The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

by Sebastian Mallaby

star4.5

Mallaby traces the rise of Silicon Valley venture capital from Arthur Rock and Kleiner Perkins through Sequoia, Benchmark, a16z, and Tiger, arguing that the power-law distribution of startup returns is what makes the VC model work and what distinguishes it from other forms of finance. Drawing on unprecedented access to leading partners, he shows how VC's contrarian, hands-on, portfolio-of-outliers approach produced companies like Apple, Cisco, Google, and Facebook, and how that playbook is now being exported globally.

Published:: 2022
Pages:: 496

Buy on Amazon

In the Conversation

In this collection, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future references 5 other books.

It draws on Zero to One, The Hard Thing About Hard Things and The Innovators.

Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.

What This Book Draws On

The books Mallaby references and why each one mattered to the argument.

Centres the book on Thiel's power-law thesis from Zero to One, using it as the analytical frame for why VC investing differs from public-market investing and why monopoly outcomes matter more than diversification

References

Zero to One

by Peter Thiel

Buy

Draws on Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things for the a16z chapters, using Horowitz's account of his operator-to-VC transition to explain the firm's hands-on investing thesis

References

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

by Ben Horowitz

Buy

Builds on Isaacson's The Innovators for the early history of Fairchild, Intel, and the semiconductor roots of Silicon Valley that produced the first generation of VCs

References

The Innovators

by Walter Isaacson

Buy

Uses Stone's The Everything Store as background for the Amazon and early e-commerce chapters, referencing Bezos's relationship with Kleiner Perkins and Doerr

References

The Everything Store

by Brad Stone

Buy

Cross-references Isaacson's Steve Jobs on the Apple/Mike Markkula/Arthur Rock financing history that Mallaby uses to open his account of modern VC

References

Steve Jobs

by Walter Isaacson

Buy

What Other Authors Say About It

No books citing this title yet.

Intellectual Lineage

How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.

Builds on (2 layers deep)

Directly cites

Zero to One

The Hard Thing About Hard Th...

The Innovators

The Everything Store

Steve Jobs

2 steps back

The Innovator's Dilemma

The Lean Startup

High Output Management

Good to Great

Built to Last

Einstein

Unexpected Connections

Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

Eric Jorgenson

self-helpphilosophy1 shared

If you liked this, try

Books with the highest citation overlap within the same categories.

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

Jimmy Soni

4 shared citations

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)

Adam Fisher

3 shared citations

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Ashlee Vance

2 shared citations

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

2 shared citations

Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

Nick Bilton

2 shared citations

The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

Brad Stone

2 shared citations

Citation Network

This book and its direct connections. Hover a node to see its title, click to visit.

Books this book cites

Books that cite this book

Larger dot = more connections

Hover a node to highlight its connections. Click to open the book page. Node size reflects total citation links.