Though it plods in spots, as forays into economics will, financial wonks will find it indispensable.
British financial journalist Mallaby delivers a circumstantial portrait of the venture capital revolution, with all its ups and downs.
How does one go about getting a hand into the pot of gold that is the venture capital market? By convincing investors that the power law is in play—i.e., that a specific idea will scale up “at an accelerating, exponential rate,” yielding riches for a relatively modest stake. For the maker of that idea, one has to hit on something that the world doesn’t know it needs until it does. In this highly detailed and sometimes wearisome account, the author opens with one such idea: An inventor conceives an all-plant hamburger that smells and tastes like meat, approaches a venture capitalist with the promise “to make you even more insanely rich than you already are,” and voilà: Impossible Foods was born. Mallaby, a former contributing editor at the Financial Times, locates the first venture capital funds in Silicon Valley but from a renegade source: In 1957, a group of scientists walked away from a lab and founded a group that was first known by the longer name “adventure capital.” The author traces the evolution of venture capital into the 1970s post-hippie culture of the Bay Area, where former communards were now content with the thought of becoming insanely rich, their tinkerings soon to explode in the digital revolution. By anticipating the wave, funders grew rich indeed, “making Silicon Valley the most durably productive crucible of applied science anywhere, ever.” Tracing the tumultuous rise of PayPal, Facebook, and other venture-funded projects, Mallaby reveals some of the inner tensions inherent in the game: Founders can be free spirits, but funders demand that they be controlled by outer boards and CEOs. The author closes with a projection into the future, with funders scattered well beyond Silicon Valley while fighting a long and perhaps losing war with an aggressive Chinese fund culture.
Though it plods in spots, as forays into economics will, financial wonks will find it indispensable.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-55999-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
