Năm 1976, hai học sinh bỏ học đại học, Steve Jobs và Steve Wozniak, bán tài sản có giá trị nhất, một chiếc xe và một vài của máy tính, và sử dụng tiền mặt để bắt đầu sản xuất máy tính trong nhà để xe. | B ill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975 when both were around 20 years old. Eleven years later Microsoft shares were sold to the public for 21 a share and immediately zoomed to 35. The largest shareholder was Bill Gates whose shares in Microsoft then were worth 350 million. In 1976 two college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak sold their most valuable possessions a van and a couple of calculators and used the cash to start manufacturing computers in a garage. In 1980 when Apple Computer went public the shares were offered to investors at 22 and jumped to 36. At that point the shares owned by the company s two founders were worth 414 million. In 1994 Marc Andreesen a 24-year-old from the University of Illinois joined with an investor James Clark to found Netscape Communications. Just over a year later Netscape stock was offered to the public at 28 a share and immediately leapt to 71. At this price James Clark s shares were worth 566 million while Marc Andreesen s shares were worth 245 million. Such stories illustrate that the most important asset of a new firm may be a good idea. But that is not all you need. To take an idea from the drawing board to a prototype and through to large-scale production requires ever greater amounts of capital. To get a new company off the ground entrepreneurs may rely on their own savings and personal bank loans. But this is unlikely to be sufficient to build a successful enterprise. Venture capital firms specialize in providing new equity capital to help firms over the awkward adolescent period before they are large enough to go public. In the first part of this material we will explain how venture capital firms do this. If the firm continues to be successful there is likely to come a time when it needs to tap a wider source of capital. At this point it will make its first public issue of common stock. This is known as an initial public offering or IPO. In the second section of the material we will describe what is .
