Book Recommendation: The Venture Mindset by Ilya Strebulaev and Alex Dang
What if your best decisions didn’t come from a place of certainty?
That’s one of the core provocations in The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth, by Ilya Strebulaev and Alex Dang. Strebulaev is a Stanford finance professor who has spent two decades studying venture capital decision-making. Dang is a seasoned venture capitalist (VC) and former partner at McKinsey with deep experience in both investing and corporate innovation. Together, they explore how VCs think; they also make a case for why all of us, regardless of industry, can benefit from thinking more like VCs.
Why Venture Thinking Is Different from Business as Usual
If you’re looking for a book about starting companies, look elsewhere. This book is about navigating uncertainty with intentionality.
Rather than thinking of mindset as a fixed personality trait, The Venture Mindset focuses on a learned approach to the world. Strebulaev and Dang argue that most people (and organizations) focus on executing known plans, minimizing risk, and delivering incremental progress. But VCs operate differently.
A Framework for Smarter Bets
Image credits: Josh Hemsley | Unsplash
The authors have put together a 9-part framework that they feel captures the core principles of the Venture Mindset. Each chapter blends research, personal stories, and illustrative examples from venture-backed startups and legacy corporations alike. Lots of success stories appear here, as well as many not-so-successful stories. My favorite concepts include:
💡 Home runs matter, strikeouts don’t. But at the same time, strive to place many small bets (that teach you something) rather than going all in on a single, make-or-break idea.
💡 Say no a hundred times. This strategy helps you encounter and evaluate many, many, many ideas, potentially positioning you to recognize when the right one comes your way.
💡 Double down or quit. Underpinning this advice is an attitude of relentless experimentation designed to tackle key risks and rapidly unearth information that could be critical to understanding how and whether your project is likely to succeed.
I particularly appreciated the book’s discussion of decision hygiene—how VCs structure decisions to reduce bias, groupthink, or ego. This feels relevant far beyond investing! I also found that the authors are fairly clear-eyed about the fact that venture thinking isn’t always the right tool, although it can be a powerful one when used well.
What Leaders Can Learn from VCs
Image credits: Buddha Elemental 3D | Unsplash
In a time when the pace of change can feel disorienting, cultivating mindset agility may be one of our best tools for resilience and reinvention. The Venture Mindset doesn’t ask us to become VCs. It asks us to get curious about how VCs think … and to borrow what serves us. That’s a small shift with potentially big consequences. In uncertain times, the opportunities go to those willing to see things differently.
So what would it take for you to explore a mindset that’s different from your own?
About Tiffany
Dr. Tiffany Vora speaks, writes, and advises on how to harness technology to build the best possible future(s). She is an expert in biotech, health, & innovation.
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