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 declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.
Noted number cruncher Sperling delivers an economist’s rejoinder to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Former director of the National Economic Council in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the author has long taken a view of the dismal science that takes economic justice fully into account. Alongside all the metrics and estimates and reckonings of GDP, inflation, and the supply curve, he holds the great goal of economic policy to be the advancement of human dignity, a concept intangible enough to chase the econometricians away. Growth, the sacred mantra of most economic policy, “should never be considered an appropriate ultimate end goal” for it, he counsels. Though 4% is the magic number for annual growth to be considered healthy, it is healthy only if everyone is getting the benefits and not just the ultrawealthy who are making away with the spoils today. Defining dignity, admits Sperling, can be a kind of “I know it when I see it” problem, but it does not exist where people are a paycheck away from homelessness; the fact, however, that people widely share a view of indignity suggests the “intuitive universality” of its opposite. That said, the author identifies three qualifications, one of them the “ability to meaningfully participate in the economy with respect, not domination and humiliation.” Though these latter terms are also essentially unquantifiable, Sperling holds that this respect—lack of abuse, in another phrasing—can be obtained through a tight labor market and monetary and fiscal policy that pushes for full employment. In other words, where management needs to come looking for workers, workers are likely to be better treated than when the opposite holds. In still other words, writes the author, dignity is in part a function of “ ‘take this job and shove it’ power,” which is a power worth fighting for.
A declaration worth hearing out in a time of growing inequality—and indignity.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7987-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A satisfyingly heartfelt tribute to a thoroughly remarkable man.
Investigative reporter Franklin recounts the life of the free-spirited millionaire entrepreneur who used his fabulous wealth in the fight to save nature.
One constant in the epic life of North Face founder Doug Tompkins (1943-2015) was his enduring love of the outdoors. The son of a successful antiques dealer, he grew up in the countryside of Millbrook, New York (Timothy Leary was a neighbor), where he cultivated his love of the natural world. His contrarian ways eventually led to his expulsion from high school just weeks before graduation. Tompkins headed West, where he baled hay in Montana, raced Olympic skiers in the Rockies, and took up rock climbing in California. He also “hitchhiked by airplane throughout South America.” Tompkins ended up in San Francisco, where, by the mid-1960s, the skiing and climbing supplies business he started with the help of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard suddenly began to boom. He was a charismatic businessman, and every one of his ventures after that—from his wife’s Plain Jane dress company to his own Esprit clothing brand—was successful. But his Midas touch never changed his passion for travel and adventure—e.g., flying his Cessna, sometimes with his family, but often, to the detriment of his marriage, solo. In the early 1990s, Tompkins bought property in southern Chile and fell in love with its pristine beauty. His outrage over the resource extraction–based nature of the Chilean government’s policies fueled his desire to protect the land. In the years that followed, he became an outspoken, sometimes reviled conservationist dedicated to using his fortune to transform thousands of acres of Patagonia into national parks. The great strengths of this timely, well-researched book lie not just in the author’s detailed characterization of Tompkins’ complex personality, but also in the celebration of his singularly dynamic crusade to save the environment.
A satisfyingly heartfelt tribute to a thoroughly remarkable man.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-296412-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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