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.

Pivoting

Podcast

How JetBlue balanced data and gut feeling through COVID-19

Masters of Scale November 25, 2020


Pivoting 9
Management 7
  • Why gut feeling matters as much as dashboards in a crisis
  • A 95% revenue drop forces brutal clarity on what actually matters
  • Leisure travel rebounds fast; short business trips may never return

Founder interviews

Podcast

How to learn from rejection and build an idea no one else can see

Masters of Scale November 24, 2020


Founder interviews 10
Niche selection 8
Fundraising & VC 7
  • A polarised investor reaction means you have a genuinely contrarian idea
  • Tristan Walker built Bevel after spotting a century-old shaving problem ignored by industry
  • Hard nos are a gift; vague maybes are the real threat to founders

Case studies

Podcast

How Franklin Leonard built The Blacklist to surface overlooked screenplay talent

Masters of Scale November 17, 2020


Case studies 10
Business models 7
MVP & prototyping 6
  • Hollywood's gut-feel pattern matching misses great scripts — data finds them instead
  • Open platform let a Staten Island kid sign with CAA within six weeks
  • Blacklist-sourced films earn 90% more revenue than the industry average

Business operating systems

Podcast

Dropbox's Virtual First: redesigning work after COVID forced the experiment

Masters of Scale November 12, 2020


Business operating systems 10
Culture building 6
Work-life balance 5
  • Offices repurposed as Studios — no desks, only collaboration space
  • Neither fully remote nor open-office return works; intentional design does
  • Always-on culture is unsustainable; technology needs better defaults

Branding

Podcast

Nike's Phil Knight: How to build a brand through authentic identity

Masters of Scale November 10, 2020


Branding 9
Case studies 8
Business models 6
  • Why authentic belief in a product beats charisma-driven sales
  • Losing your supplier can force the brand breakthrough you needed
  • Picking a side — even a controversial one — builds deeper loyalty

Community building

Podcast

How online communities are built, shaped, and protected from day one

Masters of Scale October 27, 2020


Community building 9
Case studies 6
  • Your first users set norms that propagate to millions automatically.
  • Not deciding who you're for hands control to your worst users.
  • Etsy's sellers were collaborating, not competing — the signal that mattered.

Founder interviews

Podcast

Building authentic customer connections through constructed characters

Masters of Scale September 29, 2020


Founder interviews 10
Business models 7
AI strategy & adoption 6
  • A computer-generated influencer built a genuine, monetisable 2M-strong fan base.
  • Telling users something is artificial can make them trust and disclose more.
  • Story always beats technology — fans ignored animation upgrades, cared about the character.

Fundraising & VC

Podcast

How Peloton turned skeptical investors and customers into fanatics

Masters of Scale August 25, 2020


Fundraising & VC 9
Niche selection 8
Growth hacking 7
  • 400 VC rejections — why wrong investors waste your time
  • Physical trials convert skeptics; words and videos rarely do
  • Never force a crow-eating moment when doubters come around

Case studies

Podcast

How ClassPass used fatal pricing to build a fitness empire

Masters of Scale August 4, 2020


Case studies 10
Pricing strategy 9
Business models 6
  • Bleed your business with low prices to win a winner-takes-all market
  • ClassPass discovered the untapped 'fitness dabbler' market by accident
  • Price hikes trigger rage — protecting the core promise keeps users anyway

Case studies

Podcast

Be both a painkiller and a vitamin for your customers

Masters of Scale July 28, 2020


Case studies 9
Pivoting 7
Customer experience 6
  • Compliance infrastructure transformed Hearsay from nice-to-have vitamin into must-have painkiller for financial institutions.
  • Proactive customer engagement—resetting yearly, realigning goals—stitches vitamin and painkiller into sticky moat.
  • Firing unprofitable customers who fit neither mission showed real commitment to customer success and scale.

Pivoting

Podcast

How smart founders decide which fires to let burn

Masters of Scale July 21, 2020


Pivoting 7
Processes & SOPs 7
Management 6
  • Neglecting some problems is a deliberate competitive strategy, not a failure.
  • Assign probability and damage to each fire before deciding to act.
  • Deferred fires compound — watch for merging crises, not just loud ones.

Management

Podcast

Leading a historically Black college through pandemic and racial upheaval

Masters of Scale July 18, 2020


Management 9
Cash flow management 7
Processes & SOPs 5
  • Spelman cut 70% of room-and-board revenue while fixed costs held.
  • HBCUs out-graduate peers on STEM PhDs with far fewer resources.
  • A Spelman student was tased — racial violence arrived mid-pandemic.

Management

Podcast

Darren Walker on racial justice, philanthropy, and the new playbook for 2020

Masters of Scale July 2, 2020


Management 8
Founder interviews 7
Fundraising & VC 6
  • Why Ford Foundation borrowed $1 billion to give it away
  • Black entrepreneurs lack the friends-and-family capital white founders take for granted
  • Deniability on racism ended the week George Floyd was killed

Communication

Podcast

How Delta's CEO navigated a $100M/day crisis with candour and conviction

Masters of Scale June 27, 2020


Communication 9
Long-term planning 8
Cash flow management 6
  • Communicate more when you lack answers, not less
  • Cap load factors to rebuild confidence before chasing revenue
  • Use the forced pause to accelerate investments competitors won't make

Founder interviews

Podcast

Robert F. Smith on liberating human potential through business

Masters of Scale June 23, 2020


Founder interviews 10
Hiring & recruitment 8
Business models 6
  • Vista's aptitude-based hiring doubled diversity and doubled revenue growth.
  • Paying off Morehouse debt frees graduates to play offense, not defense.
  • Liberating human potential is both a moral imperative and a competitive edge.

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