The Power Law
- Author Sebastian Mallaby
- Narrator Will Damron
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Run Time 16 hours and 53 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Banking, Economic history, Investment and securities.
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
It is no exaggeration to say that venture capital has been central to the greatest legal creation of wealth anywhere, and enabled much of the world we live in, yet we know surprisingly little about this strange tribe of financiers.
In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby turns his unprecedented access to the industry's central players into a riveting, character-driven account of venture capital and the world it has made. Most of the tech start-ups funded by Silicon Valley venture capitalists fail, but a very few hits succeed at such a scale that they will more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives venture capital, and the wider tech sector.
Mallaby make sense of the seeming randomness of success in venture capital, an industry that supposedly relies on gut instinct and personality rather than spreadsheets and data. We learn the unvarnished truth about some of the most iconic hits and infamous disasters in Silicon Valley history?, from the comedy of errors that was the birth of Apple to the avalanche of venture money that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber. And he shows how the power law now echoes around the world.
© Sebastian Mallaby 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022
Critics Review
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Mallaby, an astute chronicler of modern capitalism, […]writes with humour and historical sweep… His account is immensely enriched by interviews with most if not all of the rainmakers in venture capital
Prospect -
Sebastian Mallaby has done what many people would have thought it impossible to do: write a gripping book about the modern history of venture capital… Well-argued and compelling… A superb introduction to an important subject
TLS -
[An] entertaining history… If you want to understand a world in which a handful of coders became richer than most countries, this is an invaluable guide
Sunday Times -
In his well-researched book, leavened by lively portraits of leading figures, Mr Mallaby explores the history of the VC industry and the reasons for its vitality
Economist -
Thoroughly magnificent… Seriously great, and wildly important… It would be difficult to find a more important book than Mallaby’s in 2022, and most any year for that matter
Forbes -
Sebastian Mallaby sets off into the world of venture capital and the strange bunch of financiers behind some of the most successful companies. It’s a tale of triumphs but also major failures, hubris and jaw-dropping eccentricity
Financial Times
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