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

Experts are rarely on the cutting edge of innovation. Elon Musk was not an electric car guy prior to founding Tesla. A prominent tech VC once said that when it comes to implausible inventions, only discovery can predict the future; not foresight. Most attempts at discovery fail due to the nature of the venture-capital game, but a few succeed on such a large scale that they more than compensate for everything else. That extraordinary success-to-failure ratio is the power-law that drives the venture capital industry, all of Silicon Valley, the broader tech sector, and, by extension, the globe. In The Power Law, Sebastian Mallaby has parlayed unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time—key figures at Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Chinese partnerships like Qiming and Capital Today.