for all the wrong reasons
Review: When historians go dumpster diving through the cultural effluvia of this bizarre period, Zero Gravity will be one the most important books they find. Not because it is good. Au contraire. It is poorly written, leaden with cliches, chock full o' cliches, and generally poorly organized and insipid. So why is this book so important? Because it chronicles in vivid "You Can Be Rich Too" form the peculiar form of mania that took hold in 1997 and exploded in March of 2000. It turned a dull banker like John Doerr into a billionaire economic tastemaker; it turned a jejeune know-nothing like Steve Harmon into a species of savant. Read it now and beat the year 2051 Ph.D. in economic history candidates. And you won't even have to write a thesis.
Rating:
Summary: don't bother
Review: you can learn more by surfing redherring.com for a couple of hours .... for free.
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