March 06, 2020

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies with Reid Hoffman Co-Founder of LinkedIn, Partner @ Greylock & Sarah Guo, General Partner @ Greylock Partners #3

44 minutes

In an interview between Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo, they discuss “Blitzscaling” and how companies achieve massive scale at incredible speed. Reid shares insights and lessons on how to prioritize speed and efficiency in an environment of uncertainty, the benefits of intense collaboration found in Silicon Valley, and non-obvious rules needed to succeed.

REID HOFFMAN - Co-Founder of LinkedIn, Partner @ Greylock Partners (@reidhoffman)

“Part of the secret and the thing that’s great about Silicon Valley is that, while we compete intensely, we also collaborate intensely.” - Reid Hoffman

An accomplished entrepreneur, executive, and investor, Reid Hoffman has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses including co-founding PayPal & LinkedIn.

In '09 he joined Greylock Partners where he serves on the boards of Airbnb, Apollo Fusion, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Gixo, Microsoft, Nauto, Xapo. In addition, he serves on a number of not-for-profit boards, including Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub, & Do Something. He is the host of the podcast Masters of Scale, co-author of two New York Times best-selling books: The Start-Up of You & The Alliance. His new book is Blitzscaling, based on his Stanford course.

SARAH GUO - General Partner @ Greylock Partners (@saranormous)

Sarah joined Greylock Partners as an investor in '13 and focused on B2B apps & infrastructure.

Prior, she was at Goldman Sachs, where she invested in growth-stage tech startups like Dropbox & advised pre-IPO tech companies like Workday as well as public clients like Zynga, Netflix & Nvidia.

RESOURCES

Greylock
Blitzscaling: The Lightning Fast Path to Creating Massively Valuable Companies
Masters of Scale Podcast

SHOW NOTES

Discovering the “secret sauce” to Silicon Valley and discovering “Blitzscaling” (3:50)
Defining the framework of “Blitzscaling.” (7:01)
The OODA Loop. (7:21)
Reid’s first insight to Blitzscaling at PayPal when they were compounding at 2-5% daily user growth. (8:28)
Do rapidly scaling companies ever stop Blitzscaling? (11:39)
The dynamics of prioritizing speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty. (13:25)
Why Reid chose collaboration and to publicly share the “secret sauce” to Silicon Valley. (15:45)
What Reid’s learned about rapid scaling from his portfolio at Greylock. (17:45)
How Blitzscaling applies to different company scales. (20:10)
Where Blitzscaling goes bad. (21:48)
How Blitzscaling applies to technical leaders. (23:25)
Facebook’s example emphasizing speed at different scales. (26:18)
How to make decisions when you don’t have full data or an opinionated team. (29:26)
Reid’s three non-obvious rules of management. (32:02)
How to be comfortable “embracing chaos.” (33:55)
How do you think about product development when scaling fast? (37:03)
How Blitzscaling accounts for the “tech-lash,” the changing cultural perception of Silicon Valley, and perceived obsession with speed over accountability. (38:42)
How Blitzscaling applies to deeply technical problems with a long time-horizon. (40:45)

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By The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)

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