Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman

By WaitWhat

Business

What's Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman about?

How do companies grow from zero to a gazillion? Legendary Silicon Valley investor / entrepreneur Reid Hoffman tests his theories with famous founders. Guests include Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg & Sheryl Sandberg, Netflix’s Reed Hastings, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Spanx's Sara Blakely. With original music and hilariously honest stories, the show sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard. Masters of Scale is a WaitWhat original series in association with Stitcher.

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Rapid Response: When your b...

10.22.2020

95% of your business disappears. What do you do? Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson recounts how the travel industry drastically changed last spring, with hotel bookings all but disappearing overnight. In the midst of his own battle with cancer, Arne has ...

Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman episodes:

10.22.2020 Rapid Response: When your business disappears overnight, w/Marriott’s Arne Sorenson 95% of your business disappears. What do you do? Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson recounts how the travel industry drastically changed last spring, with hotel bookings all but disappearing overnight. In the midst of his own battle with cancer, Arne has ...
10.20.2020 74. The Empathy Flywheel, w/Nextdoor CEO Sarah Friar A social network that limits your network? Yes. Meet Nextdoor, a hyperlocal social network that’s all about who you really are and where you really live. Although it goes against everything that we've come to expect from social networks, Nextdoor’s ...
10.15.2020 Rapid Response: Movie-theater drama has come to every business, w/Shelli Taylor, CEO, Alamo Drafthouse As big movie chains shut down, Shelli Taylor's determined to keep her theaters open. With revenue at a trickle, the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse is negotiating daily with landlords and banks, and even tried her own video-on-demand service. Her balancing ...
10.13.2020 73. Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales: To scale, find the right values What's more important than product-market fit? Product-VALUE fit. If you choose the right values to drive product development, you'll draw the people, resources, and speed you need. It’s true for for-profits and for nonprofits. And Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales knows ...
10.08.2020 Rapid Response: The Covid test facts every CEO needs, w/Rajiv Shah (Rockefeller Foundation) To safely re-open a business, you need more than masks. Covid testing is key – and the options are changing quickly. We found the most in-the-know person in public health to walk us through the choices, costs, and protocols to ...
10.06.2020 72. YouTube's Susan Wojcicki: How to find – and keep – true north When you scale at warp speed, it’s easy to lose your bearings. You have to establish your company’s true north, or the dizzying pace of growth will push you off course. No one knows this better than Susan Wojcicki, CEO ...
10.01.2020 Rapid Response: Your company is a citizen – it can act like one, w/Baratunde Thurston The pandemic, social unrest, the U.S. election – everything affects your team and your business. And the stakes are only getting higher. How do you address race and diversity? Should your business take a stand in the upcoming election? What ...
09.29.2020 71. How to build authentic connection at scale, w/Trevor McFedries & Lil Miquela You might not know Trevor McFedries yet, but if you're on Instagram, you've probably met Miquela. She has millions of followers, hit singles and lucrative contracts with brands. But she’s not actually real. Miquela’s the creation of Trevor’s stealthy creative ...
09.22.2020 Rapid Response: Healthy offices and the myth of remote-work productivity, w/Diane Hoskins (Gensler) Is your office safe to re-open? How much space do you need? Is remote-work really more productive? Diane Hoskins is co-CEO of architecture firm Gensler, which advises businesses from Google to Bank of America. With the pandemic, Hoskins explains, now ...
09.15.2020 Rapid Response: Nothing matters but this. w/Eric Schmidt (frmr Google CEO) "Until this problem gets fixed, all the other things that I care about, that you care about, are on hold.” In this must-hear interview, Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO (and now co-founder of Schmidt Futures) shares why he's 100% focused ...
09.08.2020 Rapid Response: What you can learn from how schools are pivoting, w/ Success Academy's Eva Moskowitz The first day of school doesn't look the way it used to – in some cases, it might not be happening at all. As schools across the country start a new year, we're kicking off a new season with Eva ...
08.25.2020 70. Peloton’s John Foley – How to turn skeptics into fans Casual fans come and go. But converts stick with you – and spread the word. The trick is knowing how – and WHEN – to convert skeptics into super-fans. No one knows this better than Peloton co-founder and CEO John ...
08.18.2020 69. Why your company needs new rituals w/Shishir Mehrotra (YouTube, Coda) You need more than a good product to scale – you need strong rituals. All companies have rituals, from holding all-hands meetings to measuring KPIs. The right rituals in the right places help build your culture, cohere your team, and ...
08.11.2020 14. The infinite learner, w/Barry Diller (Part 1 of our interview) Tinder. Top Gun. Roots. The Simpsons. What do they have in common? Media icon Barry Diller. We're re-airing a classic episode with some wise words. Barry is what we call an "infinite learner." He’s only interested in things he's never ...
08.04.2020 19. How to price your product to scale, w/ClassPass's Payal Kadakia The price that bleeds your business could also save it. We're revisiting a classic episode with ClassPass' Payal Kadakia to focus something every entrepreneur struggles with: pricing. When you invent something innovative, you can’t know how to price it on ...
07.28.2020 68. Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) Some products are vitamins and some are painkillers – the best, though, are both. This is what Clara Shih, founder and CEO of Hearsay Systems, learned in the early years of her software startup. To survive, she needed to shift ...
07.21.2020 10. Let fires burn w/Selina Tobaccowala (Evite, SurveyMonkey, Gixo) It's the opposite of what you were taught. The best entrepreneurs — they let fires burn. Knowing which problems NOT to solve is as critical as knowing how to solve them. We're revisiting this episode with serial entrepreneur Selina Tobaccowala ...
07.18.2020 Rapid Response: Building a bridge over troubled waters, with Spelman College president Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell How to keep students learning – and building their vital lifelong community bonds – in the middle of a pandemic? This is the question for Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, president of Spelman College. Late in July, Dr. Campbell announced Spelman's ...
07.14.2020 67. Strategy Session 5: How transparent should you be with your board? How do you boost morale in dark days? Is it time to blitzscale? How do you take smart risks, how can you be transparent – but inspiring – with your board and your team, how do you keep up morale in what seem like the darkest days, and what does the future of ...
07.11.2020 Rapid Response: Inside PayPal's $530M plan to close the racial wealth gap, with CEO Dan Schulman The pandemic has hurt many businesses – but PayPal isn't one of them. PayPal has boomed as e-commerce has swelled, with stock up more than 50% this year and a huge new demographic joining the platform. That doesn't mean, though, ...
07.09.2020 Rapid Response: What it will take for tech and Hollywood to be anti-racist, w/Color Of Change's Rashad Robinson There's no quick fix to 400 years of oppression, says Color Of Change president Rashad Robinson. One of the largest racial justice organizations in the US, Color Of Change works with decision-makers in business and government to enact systemic change. ...
07.07.2020 66. The 4 core principles of crisis management, w/Ellen Kullman (DuPont, Carbon) 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 ...
07.02.2020 Rapid Response: A new playbook for new times, w/Ford Foundation president Darren Walker "This was like 1918, 1929 and 1968 in one week," says Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation. With the pandemic, economic crisis, and civil unrest all coming together after George Floyd's death, Walker found himself flooded with calls from ...
06.30.2020 65. Stephen Colbert + DonorsChoose's Charles Best — The power of small goals Startups are audacious. They’re big. They’re world-changing. But you can’t achieve scale on day one. Sometimes the best way to achieve that monumental success tomorrow is to take a teeny tiny step today. This is what Charles Best did when ...
06.27.2020 Rapid Response: Burning cash, accepting turbulence w/Delta CEO Ed Bastian A surprisingly candid and upbeat interview on the industry hardest hit by the pandemic. Delta saw seat bookings fall to less than 5% of normal, had 40,000 employees go on unpaid leave, and raised $14 billion in funding – all ...
06.23.2020 51. Liberating the human spirit, w/Robert F. Smith (Vista Equity, Morehouse Commencement), Recorded live at Summit LA 2019 Every great founder has a second purpose — something outside their main business they're trying to get done in the world. And every successful company is like a Trojan Horse, carrying this second purpose forward. No one knows this better ...
06.19.2020 Rapid Response: How business can engage against racism, w/Shellye Archambeau (MetricStream, Nordstrom, Verizon) What can your business do right now in the struggle against racism? More than you think, says Shellye Archambeau, former CEO of MetricStream, now a board member at Verizon, Nordstrom and Okta. She returns to the show with her all-too-rare ...
06.16.2020 64. Build. Measure. Learn, w/Eric Ries of The Lean Startup and the LTSE Forget writing that business plan. Design an experiment instead. So many products and companies fail because the assumptions in their beautiful business plans were just wrong. So stop writing and start testing. No one knows this better than Eric Ries, ...
06.13.2020 Rapid Response: GM's Mary Barra: "Going ventilator fast" GM is now reopening auto plants, after shutting them in March, temporarily reducing pay for 69,000 employees, and making a fast pivot to produce masks and ventilators. But with the killing of George Floyd, things are hardly back to normal. ...
06.09.2020 63. Strategy Session 4: The post-pandemic business, w/questions from Village Global and co-host Bob Safian, editor-at-large How do you find new markets when your old ones stall? How do you stay agile when your team is overwhelmed? And do constraints always lead to creativity — really? In this Strategy Session recorded in the height of the ...
06.06.2020 Rapid Response: BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti: Record-high audience, record-low revenue BuzzFeed audience is at record highs. But the pandemic's economic effects have crushed the bottom line. BuzzFeed co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti shares how his company is making hard decisions to build long-term stability. “But the transition is painful,” he ...
06.03.2020 Bonus: Reid’s 2020 Commencement Speech: In a crisis, steer toward the emerging opportunities New graduates
05.30.2020 Rapid Response: Danny Meyer, 10 weeks later: How to revive restaurants "Being the first to close is one thing. But I don't want to be the last to open,” says iconic restaurateur Danny Meyer in his second Rapid Response interview. After shutting his iconic New York City restaurants, laying off 2,000 ...
05.28.2020 Rapid Response: How "startup DNA" helped One Medical respond to Covid, with CEO Amir Rubin Since One Medical’s IPO in January, CEO Amir Rubin has been forced to constantly adapt to the coronavirus pandemic, as healthcare needs, expectations, and behaviors shifted. From telemedicine to Covid-19 testing, One Medical has leaned into existing advantages to scale ...
05.26.2020 62. A masterclass in crowdsourcing, w/Duolingo's Luis Von Ahn Crowdsourcing is more than a group of people interested in the same cause, it’s a way to tap skills – and scale – that you don’t have. And when it works, it can be the rocket fuel that launches you ...
05.23.2020 Rapid Response: How Warby Parker is making decisions in uncertainty, with CEO Neil Blumenthal "It's like getting hit in the face over and over and over,” says Warby Parker co-CEO Neil Blumenthal. But “crisis brings out clarity.” At Warby, planning for the future has meant leaning into the present — from physical changes in ...
05.19.2020 61. How to unite a team, Part 2 w/Angela Ahrendts of Burberry, Apple In Part 2, Angela arrives at Apple, which feels like another planet after her years in fashion. In never-before heard stories, Angela shares how she learned the language of tech (the physical store is the ‘hardware’; the experience inside the ...
05.16.2020 Rapid Response: Future-proofing Verizon, with CEO Hans Vestberg Data streaming, videoconferencing – even phone calls are way up at Verizon amid Covid-19, as digital interaction steps in for IRL. But boom times don't mean easy times for CEO Hans Vestberg, who moved over 100,000 employees remote in two ...
05.12.2020 60. Apple's Angela Ahrendts: How to unite a team (Part 1) 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, ...
05.09.2020 Rapid Response: Operating in a fishbowl w/Philly 76ers & NJ Devils CEO Scott O’Neil In sports, everyone has an opinion on every hire, every trade, every price change. That’s the reality – and also the privilege, says Scott O'Neil, CEO of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils. When the NBA dramatically shut down ...
05.07.2020 Rapid Response: Crisis lessons from inside the ER, with Dr. Bon Ku In the Covid-19 storm, treating hospital patients requires constant iteration, creative information-sharing, and worst-case-scenario planning. Dr. Bon Ku, an ER physician and director of the Health Design Lab at Jefferson University in Philadelphia, takes us inside the practice and mindset ...
05.05.2020 Rapid Response: Food security in a pandemic, w/Sara Menker of Gro Intelligence Will the U.S. run out of food? Can the world's food supply chains survive coronavirus? Sara Menker, founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, which parses 650 trillion agricultural data points daily, shares eye-opening insights based on real-time facts. Learn about ...
04.30.2020 Rapid Response: Inside Panera’s pandemic pivot, with CEO Niren Chaudhary What do you do when you can’t serve customers in cafes and carry on business as usual? You try unusual things, says Panera CEO Niren Chaudhary. Forced to close cafes and restructure teams, Panera is leveraging its advantages (like a ...
04.28.2020 Rapid Response: A crisis leadership session with General Stanley McChrystal Everyone's looking for a box of crisis tricks. But the hard truth is that it simply doesn’t exist, says retired General Stanley McChrystal. Instead of looking for a new style, McChrystal says, lead with the same things that motivate people ...
04.25.2020 Rapid Response: Pet adoptions: Up. Delivery business: Up. What that means to Chewy’s Sumit Singh Pet adoptions have soared during the coronavirus lockdown, as people seek companionship and solace. For Chewy, the pet-supply company, that’s driving unprecedented demand. Ultra-rapid growth has its own set of challenges that CEO Sumit Singh is responding to by: hiring ...
04.23.2020 Rapid Response: Build government back – better, w/Jen Pahlka (Code for America, USDR) In the US, local governments are leading the response to COVID-19 – making decisions and gathering data at a speed and scale never before seen. And many of them are asking Jen Pahlka for help. The founder and past chair ...
04.20.2020 Rapid Response: Target’s Brian Cornell: “I want to see retail survive this” Every day in a pandemic is different, and that’s true for people and for corporations. CEO Brian Cornell has promised Target will keep its doors open. To do that, Target is becoming "a good student," says Brian, listening to experts, ...
04.18.2020 Rapid Response: TaskRabbit's Stacy Brown-Philpot: “A pandemic doesn’t see money.” TaskRabbit remains open for business, says CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot. As the magnitude and severity of the pandemic became clear – and as workers across the U.S. were furloughed and services cut – TaskRabbit leaned into the work they do: providing ...
04.16.2020 Rapid Response: Lyft’s John Zimmer: How to keep an essential business running Everything starts with transportation, says John Zimmer, co-founder and president of Lyft. And even though ride sharing is sharply down, transportation remains key – for essential workers and for our supply chain. So Lyft is flexing some new muscles, says ...
04.13.2020 Rapid Response: Airbnb’s Brian Chesky: "Crisis is pushing us back to our roots" As the pandemic hit, Airbnb was preparing for an IPO. Within a matter of days, everything changed dramatically, as travel worldwide screamed to a halt. “I felt like I was captain of a ship and a torpedo hit the side,” ...

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