An informative look at an industry that values “hyper maximalist growth at breakneck pace.”
Moving fast and breaking things.
At some point, the tech sector became Big Tech, much of it fueled by arrogance, elitism, and greed. A civic technologist and community organizer, Bracy sees the villain in this dynamic as venture capital firms that invest in companies that rush for “breakneck” growth and market share rather than build a solid structure—a process known as “blitzscaling.” Only a small percentage of startups—and the VC firms that fund them—prosper, but the overall returns can be spectacular. This has led to the VC methodology spreading into business sectors that, says Bracy, are simply not appropriate for them and instead need patient capital to provide a steady growth path. She cites research showing that the VC sector, rather than fostering innovation, destroys more value than it creates. Some entrepreneurs have looked beyond the usual VC providers for funding and have successfully worked with philanthropic foundations and similar organizations. Bracy suggests that corporate regulators should examine the VC sector, which has so far escaped serious attention—while venture capital “might not be as systematically important as investment banking,” she writes, “it certainly holds outsized sway in the economy overall.” Largely free of jargon, Bracy’s study adds up to an important analysis that’s supported by some useful ideas. “For innovation to thrive,” she writes, “we need venture capitalists to prioritize the pursuit of breakthroughs rather than the pursuit of windfalls.” Bracy concludes with some advice for startup entrepreneurs: “Don’t give up,” she writes. “Don’t listen to investors who tell you your ideas aren’t big enough or who try to shake your conviction in the solutions you are building….We need your ingenuity and bravery now more than ever.”
An informative look at an industry that values “hyper maximalist growth at breakneck pace.”Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593473481
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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