Venture Capital and the Art of Disruption

The Power Law

From an award-winning financial historian comes the gripping, character-driven story of venture capital and the world it made 
 
Innovations rarely come from "experts." Jeff Bezos was not a bookseller; Elon Musk was not in the auto industry. When it comes to innovation, a legendary venture capitalist told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. Most attempts at discovery fail, but a 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 venture capital, Silicon Valley, the tech sector, and, by extension, the world. 
 
Drawing on unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time, award-winning financial historian Sebastian Mallaby tells the story of this strange tribe of financiers who have funded the world's most successful companies, from Google to SpaceX to Alibaba. With a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis, The Power Law makes sense of the seeming randomness of success in venture capital, an industry that relies, for good and ill, on gut instinct and personality rather than spreadsheets and data. We learn the unvarnished truth about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in the history of tech, from the comedy of errors that was the birth of Apple to the venture funding that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber to the industry's notorious lack of women and ethnic minorities. 
 
Now the power law echoes around the world: it has transformed China's digital economy beyond recognition, and London is one of the top cities for venture capital investment. By taking us so deeply into the VCs' game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.

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

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

[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

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

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

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

[An] absorbing new history of startup investing

[Mallaby] brings his trademark mixture of exhaustive research and clear analysis to his most interesting subject so far

Venture capital has influenced the American economy for over half-a-century now, and finally we have a book of exceptional reporting, analysis and storytelling to bring that history to life. What makes Sebastian Mallaby's The Power Law a classic is how deeply it takes us into VC's defining successes and failures - which are much harder to get anyone to talk frankly about. I'm not sure this is the book of VCs' dreams, but it's what the rest of us have been waiting for

A fascinating journey through the tightly networked world of the venture capitalists who make Silicon Valley tick, from the scrappy dealmakers of the 1960s to the high-flying global investors of today. Filled with eye-opening case studies and vivid personalities, frank in its analysis of the industry's greatest strengths and most dangerous blind spots, The Power Law is essential reading for understanding our tech-driven economy and where it might go next

Professor Margaret O’Mara, University of Washington

As we face urgent man-made existential challenges from climate change to economic inequality, Sebastian Mallaby shows that the capitalists of Silicon Valley are shaping the future in ways few understand. In The Power Law he takes us inside their rarified world, showing the possibilities and shortcomings of their big egos and big bets. Mallaby's deep access enables us to get a rare and unsettling look inside a subculture of unparalleled influence

Jane Mayer, Chief Washington Correspondent, The New Yorker

If you can read only one book on venture capital, this is the one. The Power Law narrates the evolution of venture capital from its origins in Silicon Valley to its emergence in China by following the ambitious and often idiosyncratic investors who finance risky new ventures while recognizing that success is rare, but transformative. The book is a fascinating read, and illustrates well one of its core themes, that venture capital is a network that straddles and offers the virtues of both markets and corporations

This book is a powerful combination of careful research and great storytelling. Sebastian Mallaby portrays many of the world's most successful venture capitalists but also shows how the industry has evolved and why it has become a major source of innovation in our economies. Highly informative and fun to read

Baroness Minouche Shafik, Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science

Everyone talks about venture capital. We glorify it, we vilify it, and everywhere outside Silicon Valley envies it. At last we have a storyteller with the intelligence to understand venture capital, the diligence to dig out some astonishing tales, and the eloquence to make the journey of discovery such a pleasure. This is a superb book

Tim Harford, author of HOW TO MAKE THE WORLD ADD UP

In this fascinating study of venture capitalists, Sebastian Mallaby explains why they invest with the sole purpose of winning the jackpot while the rest of us are advised to invest cautiously. A compelling story of flesh and blood financiers, sprinkled with insights from which all economists could learn

Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England

Heavyweight and richly detailed, [The Power Law] is both a careering ride through the chaos of startup culture and a sober assessment of how the relationship between founders and their financiers has evolved

A must-read for anyone seeking to understand modern-day Silicon Valley and even our economy writ large... Phenomenally detailed and engaging

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 . . . Mr. Mallaby writes a fast-paced narrative. He also has a journalist's eye for revealing details

Sweeping and authoritative . . . tells an undercovered tale

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

Sebastian Mallaby

The highest praise for The Infinity Machine is to say that Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject ... expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents the most insightful portrait of Hassabis to date

When it comes to recounting the scientific challenges, Mallaby captures wonderfully the tension, the excitement and the joy

With unprecedented access, Mallaby had a front row seat... what results is a rich and clearly written account

An extraordinary portrait of our age – beautifully written, clear-eyed and engaged in the deepest ethical questions of our day

Gripping, absolutely of the moment... I loved it because it's filled with really important ideas about how this wave of AI is changing our economy... but it's also got the element of a thriller

A hugely acclaimed recent book…a lot of people are talking about

In this deeply reported and profoundly insightful book, Sebastian Mallaby chronicles the brilliant Demis Hassabis and the company he cofounded ... a colourful and engrossing tale but also a sophisticated description of how AI developed

Walter Isaacson, author of Elon Musk

Sebastian Mallaby has tunnelled deeply into one of the most influential artificial intelligence projects of our time. It's an entrancing and revealing journey … at once inspiring and terrifying

Steve Coll, author of The Achilles Trap

Captures the extraordinary drama of the high-stakes AI arms race ... a gripping story about ambition colliding with ethics at the frontier of machine intelligence

Chris Miller, author of Chip War

A truly revealing window into the biggest business phenomenon of our age … a quest for superhuman intelligence that already has far outraced the ideals and imaginings of its human creators

Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code

With his customary flair, Sebastian Mallaby relays the enchanting tale of how the British son of a Chinese Singaporean mother and Greek Cypriot father led google to pole position in the AI race and picked up a Nobel prize along the way

Michael Moritz, author of Leading

The Infinity Machine will teach you a lot about AI, and how human ability, vision, and tenacity remake the world

Andrew McAfee, author of The Geek Way

Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the Quest for Superintelligence

Even in a tech world crowded with visionary leaders, Demis Hassabis is recognized as a special case. Born to working class, immigrant parents in North London, a chess prodigy by five and wizard coder in his teens, he turned down a seven-figure job offer from a video-game studio to study science at Cambridge. Long before the current obsession with AI, he founded the path-breaking company DeepMind in order to pursue a single, audacious goal: the dream of artificial superintelligence, which would solve humanity’s hardest problems, change life and work as we know it, and perhaps even unlock the deepest mysteries of the Universe. For his scientific achievements, he won a Nobel Prize in 2024, and his company, now Google DeepMind, is considered the tech giant’s engine room. 
 
For the past three years, Sebastian Mallaby has had unprecedented access to Hassabis and DeepMind, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews with him and his inner circle as well as detractors and rivals at other companies. The result is a revelation-packed portrait of a singular mind and a historic reckoning with the AI revolution, a shift potentially more significant than any since the dawn of complex thought 70,000 years ago. 
 
As Mallaby chronicles, DeepMind is locked in an arms race with Silicon Valley competitors to build artificial general intelligence, and thereby become the keeper of humanity’s future. Yet this is not a Silicon Valley story. Hassabis has remained in Britain, and unlike his rivals, his aims are not wealth and power but scientific enlightenment. Like them, however, he is haunted by the memory of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the atom bomb. He aims to control the technology, but the technology may ultimately control him – and humanity writ large.

Sebastian Mallaby

Praise for The Infinity Machine

The highest praise for The Infinity Machine is to say that Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject ... expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents ...

When it comes to recounting the scientific challenges, Mallaby captures wonderfully the tension, the excitement and the joy

With unprecedented access, Mallaby had a front row seat... what results is a rich and clearly written account

The highest praise for The Infinity Machine is to say that Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject ... expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents ...

When it comes to recounting the scientific challenges, Mallaby captures wonderfully the tension, the excitement and the joy

With unprecedented access, Mallaby had a front row seat... what results is a rich and clearly written account

The highest praise for The Infinity Machine is to say that Mallaby has done full justice to his kaleidoscopically interesting subject ... expertly structured and vividly reported, the book presents ...

When it comes to recounting the scientific challenges, Mallaby captures wonderfully the tension, the excitement and the joy

With unprecedented access, Mallaby had a front row seat... what results is a rich and clearly written account

Books by Sebastian Mallaby

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