Origin stories

Podcast

Building Japan's Future: Akio Morita and Sony

Founders December 15, 2019

---

Origin stories 10

Long-term planning 6

Management 5

• Post-war confidence: Morita rebuilt Sony's reputation by trusting his judgment over consensus and internal objection.
• The Walkman bet: Staked his career on a product everyone opposed, sold 400 million units.
• Long-term resourcefulness over quarterly profits shaped every business decision and company culture.

Read more →

Vision & mission

Podcast

Scout and scale: how to solve impossible challenges by finding who's already done it

Masters of Scale December 13, 2019

---

Vision & mission 9

Management 7

Processes & SOPs 6

• Why 'not invented here' syndrome is an ego trap that kills scale
• Google Maps was built from three acquisitions — not one line of in-house code
• A $350M government saving by refusing to reinvent existing software

Read more →

SEO

YouTube

Quick SEO wins to boost organic traffic without deep expertise

Ahrefs December 11, 2019

---

SEO 9

Content marketing 6

• Deleting underperforming content can increase traffic by 50–80%
• Emailing sites you link to earns passive links without a direct ask
• Repurposing content lets you own multiple spots in Google search

Read more →

Customer discovery

YouTube

The SLAM process: a sequenced framework for validating startups and new products

Bill Gallagher December 11, 2019

---

Customer discovery 10

Niche selection 8

MVP & prototyping 6

• Start with the customer's unmet need — never with your product idea.
• SLAM adds sequence and ecosystem mapping the business model canvas lacks.
• Dominate one small customer tribe before attempting to scale broadly.

Read more →

Case studies

Podcast

How ByteDance acquired Musical.ly to build TikTok

Acquired December 9, 2019

---

Case studies 9

Pivoting 7

Business models 6

• Algorithm-first feeds beat follow-graphs — TikTok actually is N squared.
• Musical.ly pivot from education app to lip-sync on a Caltrain hunch.
• ByteDance spent more on post-merger ads than the $1B acquisition price.

Read more →