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  • The Power Law

  • Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
  • Written by: Sebastian Mallaby
  • Narrated by: Will Damron
  • Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (20 ratings)

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The Power Law

Written by: Sebastian Mallaby
Narrated by: Will Damron
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Publisher's Summary

Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 

Named a Best Book of 2022 by
The Economist

“A gripping fly-on-the-wall story of the rise of this unique and important industry based on extensive interviews with some of the most successful venture capitalists.” - Daniel Rasmussen,
Wall Street Journal

“A must-read for anyone seeking to understand modern-day Silicon Valley and even our economy writ large.” -Bethany McLean, The Washington Post

"A rare and unsettling look inside a subculture of unparalleled influence.” —Jane Mayer

"A classic...A book of exceptional reporting, analysis and storytelling.” —Charles Duhigg

From the
New York Times bestselling author of More Money Than God comes the astonishingly frank and intimate story of Silicon Valley’s dominant venture-capital firms—and how their strategies and fates have shaped the path of innovation and the global economy

Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world.

In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby has parlayed unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time—the key figures at Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Chinese partnerships such as Qiming and Capital Today—into a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis that unfurls the history of tech incubation, in the Valley and ultimately worldwide. We learn the unvarnished truth, often for the first time, about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in Valley history, from the comedy of errors at the birth of Apple to the avalanche of venture money that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber.

VCs’ relentless search for grand slams brews an obsession with the ideal of the lone entrepreneur-genius, and companies seen as potential “unicorns” are given intoxicating amounts of power, with sometimes disastrous results. On a more systemic level, the need to make outsized bets on unproven talent reinforces bias, with women and minorities still represented at woefully low levels. This does not just have social justice implications: as Mallaby relates, China’s homegrown VC sector, having learned at the Valley’s feet, is exploding and now has more women VC luminaries than America has ever had. Still, Silicon Valley VC remains the top incubator of business innovation anywhere—it is not where ideas come from so much as where they go to become the products and companies that create the future. By taking us so deeply into the VCs’ game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.

©2022 Sebastian Mallaby (P)2022 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

“Meticulously researched account . . . The book offers a satisfying look at how the sausage is made at some of the most powerful investment firms on the planet.”New York Times

“Thoroughly magnificent. . . . Seriously great, and wildly important.” —Forbes

“Sebastian Mallaby is the master of unspooling human drama from financial systems. Here, the venture capitalists are the protagonists. Whether it’s financiers scrambling to court a pajama-wearing young Mark Zuckerberg or venture capitalist Bill Gurley’s efforts to oust Uber founder Travis Kalanick from the company, the stories are almost Shakespearean in their depictions of ambition, jealousy and ego.” NPR, “Books We Love 2022”

What listeners say about The Power Law

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  • Bob Jordy
  • 2023-02-01

Same old VC bs

Same stories everyone has heard 1000 times where the vcs over exaggerate their involvement, it’s a total skip

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  • Alireza
  • 2022-09-30

Best book ever written about venture capital

Great research and storytelling this is the best book I read this year and best I've ever read on this topic

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  • James S.
  • 2022-04-10

Complete history, phenomenal, nearly perfect

This book is practically a clone of The Code Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, by Margaret O'Mara (also an Audible), but from a different perspective. I reread my review of Margaret's book again before writing this one, and this review could also practically be a clone of my other review; but I will extend it further to say that The Power Law goes further, and was for me more engaging.

There is one slightly annoying thing about this book, which caught my attention because the book is all about Silicon Valley, the cradle of technologies built by engineers and scientists whose Bible is mathematical rigor: At some point in one of the first few chapters the author compares quadratic power-law growth to exponential-doubling growth, and says that the former grows faster than the latter. While 2^N ≤ N^2 is true for small integers N (I think his example was for N=3, so 2^3 = 8 being less than 3^2 = 9 is the proof to his particular example), this is no longer true for any integers N greater than 4. And it becomes comically untrue the larger N gets.

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  • Dan
  • 2023-09-12

Sprawling tale of the rise of VC

Sprawling tale of the rise of VC, peppered with interesting stories about funds, VC backed startups, and the players throughout. Unabashedly pro venture capital, and makes a strong case for the positive impact that ambitious thinking and money has on society.

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  • tom r
  • 2023-07-20

Report

Fascinating to see how the industry evolved. Found the earlier years particularly interesting as each new entity initiated a new approach.

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  • Donald
  • 2023-07-02

Masterful overview of the venture capital revolution

Masterful overview of the venture capital revolution. Mallaby dissects the motivation of every startup era.

An absolute must read for any aspiring or current entrepreneur or startup founder.

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  • Yusef Kassim
  • 2023-06-02

Amazing history of the VC industry!

Great insights and stories! Author has done a masterful job documenting this industry and its impact on the world.

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  • Nick Martin
  • 2023-04-12

Great backdrop for how and why VC got started

Succinct, easy to follow, and informative history of venture capital. Highly recommend it to anyone

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  • Sina G
  • 2023-03-16

Brilliantly put together!

Can’t expressed how eye opening this books has been for me. Well designed and drafted with a captivating storytelling throughout.

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  • Matthew
  • 2023-02-24

Excellent

An Excellent history of VC from the big names and well known funds of the industry.

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