After guiding the company through a near-death experience, Airbnb’s Brian Chesky talks with Rapid Response host Bob Safian about what he learned and how responding to a crisis both reveals your character and teaches you what’s most important. Recorded live on stage at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com/ Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribe See Privacy Policy at http...
May 09, 2023•24 min
Rapid Response with Bob Safian: If the most prestigious aspect of your business isn’t paying dividends, should you leave it in the past? BuzzFeed’s co-founder and CEO, Jonah Peretti discusses the surprising decision to shutter the Pulitzer Prize-winning BuzzFeed News, and how the company seeks to re-anchor toward the bright future of media. In his third appearance on Rapid Response, Peretti shares lessons about redefining the tool of social media, leading a private versus public business, and ho...
May 04, 2023•26 min
Early-stage startups are a lot like pirate ships — they need a buccaneering spirit to survive. But every startup needs to shed its pirate nature at some point, and evolve into something more akin to a navy — no less heroic, but more disciplined. Dara Khosrowshahi, as Uber CEO, took on the most extreme pirate-to-navy transition in startup history. Though Uber blitzscaled to become the most valuable startup in the world, it was also notorious for its toxic culture — and Dara turned the company aro...
May 02, 2023•44 min
You may think that to scale you need to cut humans out of the equation. The opposite is true. You can harness the power of the “human cloud” to solve almost any problem — as long as you keep the word “human” in the equation. That’s what former TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot champions for this community of people who work with each other, teach each other, and continually learn from each other. "All-Star Episodes" are part of a special series designed to center some of the most timely — and t...
Apr 25, 2023•36 min
How do you create authentic partnerships to build scale? Daymond John, founder of FUBU and one of the original “sharks” on ABC’s Shark Tank, shares lessons from FUBU’s earliest days in Queens, where he partnered with bouncers, bodegas, his neighbor LL Cool J, and his earliest collaborator and investor (his mom) to turn a great idea into a billion-dollar urbanwear brand. "All-Star Episodes" are part of a special series designed to center some of the most timely — and timeless — business wisdom in...
Apr 18, 2023•36 min
Google doesn’t tell its employees how to innovate; it manages their inventive chaos. Their secret? Mix free-flowing ideas with disciplined decision-making. In this week's All-Star Episode, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt shares his strategies to manage chaos. CEO of Google from 2001-2015, and now the co-founder of Schmidt Futures, Schmidt reveals the hidden secret in Google’s famous “20% time” policy, their approach to hiring smart creatives, and the parallels between leading Google and pil...
Apr 11, 2023•30 min
The Apple logo. The iconic Burberry check. These images inspire loyalty of customers and employees alike. But it takes more than a beloved brand to power a company and motivate a team. No one knows this better than Angela Ahrendts, former SVP of retail at Apple, and the former CEO of Burberry. Angela has spent most of her career learning how to imbue those logos with meaning — and support them with down-to-earth, everyday, human connection. Why? Because to unite a team — especially one that’s la...
Apr 04, 2023•32 min
Normally, trust = consistency + time. But when you're scaling fast, you have to find shortcuts to trust, with your partners and your users. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek knows a thing or two about this. When he founded Spotify, he did what few disruptors ever do: He worked with the industry he was trying to reinvent. How did Ek build a relationship with a music industry wary of piracy? He found shortcuts to trust. And not just with the music industry, but users to. With cameo appearances from Gustav Söd...
Mar 28, 2023•38 min
Being authentic defines strong leadership. Bozoma Saint John has continually challenged expectations, moving purposefully across multiple roles, from Uber’s chief brand officer to Netflix’s CMO, from Pepsico to Apple, from working for celebrated director Spike Lee to working for iconic Hollywood talent agent Ari Emmanuel. The wall between the personal and professional is artificial, Boz argues, and a barrier to leading what she calls The Urgent Life in a new book. The best leaders tap into their...
Mar 16, 2023•28 min
To survive a crisis, you have to double down on who you already are as a company. This is something Ellen Kullman knows, having led DuPont through the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and taken the CEO role at 3D-printing unicorn Carbon only weeks before Covid hit. Through her years as a leader, Ellen has developed four crisis principles that allowed her to lead teams and thrive through pandemic, economic meltdown, and beyond. The key? Practicing the principles in calmer times, before crisis hits. Be...
Mar 14, 2023•36 min
How do you stay focused and committed to putting out a fire while new fires ignite elsewhere? Mercy Corps CEO, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna returns to Rapid Response to discuss the expansive relief effort in Turkey and Syria since the earthquake, leading a grieving team, and how the org’s support strategy in Ukraine must pivot as the country enters its second year of war. Tjada also shares insights about the greater role businesses can play in societal improvement, and why altruism doesn’t mean sacrific...
Mar 09, 2023•22 min
Hard challenges demand that we embrace tension. Former CEO of IBM Ginni Rometty argues that, right now, business has a responsibility to deploy what her new book calls Good Power — from putting skills first in hiring, as a way to close systemic opportunity gaps, to thoughtfully erecting guardrails around new technology. As an early pioneer in the AI space with IBM’s Watson, Ginni acknowledges the risk that disruptive technology can have on society. She offers her insider perspective on balancing...
Mar 02, 2023•26 min
What drove the meteoric rise of David Droga’s trailblazing agency Droga5? A series of daring, unexpected leaps — tactics he’s now applying at mega-scale as head of Accenture Song. Conventional wisdom tells you to ‘climb the ladder’ of success linearly — as an individual or a company. But David’s unexpected moves — leaning into creative partnerships and controversial programs — accelerated his path to scale. David tells us: “I’m more scared of repetition than I am of failure.” Read a transcript o...
Feb 28, 2023•41 min
With deserted airports, vaccine and mask mandates, and pandemic-prompted staff departures behind it, Delta Air Lines is once again soaring, recently sharing $563 million in profits with its employees. CEO Ed Bastian, in his third appearance on Rapid Response, talks about capitalizing on the big decisions made amid Covid darkness — from airport renovations to investing in free Wifi — and the opportunities and challenges of adding 25,000 new employees over the past year. Sharing insights on managi...
Feb 23, 2023•27 min
What can entrepreneurs learn from a genre-crossing, multi-platinum musician? How to take a big opportunity — and leverage it into something epic. From his earliest days as a founding member of the Black Eyed Peas, will.i.am learned from mentors how to not only identify big opportunities but compound them. From the Super Bowl to the first iTunes commercial; from the founding of Beats and his tech company i.am + to a song beamed back from Mars, his ability to bring stakeholders t...
Feb 21, 2023•43 min
To breathe fresh life into an established platform, Kickstarter’s new 33-year-old CEO Everette Taylor is shaking things up – and he’s unapologetic if it makes people uncomfortable. From bold new product lines to bold statements, Taylor is working to kickstart Kickstarter’s existing community while aggressively pursuing new users. Marketing is product and product is marketing, he says. “I want to build a juggernaut.” Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com/ Subscribe to the ...
Feb 16, 2023•26 min
Reid Hoffman and Bob Safian sit down once more to discuss how today’s hot-button stories are impacting business. And right now, there's no hotter topic than ChatGPT and the race to bring transformative AI tools into the mainstream. So in this special AI deep-dive, Reid and Bob discuss how ChatGPT has reignited the search engine wars, how we can expect AI to transform our work and leisure, ways to see through the hype, and how business leaders should get the jump on the AI inflection point. Read ...
Feb 14, 2023•33 min
Sports gambling is on track to grow into a $40 billion industry in the U.S., with FanDuel the lead player. CEO Amy Howe explains why the Super Bowl is so important to the company’s aspirations, even as it expands into wider gaming options and broader sports leagues. Leveraging its first-mover advantage, FanDuel is seeking to build an iconic brand around responsible gaming. With so much on the line, Super Bowl week is as make-or-break for Howe as it is for the two teams on the field. Read a trans...
Feb 09, 2023•25 min
How do you keep innovating while also making sure your core business stays on point? How do you turn your employees into impassioned storytellers? And how do you get even the most risk-averse stakeholders to get on board with your trailblazing new approach? Reid Hoffman and Bob Safian answer these questions and more, all posed live by entrepreneurs across many industries and stages of scale. Plus Reid reminds us the importance of staying grounded in our humanity amid the spate of big tech layoff...
Feb 07, 2023•30 min
The carbon-capture industry notched a breakthrough in early 2023, when Climeworks became the first company to be third-party certified for taking carbon out of the air and mineralizing it underground. Climeworks co-founder and co-CEO Christoph Gebald is now racing to scale this new potential, from Iceland to Oman to the United States, by convincing investors, corporate partners, and governments to support a new pillar in the quest for net-zero goals. Christoph points to both serendipity and...
Feb 03, 2023•27 min
Smart entrepreneurs know one of the secrets to scale is leveraging wisdom from others. (In fact, that’s the mission of this show!) But not all advice is right for you right now — and some can even be disastrous. As the founder of the proto-fintech platform LearnVest, Alexa von Tobel scaled her business by seeking advice from mentors and friends … and then, taking only the advice that served her mission. Following Alexa’s story, you’ll learn how to become a good advice detective, with the po...
Jan 31, 2023•35 min
While many retail businesses have struggled to cope with a wave of disruptions — from pandemic to supply chains to inflation — Lululemon has continued to scale, even when retail sales elsewhere dipped. CEO Calvin McDonald shares how mid-term strategic planning, control over inventory, and a culture that climbs mountains together has fueled agility and versatility. When it comes to brand-building and community building, Calvin says, it’s critical to lean into listening, so you can amplify what ma...
Jan 26, 2023•24 min
For entrepreneurs and business leaders, the path to success is littered with traps. In this special episode of Masters of Scale, we go into the trenches with leaders from Google, Uber, LinkedIn, and more for inside stories on how to identify, decode, and surmount unexpected pitfalls — from organizational jams to overcommunication, from bloated meetings to bungled succession planning. Learn how to get out of, and avoid, these traps, for yourself and the entire organization. Read a transcript of t...
Jan 24, 2023•44 min
While media companies from CNN to Buzzfeed have faced layoffs, one digital network focused on Black millennials has continued to forge ahead. Morgan DeBaun, CEO of Blavity, which reaches some 100 million users through brands like Travel Noire and Afrotech, has defied the odds — repeatedly. Morgan’s experience offers lessons about financial discipline and focused patience, as well as the untapped value in multicultural consumers. An adviser to big companies like American Airlines and an advocate ...
Jan 19, 2023•33 min
As Reed Hastings steps down from his co-CEO role at Netflix, we return to the leadership lessons he shared in his original Masters of Scale episode. This episode is all about how you need a strong culture to build a company that will scale beyond the early start-up days. And strong company cultures only emerge when every employee feels they own the culture from day 1. Here's how Reed Hastings and his team at Netflix did it – and made their culture deck famous in the process. Cameo appearances: J...
Jan 18, 2023•36 min
You can’t predict your next a-ha moment. but you can create favorable circumstances for serendipity to happen – for you, and for your team. No one knows this better than J.J. Abrams, director, producer, screenwriter, and co-founder and co-CEO of Bad Robot Productions, which has been behind some of the most successful TV series and films of the last 20 years, from Lost to Star Trek to the Star Wars sequel trilogy. J.J. explains how creativity and collaboration are things you cultivate, not conjur...
Jan 17, 2023•38 min
When the FDA blessed Upside Foods’ grown-from-cells chicken as safe to eat, it was a coming-of-age moment for cultivated meat. Upside founder and CEO Uma Valeti, MD, shares his journey of convincing skeptics, landing investors from Bill Gates to food giants Tyson and Cargill, and building a collaborative partnership with the FDA and USDA. Plus, his lessons on leadership from a career in cardiology and what it will take to convert consumers to a never-before-seen product. Read a transcript ...
Jan 12, 2023•27 min
All great teams need to improvise under pressure, but underpinning this should be a set of tried-and-tested playbooks that let you orchestrate and replicate winning strategies. Cisco's John Chambers created a library of living playbooks — covering culture, acquisitions, crises, and more — to astounding effect as he took Cisco from a small tech supplier to the most valuable company on the planet. Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.com Subscribe to the Masters of Scale...
Jan 10, 2023•37 min
Want to improve any idea? Find someone who disagrees with it. This is something legendary investor Ray Dalio knows. But there’s a difference between constructive and destructive conflict — and Dalio is a master at spotting the difference. In constructive conflict, a team has a shared goal, whether or not they have differing opinions. And this is the key to success. Cameo appearances: Steve Horgan (USA Field Hockey Director of Umpiring), Daniel Amen (psychiatrist, founder of Amen Clinics). R...
Jan 05, 2023•43 min
Branding is at the heart of any organization’s identity, product, and mission. It's the narrative you weave throughout your scale journey. That’s why brand relevance isn't a nice-to-have — it's a need to have. This special episode of Masters of Scale shares key branding lessons from Nike, Disney, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, and more. Applying these insights can amplify your momentum, whether your brand is just starting out or firmly established. By refreshing your brand in dy...
Jan 03, 2023•37 min
