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The Power Law
- Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
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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.
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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”
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Story
At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dysfunctional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses.
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The best business book I ever read
- By Michael on 10-07-12
By: Bryce G. Hoffman
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Losing the Signal
- The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry
- By: Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.
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Fascinating
- By Gerardo A Dada on 09-05-15
By: Jacquie McNish, and others
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Finish Big
- How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top
- By: Bo Burlingham
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When pioneering business journalist and Inc. magazine editor at large Bo Burlingham wrote Small Giants, it became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem - how to handle the pressure to grow. Now Burlingham is back to tackle an even more common problem - how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs leave their businesses and all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated.
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Begin with the end in mind
- By D. Hartzell on 02-05-15
By: Bo Burlingham
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The Lords of Strategy
- The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World
- By: Walter Kiechel III
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine running a business without a strategy. It would be akin to driving blindfolded, to building a house without a blueprint. The concept of strategy changed all that, paving the way for the creation of the modern corporate world. The Lords of Strategy provides listeners with a deeper understanding of the world they compete in, and a sharper eye for what works — and what doesn’t — when forging strategy.
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Super Book of Narrow Interest
- By Roy on 08-23-10
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The Intelligent Entrepreneur
- By: Bill Murphy Jr.
- Narrated by: Fred Berman, L. J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1998, three Harvard Business School graduates - two men and one woman - turned down six-figure salaries at big corporations, bet on themselves, and launched their own new companies. By their 10-year reunion, their audacity had paid huge dividends. They'd made many millions of dollars, created hundreds of jobs and left their mark on the world. The Intelligent Entrepreneur tells the compelling and instructive story of how these three young founders did it.
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Terrible waste $ and a lot of time
- By David on 01-23-11
By: Bill Murphy Jr.
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Ahead of the Curve
- Two Years at Harvard Business School
- By: Philip Delves Broughton
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2004 Philip Delves Broughton abandoned a post as Paris bureau chief of the London Daily Telegraph to join 900 other would-be tycoons on the Harvard Business School's plush campus. With acute and often uproarious candor, he assesses the school's success at teaching the traits it extols as most important in business: leadership, decisiveness, ethical behavior, and work/life balance.
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On one breath.
- By Atkins on 05-17-22
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No Better Time
- The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet
- By: Molly Knight Raskin
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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No Better Time tells of a young, driven mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would create a faster, better Internet. It's the story of a beautiful friendship between a loud, irreverent student and his soft-spoken MIT professor, of a husband and father who spent years struggling to make ends meet only to become a billionaire almost overnight with the success of Akamai Technologies, the Internet content delivery network he cofounded with his mentor.
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An Overlooked Hero of 9-11
- By Jean on 05-27-16
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The House of Dimon
- How JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon Rose to the Top of the Financial World
- By: Patricia Crisafulli
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Jamie Dimon is Wall Street's biggest player. Following the 11h-hour rescue of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan, his profile has reached stratospheric levels. And while the deals and decisions he's made have usually turned out to be the right ones, his journey to the top of the financial world has been anything but easy. Now, in The House of Dimon, business writer Patricia Crisafulli goes behind the scenes to recount the amazing events that have shaped Dimon's career.
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Intriguing
- By Jean on 08-28-16
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Googled
- The End of the World as We Know It
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Googled, esteemed media writer and critic Ken Auletta uses the story of Google's rise to explore the inner workings of the company and the future of the media at large. Although Google has often been secretive, this book is based on the most extensive cooperation ever granted a journalist, including access to closed-door meetings and interviews with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt, and some 150 present and former employees.
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Audio production could have been better
- By David on 11-12-09
By: Ken Auletta
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Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?
- Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround
- By: Louis V. Gerstner Jr.
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the company was on a watch list for extinction, victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.
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Moderate Start, Picks up FAST!
- By Art H on 02-08-05
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Frenemies
- The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else)
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled. Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has.
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Good; not for beginners
- By DV on 10-05-18
By: Ken Auletta
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King of Capital
- The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone
- By: John E. Morris, David Carey
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The financial establishment---banks and investment bankers, such as Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley---were the cowboys, recklessly assuming risks, leveraging up to astronomical levels, and driving the economy to the brink of disaster.
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Great Story Ruined by Monotone Reading
- By Marc on 04-23-13
By: John E. Morris, and others
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Crash Course
- The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster
- By: Paul Ingrassia
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Crash Course, Ingrassia answers the big questions: Was Detroit's self-destruction inevitable? What were the key turning points? Why did Japanese automakers manage American workers better than the American companies themselves? Ingrassia also describes dysfunctional corporate cultures (even as GM's market share plunged, the company continued business as usual) and Detroit's perverse system of "inverse layoffs" (which allowed union members to invoke seniority to avoid work).
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Contemporary History at Its Best
- By Roy on 04-19-10
By: Paul Ingrassia
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Overhaul
- An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry
- By: Steven Rattner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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This first real look inside Team Obama mixes political warfare and big-business shakeups in equal proportions, and comes from a uniquely informed source. Steve Rattner is not just the man brought in by the president to save the auto industry, he is a former New York Times financial reporter who also earned a place among the top tier of Wall Street's most informed investment bankers and corporate experts.
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Overhaul - A Memoir
- By Roy on 12-05-10
By: Steven Rattner
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Accountable
- The Rise of Citizen Capitalism
- By: Michael O'Leary, Warren Valdmanis
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Corporations are broken, reflecting no purpose deeper than profit. But the tools we are relying on to fix them - corporate social responsibility, divestment, impact investing, and government control - risk making our problems worse. With lively storytelling and careful analysis, O’Leary and Valdmanis cut through the tired dogma of current economic thinking to reveal a hopeful truth: If we can make our corporations accountable to a deeper purpose, we can make capitalism both prosperous and good.