The Money Trap:Grand Fortunes and Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble: Grand Fortunes and Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble | Best Business Book of the Year 2025
Sama's sharp, observant prose cuts through the noise with remarkable candour. His self-aware humour and unflinching gaze make this memoir genuinely absorbing. A fascinating insider account of Silicon Valley's glittering promises and uncomfortable truths. Former Morgan Stanley executive Alok Sama stumbled into the epicentre of global tech investing as chief dealmaker at SoftBank, the powerhouse backing Arm, Yahoo, Nvidia, TikTok, Uber and countless others. What unfolds is his extraordinary journey alongside Masayoshi Son, a visionary entrepreneur hungry to reshape how humanity thinks about money and progress. Sama whisks you through boardrooms and international capitals, where billion-pound transactions pivot on handshakes and intuition. He navigates treacherous waters: collaborating with titans of industry, tangling with government officials, and weathering a vicious smear campaign that bleeds into his personal world. The narrative weaves together high-stakes dealmaking, absurd encounters and moments of genuine introspection. What emerges is something rarer than a typical business saga. This book questions whether endless wealth truly delivers fulfilment, offering a bracingly honest examination of ambition, ego and the peculiar intoxication of proximity to power. Funny, unsettling and occasionally sobering, it's a portrait of an industry reshaping our world, told by someone who watched it up close and lived to question what it all meant.
- Author: Alok Sama
- Publisher: Macmillan
- Genre: Industry-Specific Business
- ISBN: 978-9361135910
- Pages: 304 pages