Recent headlines on global internet companies have been far from positive. Internet technology companies have been accused of a long list of excesses with immesuarble harm to their users and society at large. These accusations include outright fraud, issues of privacy, censorship, platforming hate speech, snooping on activists by governments, the weakening of democratic institutions, the spread of manufactured fake news, and throttling of market competition.
And yet, over the past few decades, these software and platform technology companies have changed the world as we knew it. When done right, they have brought immeasurable wealth, efficiency, connectedness, and more. All of this—both the evil and the good—was enabled not just by finance, but a very specific type of finance. In The Power Law, the author Sebastian Mallaby tells us the story of venture capital—the disruptive new form of investing that helped create some of the wealthiest companies that exist today.