When I first started sharing the concept of blitzscaling, then later wrote a book about it, I was primarily focused on a very specific business context. For start-ups looking to achieve leadership positions in emerging and highly competitive global markets, it makes sense to prioritize speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty. Over the last few…
Bitter political partisanship continues to divide America. Devastating wildfires, floods, and hurricanes leave no part of the country untouched. Rapid technological innovation has altered global business patterns and relationships, and left individual workers, companies, and even entire industries wondering what the future holds for them. Now throw in a global pandemic. It’s not an environment…
J.J. Abrams on How Sci-Fi Fuels Innovation
How Startups Can Compete with Industry Giants
The first truth of entrepreneurship and investing: The biggest new ideas are contrarian. They go so deeply against commonly held assumptions that they seem not only risky but flat-out ridiculous. They’re the kind of ideas that draw a lot of “Nos.” And this makes sense: The fact that an idea goes against conventional wisdom is…
How Academic Pursuits Impact Entrepreneurship
Applying High-Level Thinking to Real-World Business
Today, Aurora and Reinvent Technology Partners Y announced their agreement to merge. In my own view, this is awesome news — because I’ve been an investor in Aurora since February 2018 when I co-led its Series A round for Greylock and joined Aurora’s board. At this point, it’s well understood that creating AV technology is an extremely challenging undertaking – especially…
Ethical Considerations in Building Artificial Intelligence
Most of us love a great founding story. Whether it’s the founding of a corporation or the founding of a nation, we’re drawn to the dramatic stories where everything began. But I came to realize something, as I reviewed the past four years of Masters of Scale interviews in preparation for writing the new Masters of…
Airbnb’s Playbook for Flourishing Amid Crisis
Knowing my background in philosophy, Brad Feld and Dave Jilk recently invited me to contribute a foreword for their new book, The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors. It’s now available andI highly recommend it; click here to get your copy. Here’s the foreword I wrote for it. Nietzsche is a troubling and troublesome philosopher. In different decades…
How Strategy Games Teach Valuable Business Skills
“A government of the people, by the people. A beautifully American ideal, but a reality denied to many for much of this nation’s history. As Americans, we know that in our democracy we should not expect to agree on everything. However, regardless of our political affiliations we believe the very foundation of our electoral process…
How to Make Better Decisions, Faster