Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs

What can you learn from a Silicon Valley legend and a pantheon of iconic leaders? The key to scaling a successful business isn’t talent, network, or strategy. It’s an entrepreneurial mindset—a mindset that can be cultivated.

Behind the scenes in Silicon Valley, Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn, investor at Greylock) is a sought-after advisor to heads of companies and heads of state. On his podcast Masters of Scale, he sits down with an all-star list of visionary founders and leaders to discuss the surprising strategies that have powered the most extraordinary successes of our times.

Here, Hoffman teams up with Masters of Scale’s executive producers to offer a rare window into the entrepreneurial mind. They share riveting stories and revealing insights from leaders of the world’s most iconic companies - including Apple, Nike, Netflix, Spotify, Google, Instagram, and Microsoft - as well as the bold, disruptive startups—like 23andMe, TaskRabbit, the Black List and Walker&Co—solving the problems of the twenty-first century.

Through vivid storytelling and straightforward analysis, Masters of Scale distills their collective insights —as well as his own experience as a founder and investor—into a set of counterintuitive principles that anyone can use. How do you find a winning idea and turn it into a scalable venture? What can you learn from a “squirmy no”? When should you stop listening to your customers? Which fires should you put out right away, and which should you let burn? And can you really make money while making the world a better place? (Answer: Yes.)

Based on more than 100 interviews, and with material never aired on the podcast, Masters of Scale offers a unique insider’s guide, filled with insights, wisdom, and strategies that will inspire you to reimagine how you do business.

About the Author

Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn and a partner at Greylock, and is widely viewed as one of the most successful investors of all time. He was a founding board member of PayPal and is now a board member at Microsoft as well as other companies and nonprofits. He’s the host of WaitWhat’s award-winning Masters of Scale podcast and the bestselling author of The Startup of You, The Alliance, and Blitzscaling.

June Cohen and Deron Triff are the executive producers of Masters of Scale and co-founders of WaitWhat, the media company behind the hit podcasts Masters of Scale, Meditative Story, and Spark & Fire. For seventeen combined years, they led TED’s media enterprise, growing TED Talks from initial concept to an audience of one billion views/listens each year. Under their leadership, TED earned seventeen Webbies, eight iTunes Best Podcast of the Year awards, a National Design Award, and a Peabody.

Author Residence: San Francisco, CA and New York, NY