Tulane business professor Rob Lalka's debut book, The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power has received rave reviews as a "masterfully researched book" (Walter Isaacson), "a unique and searing perspective on the growth-at-all-costs mindset that fueled the tech industry" (Jonathan Greenblatt), and "a provocative, deeply researched book that is frankly jaw-dropping in places" (Anne-Marie Slaughter).
The book has already gained significant interest from the public. The first printing sold out during the pre-release at the Berkshire Annual Meeting in Omaha and from other pre-orders; in recent weeks, it has been the #1 New Release in Venture Capital, Business Ethics, and Computers & Tech, all three of its listed categories on Amazon. During its first week, the book became a top 10 bestseller in the Business Ethics category.
Kirkus Reviews called it “An impressive work of research and intellectual reflection," adding this praise: “The body of work addressing this subject now seems inexhaustible, but this book must count as among its most clear-eyed, well researched, and morally uncompromising examples.”
Lalka spent over four years with leaked documents and previously unpublished archival material during his research for this book. Published by Columbia University Press (founded in 1893, one of the oldest and largest American university presses), and with over 1,900 references and citations, the research underwent academic peer review, the faculty review board, professional third-party fact checking, and the Press editorial review committee before publication approval. The revelations in these pages will shed new light on the tech industry and the entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who have gained immense wealth and power over the last two decades.
Ultimately, this book tells the stories we need to know right now: "Lalka traces the ambitions, adversities, and compromises that transformed young innovators into billionaires" (Isaacson), leading to "fuel for debates this country simply has to have" (Slaughter).
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The Venture Alchemists on Jane King
“I go into the origin stories of these companies. October of 2003, Zuckerberg literally is coding Facemash as Halloween prank ... They’re comparing pictures of girls against girls that he stole — it was a cyberattack — the pictures he stole from Harvard’s servers. Then you know those deer-in-headlights [student ID] photos that no one wants to be published? That’s what was being compared.
It’s interesting when you think back on it, because there is a moment there. He’s literally stealing something. He’s putting up pictures of mostly women, and they’re mostly underage, they’re freshmen, without their consent. Then he blogs about it, he brags about it, he says ‘I wonder if I should be comparing these girls to girls, or girls to barnyard animals. There’s a childishness there, a juvenility, but something happens when he then quits Harvard... Everybody who then became his mentors only cared about hypergrowth of this company. They didn’t care about, necessarily, the full-on [implications] — about anything wholesome, thoughtful, ethical, any of the purpose-driven stuff that should matter when you’re building a platform that effects more people than a nation-state.”
“Think about how much the Internet has led to horrible behavior, especially when we think about dating or stalkerish behavior that these students were seeing on Facebook early on – or just judging people. That is one of the main points I try and make about Facebook. Very early on, the site was about judgment as entertainment. And if we think about how we promote our lives on Facebook or Instagram, it’s not our full selves. It’s certainly not who we are as full humans. It’s sort of this best representation of our selves through filtered photos and through filtered moments that really aren’t about who we really are.
And why are we doing that? It’s for meaningless points on a made-up scoreboard. It’s not real value in my life. It’s about dopamine that is feeding my brain. Here’s what’s scary to me: my students at Tulane are spending six, seven, eight hours a day on Facebook – well, usually Instagram and TikTok, they’re beyond Facebook at this point – but they’re spending a lot of time on social media. And it’s rewired their brains.
According to the Surgeon General, it has rewired their brains. That is what Vivek Murthy had said May 23, 2023, there was a warning that was posted, just like they do for other things like cigarettes, they posted a warning about how social media is dangerous. And I worry about it.”
“Over 900 students showed up the next day chanting, ‘Apartheid means profit. Stanford won’t stop it.’ The students protested the fact that Stanford had received securities from South African companies that were worth about $18.9 million at time and they had a range of investments in South African companies, mining operations, other assets. The students actually ran the numbers. These were very smart kids who were trying to figure out, ‘What would it take to divest from apartheid, to fully divest from South African Apartheid.’ It would have cost Stanford about $125 million in the endowment in those days, that’d be about four or five times more these days. It’s a lot of money. This was a big decision Stanford would have needed to make in 1977.
You’re hearing some of these same declarations today, and you’re hearing some of the same arguments from the opposite side, saying, ‘Well, actually, you have more of a seat at the table if you stay invested and you can push back as a shareholder rather than pulling your money out.’ … [Stanford] students created an alternative endowment in May of 1986 and they said if Stanford would divest, they’d get the money back. If Stanford didn’t divest within a decade, then that money would go to Black South African students who could pursue their education wherever they wished. They said, ‘Okay, you’re not going to get my alumni donations unless you do what I say.’
It’s an interesting, I would even say enterprising, move. They’re trying to use the power of the almighty dollar to live out their values … If you dig into the endnotes - and that’s one of the real beautiful parts of my book is that it’s deeply researched, there are 1,902 citations - the people who were behind the alternative endowment included three Rhodes Scholars, two of whom were top officials in the Obama Administration. Susan Rice was in the Biden Administration as the head of the Domestic Policy Council, and Mike McFaul is one of the leading voices on U.S.-Russian relations and was President Obama’s Ambassador to Russia. These are some of the leaders in terms of policymaking from the last couple of decades. The other interesting thing is that the people who pushed back on them, a couple of years later – they literally criticized a church group for protesting apartheid – those people included Peter Thiel and David Sacks, two of the most successful and wealthiest venture capitalists of all time. What is happening on these college campuses today, at Tulane, up at Columbia, or really any of these universities is really important.
Because universities often determine not only what ideas are spreading and what ideas gain salience in culture and society, in business and in the world, but also the very people who are there in this era could be the next Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Mike McFaul, or Susan Rice.”
“Startups create all net new jobs. But here’s the thing. Facebook now Meta, Google now Alphabet, Uber, any of these companies are the giant conglomerates these days. They’re not startups. We can’t think of them as startups anymore. Not with the way that they’re wielding power, and the way that they that they are especially involved in politics. These people are putting so much money behind, say, Prop 22, which was the ballot initiative in California that Uber led the charge to support. They put over $200 million behind that ballot initiative in California. That’s an incredible sum of money.
Peter Thiel put $15 million into J.D. Vance’s campaign and Blake Masters’ campaign for U.S. Senate. Each. That’s incredible money. That was more than anyone had ever spent on a U.S. Senate campaign before. Compare it to what Thiel put behind Donald Trump in 2016: he’d put $1.25 million behind Trump after the Access Hollywood tapes came out.”
““I think about the opportunity that comes when we do this right, when we have entrepreneurs who are trying to build great businesses and trying to change the world – hopefully for the better. What Steve [Case] often talks about is that all net new jobs are created by startups. The Fortune 500 turns over. And these large companies will fire, and they hire, they go back and forth. But startups are where jobs actually come from, because that’s where you create new value. That’s what I teach my students: If you want to change the world, build a business.
And if you’re going to build a business, do it on purpose. Do it for a reason that matters to you. Do it for something that you actually believe is worth your time. And if you’re doing that, I actually think that we can create so much value in this world and people will pay for it. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work. That’s where this works, for real. I argue in the book that you can be pro-technology and pro-business but not do this – not do the exploitative and dangerous win-at-all-costs mentality that ends up hurting people along the way. You just don’t have to make those same choices.
The good news for my students is this… These large companies? You don’t like how they’re behaving? Well guess what: They are the major conglomerates of our era now. These aren’t startups. They’ll be the ones that you’re going to turn over. They’ll be the ones you’re going to defeat. That’s what entrepreneurship is all about. Because if you look at this and say, ‘You know what? If I was able to build an Uber that was better, that allowed people to feel safer or, even better, that would allow people to share in the value of the data that’s created from that experience…’ That could change the world. Because I would love have that alternative. Or you build a social media company that does the same, where people share in the value of all the content and the data they’re creating. That could change the world. I’d love to have that alternative. I think many other people would. That’s the opportunity that I see. Not only can you create all net new jobs through that. You can also take the concentrated power that is, in my opinion, predictably corrupting, and you can disperse it in a more decentralized way.”
“I went deep in the Sanford Archives ... and it was interesting to me — and I’m curious about — the fact that Thiel and Sacks in The Diversity Myth criticized a church group for protesting Apartheid in South Africa. They defended a man who admitted to raping someone, his name was Stuart Thomas, who was 23 years old and he ended up raping a freshman at Stanford ...
These are people that you would think would be ‘canceled’ — based on what happens, it’s the way that the world works — but they have gained power, and sat on boards, and been pretty influential in the world. The point is not to generalize. The point is to deeply understand what happens when we live in a world where that power can be gained and wielded.”
Book Discussions
March 14
New Orleans Entrepreneur Week
Ecosystem Stage, Gallier Hall
New Orleans
1:15 PM
March 16
New Orleans Book Fest
Tulane Alumni Stage, Stibbs
New Orleans
12 Noon
April 19
Toward a New Digital Civic Infrastructure
Harvard University / MIT
Cambridge
Private Event
April 25
Think Bigger Summit
Columbia University
New York
2:45 PM
Agenda
May 4
The Bookworm
Omaha
4-6 PM
Free
May 5
Hudson Booksellers
North Terminal, Eppley Airfield
Omaha
10 AM - 4 PM
May 9
Nieux Society
New Orleans
5-7 PM
Free
May 16
Garden District Books
New Orleans
6-8 PM
Register
May 20
Entrepreneurs Organization
Baton Rouge, LA
Private Event
May 24
American Enterprise Institute
Washington, DC
Private Event
May 24
Busboys and Poets (K Street Location)
Washington, DC
Register
6:30-8 PM
May 29
Book Passage
San Francisco
5:30 PM
Free
Copies of The Venture Alchemists are now in stock and being shipped nationwide
More Discussions To Be Announced
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.
As scrappy startups become giant conglomerates, 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, which ensure progress, improve society, and enhance our daily lives.