Masters of Scale

To survive your entrepreneurial journey, you have to learn to recharge. Knowing when to turn the lights out may be the only way to keep the lights on. Few know this better than Arianna Huffington, who dramatically scaled the Huffington Post — and then experienced profound physical burnout. Her new venture, Thrive Global, scales the idea of balance across an organization. With cameo appearances from Chris Yeh (co-author, Blitzscaling) and Dr. Matt Walker (author of Why We Sleep).Read Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder by Arianna Huffington: https://amzn.to/39IFfCxRead Why We Sleep by Matt Walker: https://amzn.to/2Xfxi2wRead Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh: https://amzn.to/39IFfCxRead a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/arianna-huffington-what-great-founders-do-at-night/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 too: 140M of them. With cameo appearances from Gustav Söderström (Spotify's Chief Research & Development Officer) and Miles Daisher (Red Bull Air Force).Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You can scale big with a simple idea (and a tiny team!) — but only if you catch the prevailing winds. That's what Kevin Systrom did when he co-founded Instagram: The simple photo app tapped the right trends, built on larger social networks, and dodged the complexities that would have slowed them down. The result? 30M users in 18 months. And a $1B sale of a 13-person company. With a cameo by Rohan Gunatillake (Buddhify).Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/kevin-systrom-how-to-keep-it-simple-while-scaling-big/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Can't find the star employees you need? Then make them. That's what Marissa Mayer did when she founded the Associate Product Manager program in the early days of Google — one of the company's crown jewels. She mentored a team of young, hungry, talented employees in the ways of Google, and they helped drive its success. She followed that same mindset when she became CEO of Yahoo!, and in all of her leadership roles since then. With a cameo by Karen Kirkland (Nickelodeon). Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

To succeed, you have to be relentless about pursuing a big opportunity — and ruthless about killing your own bad ideas along the way. Zynga founder Mark Pincus upended the gaming industry with social games like Farmville and Words With Friends. And he did it by gathering data; killing ideas that didn't move the needle, and going all-in on the ones that did. With cameos by Andrea Jones-Rooy, data scientist and comedian, and Matt Ruby, founder of Vooza.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/mark-pincus-how-to-kill-your-bad-ideas-masters-of-scale-podcast/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot championed for this community of people who work with each other, teach each other, and continually learn from each other. With cameos by DeLashea Strawder (Mosaic Youth Theater in Detroit) and Whitney Johnson (Author, Build an A-Team).Read Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve by Whitney JohnsonRead a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/stacy-brown-philpot-keep-humans-in-the-equation-masters-of-scale-podcast/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How 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 (she shares a never-fail technique). Then she moved fast, found help in the right places, and went all-in. The result: A billion-dollar company and women's wardrobes transformed.. With cameos by National Geographic Explorer Andrés Ruzo, and the former director of the US Patent & Trademark Office Michelle Lee.Read The Boiling River by Andrés Ruzo.Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You can make your social impact and your bottom line work hand-in-hand. But you'll have to be as creative and innovative about your company's values as you are about the business itself. Howard Schultz, chair and former CEO of Starbucks, not only changed how America wakes up, but set new standards for employee benefits. From offering college tuition to American employees to providing health care for employees' parents in China, Howard has always been one step ahead of the social impact curve.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/howard-schultz-how-to-do-good-and-do-good-business/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 extracting tips, tricks and lifehacks for busy entrepreneurs.Listen to The Tim Ferriss Show: https://tim.blog/podcastRead a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Never put a limit on your first idea. It could span your entire career. Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Medium (and before that: Blogger), shares what he learned in every iteration of his grand vision to connect the world’s brains. A reminder that passion and perseverance can be paths to scale. Cameos: "grit" expert Angela Duckworth and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.Read Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela DuckworthRead a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/ev-williams-never-underestimate-your-first-idea/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The price that bleeds your business could also save it. When you invent something innovative, you can’t know how to price it on day one. First, get people in the door — get a LOT of people in the door — even if you have to price your product fatally low at first. In this episode, ClassPass founder and chair Payal Kadakia shares their winding path to pricing and how it revealed what was invaluable about their service.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/payal-kadakia-how-to-price-your-product-to-scale/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 chair John Elkann shares the principles that helped the "horseless carriage" company founded by his great-grandfather survive the ups and downs of a century of business — including competitor attacks, leader shakeups, financial crises and more. One key: Resilience. Another: Deciding which company traditions to keep, and which to leave in the past. Featuring cameos from Radio Flyer's Robert Pasin, Cue Ball Ventures' Tony Tjan and ABC Home & Kitchen's Paulette Cole.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/john-elkann-how-to-build-your-company-to-last/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Whatever you are when you're small gets amplified when you grow. So if you're starting any kind of online community (social media, ecommerce, crowdfunding), be careful what you cultivate. Caterina Fake has founded or invested in companies with interesting and influential communities — Flickr, Etsy, Kickstarter, Stack Overflow, even Blue Bottle Coffee. Her wise words for every founder: You have a responsibility to shape the community from day one -- because the tone you set is the tone you’re going to keep, even as you go viral.Hear Caterina's own brilliant podcast, Should This Exist? https://shouldthisexist.com/Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/caterina-fake-build-a-more-human-internet/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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: "Infinite Learner": https://mastersofscale.com/barry-diller-infinite-learner/Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/learn-to-unlearn/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 features cameos from Drew Houston (Dropbox) and Alexa Christon (GE).Listen to Part 2 of this interview, "Learn to unlearn": https://mastersofscale.com/learn-to-unlearn/Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/barry-diller-infinite-learner/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In your company’s darkest moment, remember: You CAN pivot from failure to success. But only if you slash and burn everything that isn’t working. Slack’s co-founder and CEO, Stewart Butterfield, has twice navigated this kind of Big Pivot. He launched two different game companies, which both (surprise!) turned into game-changing communications platforms: Flickr and Slack. Hear the thinking behind making a hard left turn —and bringing your team along with you.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/stewart-butterfield-the-big-pivot/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 market of boundless potential.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/diane-greene-look-sideways/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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-competition/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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/subscribeSee 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.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Valley a run for its money.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/linda-rottenberg-the-next-silicon-valley/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 extracting tips, tricks and lifehacks for busy entrepreneurs.Listen to The Tim Ferriss Show: https://tim.blog/podcastRead a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 define your culture tightly, while resonating with a diverse group of employees, you have a winning formula.Read Netflix's latest culture deck: https://jobs.netflix.com/cultureRead a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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-grit-happens/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 approach to hiring smart creatives, and the parallels between leading Google and piloting small aircraft. Plus, his “roommate” at Google, and the decision he made to support a crazy idea that he was certain would bankrupt the company.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/eric-schmidt-innovation-managed-chaos/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/sheryl-sandberg-lead-lead-again/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 one knows this better than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. He shares the origin story of his mantra “move fast and break things” and how this ethos applied as Facebook evolved from student project to tech giant.Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 to navigate the world of investors who may or may not share your vision.Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/tristan-walker-beauty-of-a-bad-idea/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 ’90s, and founder and the design marketplace Minted.com today. Cameo appearances: Selina Tobaccowala (Evite, Gixo), Daniel Kahneman (Nobel-winning psychologist), Brian Chesky (Airbnb), and Amos Kedmey (Wine and Cheese Place).Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/mariam-naficy-the-money-episode/Subscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 experience.”Read Paul Graham: "In order to scale, you have to do things that don't scale."Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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.