The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth
“There are a handful of useful business books every year, imo this is one.”
Why it is worth your time
The Venture Mindset is a 2024 book by Ilya Strebulaev, a finance professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Alex Dang, a tech executive and former McKinsey partner. It distils how venture capitalists decide into 9 principles, including saying no 100 times, betting on the jockey, and accepting that a few large wins pay for many losses. The authors argue these habits apply to corporate decisions well beyond Silicon Valley. Chamath posted about it when it came out and called it one of the few useful business books in a given year. It is a formal version of the power-law thinking he applies to his own investing, where a few positions carry the result. It suits managers who want the VC approach explained with data rather than anecdote.
