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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Special: First, be human – ...

03.26.2020

Can you blitzscale when the world grinds to a halt? How do you do right by your team AND your investors? What will the entrepreneurial world look like on the other side of this? In this special episode, our host ...

Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman episodes:

03.26.2020 Special: First, be human – Thoughts on the crisis from Reid Hoffman Can you blitzscale when the world grinds to a halt? How do you do right by your team AND your investors? What will the entrepreneurial world look like on the other side of this? In this special episode, our host ...
03.24.2020 Special: Danny Meyer on the wrenching decision to do layoffs Last week, Danny Meyer laid off 2,000 people – that's 80 percent of staff at Union Square Hospitality Group, representing 20+ restaurants across the country. It was a heartbreaking decision made with full understanding of the impacts, short and long-term ...
03.18.2020 Special: Remote teams with WordPress/Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg The first in a series of special episodes with tools you need RIGHT NOW \| Suddenly, many of us are remote workers. As companies radically reimagine their day-to-day in response to the pandemic, we all need to know what Matt ...
02.27.2020 How to start a revolution – Bitcoin pioneer Wences Casares (Xapo) What if your idea is so radical that people have trouble grasping what it is – or even believing it won't harm them? Every founder believes their product is revolutionary – and the more revolutionary their product, the more reassuring ...
02.20.2020 Strategy Session: When to replace the founder, how to be a learn-it-all, when to take the "venture bet" Growth vs innovation, scale vs stability, founders vs CEOs? Entrepreneurs want to know! We’re back with another Strategy Session episode, featuring fast-growing, high-performing scale-ups from around the world, and they’re asking Reid their biggest questions. They want to know: What ...
02.13.2020 Shopify's Tobi Lütke: Be a platform The secret to massive scale? Be a platform. Build a virtuous cycle where everyone wins, and you’ll emerge the biggest winner of all. This is what Tobi Lütke did when he built Shopify – and then opened it up to ...
02.06.2020 Netflix’s Reed Hastings: Why culture matters Classic episode: You need a strong culture to build a company that will scale beyond the early days of start up. And strong company cultures only emerge when every employee feels they own the culture from day one. Here's how ...
01.23.2020 When to Zoom In, When to Zoom Out, with Josh Silverman (Etsy / eBay / Skype / Evite) When do you see the forest? And when do you see the trees? Building a company to scale requires a delicate balance of macro and micro focus – and the skill to know where to focus when. Josh Silverman has ...
01.17.2020 Strategy Session: When not to blitzscale, how to persuade your board to let you slow down, and: Are you in a Glengarry Glen Ross market? When's the right time for hypergrowth? Should you take investment when you don’t need the money? How do you deal with an exhausted team? Global entrepreneurs facing hyperfast growth ask Reid their questions about raising capital, pivoting their product, bootstrapping ...
01.13.2020 Special: A Meditative Story from Reid Hoffman How do you find joy in your life? Our host, Reid Hoffman, finds it through friendship, and the genuine, honest, and intimate conversations it brings. In this special episode of Meditative Story, from the same producers as Masters of Scale, ...
01.09.2020 What’s the hidden business behind your business? w/Rent the Runway’s Jenn Hyman Rent the Runway co-founder Jenn Hyman knows: Behind every successful business is another business backstage, one you might not expect. Rent the Runway is known for creating a glamorous "closet in the cloud,” but as Hyman explains, it achieved unicorn ...
01.03.2020 How to find your big idea w/ Spanx's Sara Blakely To find your big idea? Look for it. And look for it. And be ready to act. Spanx founder Sara Blakely was actively seeking a business idea when she thought of Spanx. Then she moved fast, found help in the ...
12.26.2019 Master the art of storytelling w/charity: water's Scott Harrison You need a great story to build a great company. And great stories are unwaveringly TRUE. No one embodies this principle more fully than Scott Harrison, founder of Charity: Water. A master storyteller, Scott built his nonprofit on 3 radical ...
12.20.2019 Bill Gates — The biggest success story you haven't heard In part two of this special two-part episode with Bill Gates, we’re talking about the biggest success story ever told on the podcast – and not just for Bill Gates, but for humanity. And it was achieved not through Microsoft, ...
12.13.2019 How to solve an impossible challenge w/Megan Smith (U.S. CTO, Google, shift7) Faced with an impossible challenge? Don’t reinvent the wheel. Find someone who’s already solved the problem – and help those inventors keep inventing. Megan Smith calls that technique “scout and scale.” She used it as the United States' CTO. She ...
12.05.2019 LIVE! All founders have a Trojan Horse w/Robert F. Smith Recorded live at Summit LA: 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. ...
11.26.2019 Ray Dalio - How to embrace conflict 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 ...
11.21.2019 The Money Episode w/Minted's Mariam Naficy Every founder faces the same question when they start their entrepreneurial journey: How much money do I need to raise? And the answer is: A lot more than you think – but not for the reasons you think. In this ...
11.15.2019 LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner – How to set the drumbeat Every leader has to set the drumbeat for their company — the culture, mission, and values that get the entire team in sync. And the rhythm has to be true to them. Jeff Weiner is a master at this. As ...
11.07.2019 Bill Gates — How to accelerate history How did Bill Gates scale BOTH a global business and a global philanthropy? He spotted an inflection point in history — and accelerated it. What does that take? A great idea, great timing and also: Great partners. Because even Bill ...
10.31.2019 Make it epic — with will.i.am 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 ...
10.17.2019 LIVE! Tory Burch: Patience or Speed? Both. Tory Burch built a billion-dollar business from the ground up, by speeding forward when others might have hit pause, and showing watchful patience when others may have gone full tilt. In our live onstage interview, she shows how this approach ...
10.10.2019 Keep humans in the equation — with TaskRabbit's Stacy Brown-Philpot 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 ...
09.26.2019 A Strategy Session with Reid Hoffman In this special episode, host Reid Hoffman answers questions from early-stage entrepreneurs – people in the trenches of startup life all over the world. How do you gain your users' trust? How do you build a team and company culture ...
09.12.2019 How to Build Your Company to Last w/Fiat's John Elkann Forget being a unicorn. Learn to be a “Phoenix.” Your company can last 100+ years – but you'll need the resilience to rise and fall, and rise again. Fiat’s Chairman John Elkann shares the principles that allow the "horseless carriage" ...
09.05.2019 Dropbox's Drew Houston: How to take on Goliaths and win When Drew Houston founded Dropbox, he knew he faced some fierce competition (hello, Google, Apple and Microsoft). But he didn’t back down. Why? Because he believed in his product, and he knew he had an advantage those big, cumbersome competitors ...
08.06.2019 Special: Recharge your brain with a Meditative Story by Arianna Huffington As an entrepreneur, you have to find a way to recharge. This new podcast -- from the creators of Masters of Scale - was designed to create calm amid an always-on schedule. The particular episode we’re sharing was inspired by ...
08.01.2019 23andMe’s Anne Wojcicki: Embrace the gatekeepers When Anne Wojcicki co-founded 23andMe, she carved out a brand-new space in personal health -- helping people become experts on their bodies right down to the DNA level. Then the federal regulators came calling. But instead of trying to outwit, ...
07.30.2019 Introducing Meditative Story This short trailer offers a taste of a new podcast from the team that created Masters of Scale. And just like MoS, it's unlike anything you've heard before. In each episode of Meditative Story, you'll hear a storyteller who will ...
07.26.2019 The Big Pivot w/Slack's Stewart Butterfield Slack's Stewart Butterfield knows: There’s more to a pivot than a sharp left turn. First, there’s the opportunity you’re pivoting toward. Can you see it clearly enough to navigate toward it? Can you convince others to come along? Then you ...
07.18.2019 Small Changes for Big Impact w/Bumble's Whitney Wolfe Herd Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd knows: The smallest feature can make or break your product. The challenge is recognizing the impact of that feature – and making sure it’s actually positive. This is what Wolfe Herd tapped into when she ...
07.02.2019 Entrepreneurship as a Second Act w/Gwyneth Paltrow Would-be entrepreneurs, this one's for you. It’s never too late to join the entrepreneurial party. We've all heard the stories of young geniuses, but plenty of influential entrepreneurs founded companies in their 30s, 40s, 50s. There’s value to being a ...
06.21.2019 10 New Rules for Big Career Changes (The Graduation Episode) w/ Jordan Harbinger On Masters of Scale, we talk a lot about how businesses grow. But we also talk about how people grow: How key decisions (and happy accidents) can shape your future, and how your setbacks can actually set you up for ...
06.05.2019 How pirates become the navy w/Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi 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 ...
05.21.2019 The case for bootstrapping w/Mailchimp’s Ben Chestnut You can bootstrap your business to scale, but you'll have to make your own luck. Nobody knows this better than Mailchimp's Ben Chestnut. He used a DIY ethos to grow a $600M company without ever raising a dollar of outside ...
04.30.2019 Open or closed? The answer is both—w/Joi Ito, MIT Media Lab Director No organization that’s entirely closed – or entirely open – can scale as successfully as an organization that combines both. Yes, organizations that are open invite a bit of chaos – but that chaos breeds innovation. Knowing which aspects of ...
04.11.2019 When your invention becomes a weapon – from Should This Exist When former Wired Editor Chris Anderson launched DIY drones — an open source community for makers — drones were still considered a military technology. His drones were used by filmmakers, farmers and conservationists. He believes they were also used by ...
03.26.2019 Take bigger risks w/Shellye Archambeau If you try to avoid risk, you actually risk total failure. Or worse: mediocrity. Take it from Shellye Archambeau. She led the most stunning Silicon Valley turnaround you’ve never heard of. She took the role of CEO for a failing ...
03.12.2019 Check your blindspot w/Sallie Krawcheck (Ellevest) If your company's dominated by one type of person, you run the risk of tunnel vision. You might move fast — but you'll often drive straight into traps as you grow. Truly scalable companies need a diverse portfolio of viewpoints ...
03.05.2019 Build a more human internet — w/ Caterina Fake (Host of “Should This Exist?") How do you build a thriving online community? One human connection at a time. Caterina Fake is the host of our spinoff series "Should This Exist?” and she knows: Whatever you are when you're SMALL — gets amplified as you ...
02.26.2019 The Reid Hoffman Story (Part 2) — Make everyone a hero We’re back with Part 2 of our special turn-the-tables episode with Reid Hoffman. In this episode, we follow Reid through PayPal, LinkedIn, the Microsoft acquisition, his angel investments, Greylock, and his hosting of Masters of Scale — all the while ...
02.21.2019 Introducing: Should This Exist? Introducing a brand new show from the team behind Masters of Scale: Should This Exist? Neuroscientist Daniel Chao created a headset that hacks your brain with electricity so you can learn as fast as a kid again. It’s called Halo, ...
01.22.2019 The Reid Hoffman Story (Part 1) — Make everyone a hero In this special episode, we turn the tables on host Reid Hoffman. He’s the guest and we tell his story, while proving a theory that’s perfect for Reid: You can chart an epic journey to scale, if you make everyone ...
01.08.2019 Let your customers be your scouts – w/Eventbrite's Julia Hartz That constant roar of customer feedback? Be thankful for it. It holds all the secrets to your success, if you learn how to read the signs. Listen to what users say, sure. But also watch what they do and interpret ...
12.18.2018 To scale, you must master the skill of storytelling w/Charity: Water’s Scott Harrison You need a great story to build a great company. And great stories are unwaveringly TRUE. No one embodies this principle more fully than Scott Harrison, founder of Charity: Water. A master storyteller, Scott built his nonprofit on 3 radical ...
12.04.2018 Your Plan B Needs a Plan B — w/Nancy Lublin of Do Something and Crisis Text Line [A favorite episode returns!] To succeed as an entrepreneur, you need grit. But grit is more than persistence. You’re not just charging up the same hill over and over. You're generating an endless supply of Plans B. And Nancy Lublin ...
11.19.2018 The Millennial Episode — with Brit + Co’s Brit Morin You can marshal the power of millennials to grow your company, but you have to redefine your concept of loyalty. To keep millennials as users (and employees), you’ll need to keep evolving — and help them evolve. No one understands ...
11.05.2018 The elusive formula for great hiring w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri Your first hires = cultural cofounders. And it’s worth your time to get every one right. Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri personally interviewed his first FIVE HUNDRED employees at Workday. He knows how to map back from the culture he wants, ...
10.22.2018 Shake Shack's Danny Meyer — When to ignore conventional wisdom To revolutionize an industry, you have to cast off received wisdom. Shake Shack’s Danny Meyer knows this well. When he opened his first high-end restaurant, New York’s Union Square Cafe, received wisdom told him food was the star attraction. But ...
10.03.2018 Arianna Huffington—What great founders do at night To survive your entrepreneurial journey, you have to learn to recharge. In fact, knowing when to turn the lights OUT may be the only way to keep the lights on. You need a sustainable strategy that maximizes your team's efficiency, ...

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