On Masters of Scale, iconic business leaders share lessons and strategies that have helped them grow the world's most fascinating companies. Founders, CEOs, and dynamic innovators join candid conversations about their triumphs and challenges with a set of luminary hosts, including founding host Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock partner). From navigating early prototypes to expanding brands globally, Masters of Scale provides priceless insights to help anyone grow their dream enterprise.
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To move from one success to another, you have to learn to unlearn. Take everything that helped you win the first time, then discard it and learn a new way. That's how Barry Diller, a titan of "old media" (at ABC, Paramount and Fox), mastered the new dot-com world — with everything from Expedia to Match.com. This is Part 2 of our epic interview with Barry Diller, and it features cameos from Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi and serial entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan. Listen to Part 1 of this interview: "I...
Tinder. Top Gun. Roots. The Simpsons. What do they have in common? Media icon Barry Diller. Barry is what we call an "infinite learner." He’s only interested in things he's never done before. And if they’ve never been done by anyone? Better yet. He succeeds by embracing that he is, in fact, a master of nothing. Entrepreneurs, take note: You just might be an infinite learner yourself, and Barry shares a lesson or two you can use. This is Part 1 of our epic interview with Barry Diller, and it feat...
This episode features Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr and Slack, detailing his two major business pivots from online games to world-changing communication tools. He shares the challenges of "slashing and burning" old ideas, convincing reluctant teams, and the emotional toll of shutting down ventures. Stewart emphasizes the critical role of strong leadership, empathy in employee transitions, and persuasive storytelling in navigating difficult entrepreneurial transformations to achieve unexpected success.
Business plan not entirely clear? Not sure how you’ll make enough money or find your users? That's OK. Really. The most scalable ideas often come at you sideways. You'll find yourself crabwalking from a small market to a bigger one to one of unimaginable scale. We talk to the master of the entrepreneurial crabwalk, Diane Greene, who brought us into the age of cloud computing. As the founding CEO of VMWare and now the head of Google’s cloud division, she shares how she scampered sideways into a m...
If you want to grow your business, your goal isn’t to beat the competition — it’s to escape the competition altogether. No one knows this better than PayPal founder Peter Thiel. His theory? “Competition is for losers.” Thiel is a former colleague, frequent co-investor and longtime intellectual sparring partner with host Reid Hoffman. Their combined thinking on the competitive landscape is unmissable. Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/peter-thiel-escape-the-compet...
The Masters of Scale team brings you a special blend of leadership tips from Season One guests — including clips we haven’t aired yet. In this bonus episode, we’ll share our favorite insights from Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, Zynga’s Mark Pincus and more. Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info ....
In the early days of your startup, it feels like everything's on fire all the time. Real talk: if you try to put out every fire, every day, you’ll only burn yourself out. The best entrepreneurs know how to let some fires burn. Selina Tobaccowala, veteran leader of Evite, SurveyMonkey and the fitness startup Gixo, shares her insights on how to choose which problems not to solve, and how to conserve your energy for the biggest blazes. Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com S...
What’s the secret to Silicon Valley's thriving startup scene? And can that kind of ecosystem happen anywhere else in the world? Linda Rottenberg, CEO of Endeavor, makes the case that a startup culture can be nurtured almost anywhere, so long as you have the raw ingredients — starting with a few initial entrepreneurs with access to capital and a willingness to pay it forward. From Buenos Aires to Boston, Tel Aviv to Shenzen, hear Linda's stories of global startup scenes that could give Silicon Va...
Guest host Tim Ferriss shares advice you’ll want to etch into stone: the Ten Commandments of Startup Success. We teamed up with Tim’s own podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show , to bring you this special remix of actionable lessons from Masters of Scale Season One, including previously unaired insights from Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Endeavor’s Linda Rottenberg. Tim is the author of The 4-Hour Work Week and Tools of Titans , and a veteran TED speaker. He’s masterful at extract...
Strong company cultures only emerge when every employee feels they own the culture — and this begins even before the first job interview. CEO Reed Hastings has built an adaptive, high-performing culture at Netflix by being unabashedly upfront about who they are and who they aren’t. The company’s famous “culture deck” offered a 100-slide description of how Netflix sees itself — not as a family, but as a high-performing sports team. It won’t appeal to everyone — and that’s the point. If you can de...
To succeed, entrepreneurs need a good idea, timing, money, luck. But more than anything, they need the ability to generate an endless supply of Plans B, C, and D when Plan A doesn't come through. Nancy Lublin has scaled three successful not-for-profits: Dress for Success, DoSomething.org and Crisis Text Line. She shares the tenacious approach to technology and financing that have helped these organizations scale. Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/nancy-lublin-gri...
Google has succeeded by innovating again and again. Their secret? They don’t tell their employees how to innovate; they manage the chaos. Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google since 2001 and now chair of parent company Alphabet, shares the controversial management techniques he created to lead an environment of free-flowing ideas — and the disciplined decision-making that helps to make a breakthrough idea into a profitable product. He reveals the secret to Google’s former “20% time” policy, their appr...
In just 6 years, Facebook grew to 2 billion users and 14,000 employees. How? Well, first, they hired COO Sheryl Sandberg. And she knew that to lead a fast-changing organization, you have to be as skilled at breaking plans as you are at making them. Great scale leaders know how to pivot, because every day there are new competitors, new threats, new opportunities. Sandberg shares the practical, tactical on-the-ground leadership lessons she learned while scaling at Google and Facebook. Read a trans...
If you’re Steve Jobs, you can wait for your product to be perfect. For the rest of us, If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released it too late. Imperfect is perfect. Why? Because your assumptions about what people want are never exactly right. Most entrepreneurs create great products through a tight feedback loop with real customers using a real product. So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company. What will make or break you is speed. And no o...
The best business ideas often seem laughable at first glance. So if you’re hearing a chorus of “No’s” — it may actually be a good sign! Google, Facebook, LInkedIn, Airbnb — they all sounded crazy before they scaled spectacularly. So don’t be discouraged by rejection. Instead, learn to hear the nuance in the different kinds of “no.” That’s what Tristan Walker did. After stints at two successful startups, he launched out on his own with Walker & Company, makers of the Bevel razor — and learned...
Think you've raised enough money for your startup? Think again. You have to run through a minefield of unexpected expenses as an entrepreneur. And you never know where the big opportunity will come from — or if you'll need to make an unexpected, expensive pivot to stay afloat. So always, always raise more money than you think you need. Mariam Naficy shares her white-knuckle experiences founding startups that survived two financial crashes — the online cosmetic company Eve.com in the dotcom-boom ...
If you want your company to truly scale, you first have to do things that don't scale. Handcraft the core experience. Get your hands dirty. Serve your customers one-by-one. And don't stop until you know exactly what they want. That's what Brian Chesky did. As CEO of Airbnb, Brian’s early work was more akin to a traveling salesman. He takes us back to his lean years – when he went door-to-door, meeting Airbnb hosts in person – and shares the imaginative route to crafting what he calls an "11-star...
Coming May 3rd, Reid Hoffman, legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, explains how famous founders take their companies from zero to a gazillion. In this trailer for Season One, a taste of this straight-from-Silicon Valley podcast. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
