• The Venture Alchemists
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The Venture Alchemists

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In The Venture Alchemists, Rob Lalka demystifies how tech entrepreneurs built empires that made trillions.
  • 14 May 2024
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Winner, 2025 Publication Award for Best Book - Social Impact, Tulane University

Gold Medalist, 2025 Axiom Business Book Awards, Business Ethics - Future Trends category

Shortlist, 2024 Best in Business Book Awards, Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing

We once idolized tech entrepreneurs for creating innovations that seemed like modern miracles. Yet our faith has been shattered. We now blame them for spreading lies, breaking laws, and causing chaos. Yesterday’s Silicon Valley darlings have become today’s Big Tech villains. Which is it? Are they superheroes or scoundrels? Or is it more complicated, some blend of both?

In The Venture Alchemists, Rob Lalka demystifies how tech entrepreneurs built empires that made trillions. Meta started as a cruel Halloween prank, Alphabet began as a master’s thesis that warned against corporate deception, and Palantir came from a campus controversy over hateful speech. These largely forgotten origin stories show how ordinary fears and youthful ambitions shaped their ventures—making each tech tale relatable, both wonderfully and tragically human. Readers learn about the adversities tech entrepreneurs overcame, the troubling tradeoffs they made, and the tremendous power they now wield. Using leaked documents and previously unpublished archival material, Lalka takes readers inside Big Tech’s worst exploitations and abuses, alongside many good intentions and moral compromises.

But this story remains unfinished, and The Venture Alchemists ultimately offers hope from the people who, decades ago, warned about the risks of the emerging Internet. Their insights illuminate a path toward more responsible innovations, so that technologies aren’t dangerous weapons but valuable tools that ensure progress, improve society, and enhance our daily lives.

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Price: $35.00
Pages: 496
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia Business School Publishing
Publication Date: 14 May 2024
Trim Size: 9.25 X 6.12 in
ISBN: 9780231210263
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Computers & Information Technology, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Government & Business, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Business Ethics
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This masterfully researched book reveals the all-too-human origins of today's tech titans. Rob Lalka transports us to the dorm room debates, campus lab breakthroughs, and free speech controversies where iconic companies like Facebook, Google, PayPal, and Palantir first emerged. Lalka traces the ambitions, adversities, and compromises that transformed young innovators into billionaires; here, the companies are vivid characters, and the entrepreneurs are real people, flaws and all.
Rob Lalka is the Albert R. Lepage Professor in Business and executive director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Tulane University. He is on the board of directors of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, Public Democracy, Inc., and Venture For America in New Orleans. Previously, he served on the U.S. Secretary of State’s policy planning staff and in the State Department’s Office of Global Partnerships, was a director at Village Capital, and was a senior advisor at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

Acknowledgments
Act I. Silicon
1. Sophomoric Exploits: Mark Zuckerberg, Facemash and Thefacebook
2. Dark Arts: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Backrub and Google
3. You’re Going to Get What’s Coming to You: Keith Rabois, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, PayPal
4. A Self- Fulfilling Prophecy: Travis Kalanick, UberCab
5. White Lies: Bill Shockley, Foundation for Research and Education on Eugenics and Dysgenics
Act II. Gold
6. Trust Us: Mark Zuckerberg, Thefacebook and Facebook, Inc.
7. Anything It Likes: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google, Inc.
8. Words Do Matter: Keith Rabois, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, PayPal and Founders Fund
9. Rape with an Engraved Invitation: Travis Kalanick, Uber
10. Greed Is Good: J. D. Vance, Mithril Capital and Narya Capital
Act III. Power
11. What Important Truth? Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel, Meta Platforms, Inc.
12. There Will Be Blood: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Alphabet Inc.
13. A New Crusade: Peter Thiel, Palantir
14. We Do the Right Thing: Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber Technologies, Inc.
15. Our Great Symbol of Democracy: J. D. Vance and Peter Thiel, Narya Capital, Rumble, and Clearview AI
Epilogue
Notes
Index