Masters of Scale

About this creator

Masters of Scale is an entrepreneurship podcast about scaling companies, navigating leadership, and learning from experienced founders and executives.

Why they're in the library

Included for clear, credible perspective as entrepreneurship podcast about scaling companies, navigating leadership, and learning from experienced founders and executives.

Showing 461 digests for Masters of Scale.

Founder interviews

Podcast

Danny Meyer on surviving Covid, inflation, and the next Shake Shack

Masters of Scale September 29, 2022


Founder interviews 10
Culture building 7
Vision & mission 6
  • Inflation did what minimum-wage policy couldn't: permanently raised hospitality wages
  • Suppliers voided contracts mid-term — unprecedented in 37 years of running restaurants
  • Why entrepreneurs with the right idea face a golden age right now

Pivoting

Podcast

How Zillow stays the course when the housing market turns

Masters of Scale September 22, 2022


Pivoting 9
Long-term planning 9
Culture building 5
  • Why chasing every market shift leaves you behind when it recovers
  • Zillow killed iBuying — and partnered out the risk instead
  • One-click home touring doesn't exist yet — Zillow is building it

Business models

Podcast

How EVgo is building America's fast-charging network for electric vehicles

Masters of Scale September 15, 2022


Business models 9
Scaling infrastructure 8
Pricing strategy 6
  • Why a charging station takes 18 months to build, not weeks
  • Charge while you shop: placing stations where drivers already stop
  • Federal climate legislation changes the investment math for EV infrastructure

Culture building

Podcast

Satya Nadella on refounding Microsoft through culture reset

Masters of Scale September 13, 2022


Culture building 10
Case studies 8
Identity & self-belief 5
  • Eliminating stack ranking restored trust and unlocked team performance
  • Insider refounders can reset culture without needing an outsider mandate
  • Microsoft's OpenAI bet reversed decades of monopoly-era competitive thinking

Management

Podcast

How World Central Kitchen served 150 million meals in a war zone

Masters of Scale September 8, 2022


Management 9
Scaling infrastructure 8
Resilience & grit 6
  • Skip the planning meeting — deploy, adapt, and build the plan on the ground.
  • 6,000 Ukrainians feeding Ukrainians scaled faster than any imported system could.
  • Flat organizations outperform hierarchies when conditions change by the hour.

Business operating systems

Podcast

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky on scale, sustainability, and staying scrappy

Masters of Scale August 25, 2022


Business operating systems 9
Culture building 8
Case studies 6
  • Only 10% of workloads have migrated to cloud — it's barely begun.
  • Amazon's carbon intensity improved even as absolute emissions grew.
  • Scale creates obligation: 29M people trained, $2B in housing equity.

Vision & mission

Podcast

Balancing creative experimentation and purposeful direction to scale ideas

Masters of Scale August 16, 2022


Vision & mission 9
Case studies 8
Management 6
  • Why asking 'why' before 'what' separates great products from expensive failures.
  • How Steve Jobs used strategic commitment, not chaos, to ship the iPod.
  • Turning a neglected thermostat into a desirable gift by caring about the problem.

Pivoting

Podcast

How Target played offense during its 2022 inventory crisis

Masters of Scale August 11, 2022


Pivoting 9
Management 7
Processes & SOPs 5
  • Taking a full inventory hit in one quarter beats dragging it across four
  • Pandemic years built organisational agility that enabled an eight-hour decision
  • Culture outperformed strategy as Target's primary competitive advantage

Origin stories

Podcast

Bill Gates on how Microsoft identified and accelerated technology inflection points

Masters of Scale August 9, 2022


Origin stories 9
Business models 7
  • Spotting an inflection point isn't enough — you must actively accelerate it.
  • Microsoft survived by planning for IBM's exit six years before it happened.
  • Missing the internet nearly killed Windows; an all-in pivot saved it.

Culture building

Podcast

Five ways to burnout-proof your organization

Masters of Scale August 2, 2022


Culture building 9
Management 7
Work-life balance 6
  • Spot burnout hidden in high-performer productivity before it causes attrition
  • Leaders must communicate two-way: send clarity, actively seek frontline truth
  • Hire before you break; delegation at inflection points prevents solo-founder collapse

Pivoting

Podcast

Business leadership in turbulent times: Russia, crypto, democracy, and work

Masters of Scale July 26, 2022


Pivoting 9
Management 8
Fundraising & VC 6
  • Why pulling out of Russia is a moral threshold, not just a values statement
  • Crypto bulls and bears are both right — and why that matters
  • Threatening democracy is directly bad for business investment and talent

Founder interviews

Podcast

Drive full speed at opportunity: AKQA founder Ajaz Ahmed on speed and signals

Masters of Scale July 19, 2022


Founder interviews 9
Pivoting 6
  • Saying yes to vague opportunities led Ajaz to Desmond Tutu's life-changing advice.
  • Pre-building prototypes before pitching turned AKQA from obscure startup to Nike's agency.
  • The dot-com crash was a launchpad: AKQA raised $71M and went international while rivals froze.

Founder interviews

Podcast

How to harness factions to unite and scale your organization

Masters of Scale July 12, 2022


Founder interviews 10
Culture building 7
Management 6
  • Factions turn powerful when aimed at the market, not each other
  • Cisco's Spin-In model: captive startups funded inside the parent company
  • Stress comes from workplace toxicity, not how busy a team is

Founder interviews

Podcast

How Ameelio is rebuilding criminal justice with free prison tech

Masters of Scale June 30, 2022


Founder interviews 10
Business models 9
Fundraising & VC 7
  • Families pay nothing — attorneys and DOCs fund the model instead
  • Family contact is the cheapest recidivism intervention available
  • Cold emails to Jack Dorsey and Reid Hoffman actually worked

Origin stories

Podcast

How Michael Dell built a tech giant by deconstructing everything

Masters of Scale June 28, 2022


Origin stories 9
Business models 8
Supply chain 7
  • IBM's $500 PC sold for $3,000 — Dell fixed that.
  • Selling direct without retail gave better customer insight.
  • Going private unlocked a $67B transformation public markets couldn't stomach.

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