The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth

Ilya Strebulaev · Alex Dang

May 2024 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Will Damron

About this audiobook

Inspired by venture capitalists’ unique mindset, this is a transformative playbook for delivering extraordinary results in modern organizations, from a Stanford professor and a technology executive.

Behind life changing companies like Amazon, Google, Moderna, SpaceX, and Zoom are Venture Capital investors. VCs are known for their extraordinary ability to spot emerging trends, identify disruptive startups, attract talent, and bring new industries into being.

Ilya Strebulaev has spent the last two decades at Stanford studying VCs’ counterintuitive approaches to decision-making, and the reasons behind the success and failure of corporate innovation efforts. Alex Dang, a senior leader at McKinsey and Amazon, has seen up close the impact VCs’ thinking and mechanisms can have on a business’ success. Together in The Venture Mindset, they present nine distinct principles that can help anyone looking to transform their business and achieve extraordinary results, no matter the industry.

The Venture Mindset is a new mental model where failure is a must, ideas are rejected in their myriads in search of a single winner, due diligence is put on its head, dissent is encouraged, plugs are pulled, and time horizons are extended. It is fundamentally different from the mindset found throughout the rest of the business world. This mindset helps leaders to develop a strong pipeline of ideas, make smarter, quicker decisions, and deliver more value at scale. It’s a must read for any leader looking to stave off irrelevance and win big in the uncertain world of business today.

*Includes a downloadable PDF of charts and graphics from the book

About the author

Ilya Strebulaev is the foremost academic expert on venture capital. As the founder of the Venture Capital Initiative and a Professor of Private Equity and Finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he teaches a popular class on venture capital, his research has been widely published in leading academic journals and featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Harvard Business Review. He frequently leads workshops and executive sessions for senior business and government leaders around the world and has consulted for companies and investors on the venture industry trends and corporate innovation. In 2023 he was named a Top Voice on LinkedIn.

Alex Dang is a CEO, a senior technology executive, and an advisor on innovation and digital strategy. He has two decades of senior leadership as a Partner at McKinsey and Ernst & Young, and as a product leader at Amazon, where he designed and launched numerous new businesses and solutions for millions of customers across ecommerce, supply chain, and AI. He graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.