There's no shortage of tech podcasts, but few give you a true dose of the future.

The A16Z podcast is an exception.

It takes you straight to the innovators behind new materials, data centers, self-driving cars,

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HBR presents.

Welcome to Exponential View, with me, Azim Azar.

As an entrepreneur, investor and analyst, I've been an insider in the technology industry for over 20 years.

In that time, I've watched exponentially developing technologies change our world.

A huge number of those innovations have been driven by venture capital, which I believe is one of modernity's great transformational forces.

My guest this week has spent five years researching and writing a book about that industry.

It's called The Power Law.

He writes about how venture capital came to shape our world, what makes it unique, and why it's best proponents play an outsized role in changing the way we live.

He's had a storied career as a journalist and author and is currently a senior fellow at the council on foreign relations.

I'm thrilled to have him here to talk about one of my absolute favorite subjects.

Sebastian Malibi, welcome to Exponential View.

Great to be with you, Azim.

Venture Capital is a really alluring subject, and venture capitalists themselves have this mystique around them, an aura.

What makes it so interesting, so sexy, so enticing a subject matter?

I think the act of building something out of nothing is sexy and fascinating, and that's what startup founders do, and that's what their investing partners do when they get into the trenches with them.

So it's sort of that thing about inventing tomorrow, which is irresistible.

I think it really came into its own, certainly on the west coast, with the foundation of Arthur Rocks, venture capital partnership in 1961.

And so from that point on, you've got six decades, and it's remarkable that now it's grown to a point where when you look at all of the companies that have gone public in the United States since 1995, three quarters of the market cap derives from venture backed companies.

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