In the early decades of the 20th century, automobility at scale ushered in new patterns of living and a new era of broad-based prosperity in America. For some time now, I’ve believed autonomous vehicles can do the same. So when the opportunity arose last year for Greylock to co-lead the $90 million Series A round in…
Since launching the Masters of Scale podcast, I’ve interviewed more than 50 amazing entrepreneurs, and helped them share their experiences and lessons from building iconic companies. Now, for the first time in the history of the podcast, the tables have been turned. My friend June Cohen, the co-founder of WaitWhat, the company behind Masters of Scale, steps out…
(This post by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh.) In an ideal world, blitzscaling organizations would embody all the virtues that society might desire from its businesses—a diverse and inclusive workforce, a strong sense of responsibility to shareholders and stakeholders, an ample supply of well-paying jobs, and executives who serve as moral role models and leaders…
(This post by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh.) One of the reasons that many businesspeople (especially experienced executives) have problems grasping and applying the principles of Blitzscaling is that it requires you to throw out many of the normal rules of business. Careful planning, cautious investment, and courteous service may end up being tossed aside…
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Greylock Partner and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman share lessons learned from scaling Microsoft, LinkedIn and PayPal. Blitzscaling is the strategy that leading entrepreneurs have implemented to build strong, enduring companies. The techniques allow for startups and incumbents across any industry to scale at rapid rates and outdistance the competition. This episode…
To achieve ‘blitzscaling,’ you have to go against common sense
By Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh All founders need some universal skills to succeed. They need the ability to take bold risks in pursuit of a vision that isn’t self-evident to others. They need the ability to learn (since they’re trying to do something brand-new). And to play a long-term role at their start-up turned…
What will be the enduring, market-defining companies of the future? Where will they come from? And what are the modern secrets of Silicon Valley? How do we use those lessons to help every region of both the U.S. and the world build scale industries and economies? I have tried to address these questions in my…
Each new communications medium — writing, newspapers, radio, television — has both created essential progress and posed new and potentially harmful challenges to society. The fundamental lesson we need to learn from our history is not that we should halt or reverse innovation, but rather that we need to evolve new technology and its interface…
Many people often ask, “How did you write this book?” When a simple answer makes the most sense, we usually say, “With a lot of hard work.” But for those who are curious about how Blitzscaling came to be, I thought I’d ask my co-author Chris Yeh to tell the story. The following is a guest post from Chris…
Blitzscaling — pursuing rapid growth by prioritizing speed over efficiency in the face of uncertainty — is the primary way to turn startups into world-changing companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Blitzscaling is risky because it involves committing massive resources while the outcome is far from certain. But in winner-take-most or winner-take-all markets, the biggest…
When people think about Google’s greatest assets, they usually picture Search, Android, or Gmail—market-leading products that hundreds of millions of people use every day. These are great products, but I believe that Google’s most overlooked “crown jewel” is actually a management training program. Of course, calling Google’s Associate Product Manager (APM) program a training program…
One of the great paradoxes of entrepreneurship is that you have to pursue an opportunity with 110% commitment, but be willing to pivot at a moment’s notice. As the great philosopher Kenny Rogers pointed out, you’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em. Stumbling over this paradox caused my…
My Investment in Apollo Fusion Simply put, Moore’s “law” states that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers, will double every two years. While there has been some debate about whether or not Moore’s Law characterizes advancements we’ve seen in space technology, and many believe that Moore’s Law in computation has slowed, what is not…
If software is eating the world, it’s using the marketplace model as the fresh cracked pepper to flavor its meal. Services from Uber to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk promise to layer clean, systematic APIs on top of messy human interactions for greater efficiency. Yet while economics papers might model human beings as Homo Economicus—a hyper-rational utility maximzer—in the real…