The Power Law

2-star readers call it “far too rah-rah of VC” and “too obsequious to the perspective and societal benefit of VCs,” arguing Mallaby had the big firms’ cooperation and it shows in how gently he treats them; the book reads as straight history for most of its length and only turns critical in the final stretch, right when readers wanted that lens running throughout. One flat dismissal: “This is a book no one needed,” calling it “Just a bunch of random VC stories.” A dating problem has already caught up with it too: Mallaby cites Stripe’s valuation as proof of a success story, and within roughly two years that valuation had been cut in half. A harsher reader summed the whole enterprise up as “wealthy pricks who don’t believe they owe society anything,” while even a sympathetic critic concedes it “plods in spots, as forays into economics will.”