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.

Culture building

Podcast

How cognitive diversity unlocks opportunity and prevents groupthink

Masters of Scale March 12, 2019


Culture building 9
Founder interviews 7
Niche selection 6
  • Wall Street's monoculture hid a $7 trillion women's investment market
  • Homogeneous teams build blind spots — then reward people for ignoring them
  • Hiring opposites, not copies, is how Ellevest outperformed without a CMO

Customer discovery

Podcast

How Eventbrite uses customer observation to drive product strategy

Masters of Scale January 8, 2019


Customer discovery 9
Case study 7
Communication 5
  • Watch what customers do, not just what they say
  • Organic user behavior revealed Facebook integration before anyone asked
  • Small cross-functional sessions unlock insights neither data nor empathy finds alone

Origin stories

Podcast

How Daniel Ek built Spotify by engineering shortcuts to trust

Masters of Scale September 19, 2018


Origin stories 9
Business models 6
Product-market fit 5
  • Why Spotify had to be faster than free piracy to win users
  • Guaranteeing a year of label revenue to unlock the first licensing deal
  • A great free product converts users — frustrating them just drives them away

Case studies

Podcast

How Instagram scaled to a billion users by staying ruthlessly simple

Masters of Scale September 6, 2018


Case studies 10
Business models 8
MVP & prototyping 6
  • Stripping a multi-feature app to one use case unlocked explosive growth.
  • 13 employees, 30 million users — and Kevin says they hired too few.
  • Filters weren't Kevin's idea — his wife's honest feedback changed everything.

Case studies

Podcast

Building the talent you need when you can't find it: Marissa Mayer on Google's APM program

Masters of Scale August 8, 2018


Case studies 10
Hiring & recruitment 8
Culture building 7
  • Why training raw graduates beat hiring experienced product managers
  • Google's APM rotations created a hidden cross-company network
  • Yahoo's Alibaba stake bought time then stole it

Iteration & feedback loops

Podcast

How to kill bad ideas and stay true to winning instincts

Masters of Scale July 25, 2018


Iteration & feedback loops 9
Pivoting 7
Processes & SOPs 6
  • Your instincts are right 95% of the time; your ideas only 25%.
  • Zynga tested hundreds of ideas daily before writing a line of code.
  • Over-investing in data analysts gave Zynga a speed advantage rivals couldn't match.

Pivoting

Podcast

How TaskRabbit built a self-teaching human cloud

Masters of Scale July 11, 2018


Pivoting 10
Culture building 8
Case studies 7
  • Removing bidding wars made Taskers spontaneously teach each other skills.
  • Telling your community about changes via press is a trust-destroying mistake.
  • Distributed human networks self-improve when you stop competing people against each other.

Founder interviews

Podcast

How Sara Blakely found the idea for Spanx and built a billion-dollar company

Masters of Scale March 21, 2018


Founder interviews 10
Business models 6
MVP & prototyping 5
  • The idea finds the founder who is already actively hunting for it
  • Sara built a billion-dollar company from $5,000 with zero industry experience
  • Protect early ideas from friends and family — share only with people who can build

Case studies

Podcast

How Starbucks built a values-driven business at massive scale

Masters of Scale March 7, 2018


Case studies 10
Culture building 8
Vision & mission 6
  • Why Schultz gave all employees health insurance while losing money
  • The parent-benefits insight that rescued nine years of China losses
  • Profit and conscience are frenemies — discipline makes them scale together

Founder interviews

Podcast

Reid Hoffman's 10 commandments of startup success

Masters of Scale February 28, 2018


Founder interviews 9
Hiring & recruitment 7
Resilience & grit 6
  • A squirmy no beats a polite maybe — rejection quality over quantity
  • Scale only after the product earns genuine love, not manufactured demand
  • Culture selects who stays; dummy-proofed systems keep only dummies

Founder interviews

Podcast

Ev Williams on pursuing one vision across Blogger, Twitter, and Medium

Masters of Scale February 21, 2018


Founder interviews 10
Resilience & grit 7
Identity & self-belief 6
  • Blogger, Twitter, and Medium are one career-long bet on connecting minds.
  • Hesitating to repeat yourself is the mistake — obsession is an asset.
  • Twitter's 'follow' model was a deliberate rejection of social networking.

Pivoting

Podcast

How ClassPass learned to price a first-of-its-kind fitness subscription

Masters of Scale February 14, 2018


Pivoting 9
Pricing strategy 9
Case studies 7
  • Why bleeding your business with low prices can save it
  • ClassPass pivoted three times before finding a viable subscription model
  • Price hikes trigger customer riots — but rarely the cancellations founders fear

Business operating systems

Podcast

How to build a company that lasts a century or more

Masters of Scale February 7, 2018


Business operating systems 9
Management 7
Case studies 7
  • Only 45 companies per million survive past 100 years.
  • Truth-tellers at the top are essential to every great turnaround.
  • Lasting companies return to their core identity again and again.

Community building

Podcast

Building online communities that scale with human values

Masters of Scale January 24, 2018


Community building 9
Culture building 8
Niche selection 5
  • Whatever you are when small gets amplified when you grow.
  • A non-decision on community values hands control to your worst users.
  • Flickr's culture scaled because Fake personally set the tone from day one.

Founder interviews

Podcast

How Barry Diller built IAC by learning to unlearn

Masters of Scale December 13, 2017


Founder interviews 9
Pivoting 7
Hiring & recruitment 6
  • Success imprints harder than failure — and quietly traps you.
  • Barry Diller left Hollywood for QVC because confusion excited him.
  • Throwing people into roles beyond their ability is how great talent forms.

Get early access to the full library.

Join the waitlist for a personal account and content recommendations based on what you're working on.

No spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

You're on the list. We'll be in touch before launch.

Be among the first to get personalised recommendations tailored to your stage in business.

No spam.

You're on the list. We'll be in touch before launch.

Be among the first to get personalised recommendations tailored to your stage in business.

No spam.

You're on the list. We'll be in touch before launch.