Marco and Thomas met in 1989 at Stanford University during their PhD in Economics.

Studying in the heart of Silicon Valley they discovered a passion for entrepreneurial finance, starting a scientific collaboration that resulted in several high-impact academic studies.

Throughout their careers they designed and taught numerous entrepreneurial finance courses in many countries at the undergraduate, graduate, MBA, and executive levels.

This is how they recognized the need for a modern entrepreneurial finance book that would explain the subject in a rigorous and accessible way.

Dr. Marco Da Rin 

Associate Professor of Finance at Tilburg University, and previously held positions at the London School of Economics, Bocconi University (Milano, Italy), at the University of Torino, and the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.

His research focuses on entrepreneurial finance, venture capital, private equity, and public policy for entrepreneurship.

His academic articles have been published in leading scholarly journals and have been covered by the business press, including The Economist, Forbes.com, venture capital and private equity online magazines, and national business papers.

He has been a consultant to several international organizations including the European Commission, the OECD, and the United Nations, as well as regional governments and private companies.

He has advised and contributed to several start- ups.

Dr. Thomas Hellmann 

DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Saïd School of Business, University of Oxford. He previously was faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), as well as holding visiting positions at Harvard Business School and Wharton.

He is a pioneer of the academic literature on entrepreneurial finance, with numerous scholarly contributions to venture capital, entrepreneurship, innovation, and public policy.

His consulting clients include the World Economic Forum, Barclays Bank, and countless start- up companies.

He is the founder of the NBER Entrepreneurship Research Boot Camp. He serves as the Academic Advisor of the Oxford Foundry, and the Academic Director of SBS Entrepreneurship Centre.

Most recently he led the launch of the Creative Destruction Lab at Oxford.