<ul><li>The best leaders develop talent from within rather than just hiring expensive stars. If you hire people at senior positions, you are a failure as a leader.</li><li>If you’re a good entrepreneur you can assume that your instincts are right 95% of the time and your ideas might be right 25% of the time.</li><li>Fighting every fire can cause you to miss critical opportunities to build your business—you’ll be all reaction and no action.</li></ul>

Reset Your Assumptions

Rapid decision-making is essential. When you’re moving fast, you may make mistakes. But the biggest mistake is not making decisions fast enough, because the only thing that matters is time. You can never raise enough money. Things are always more expensive and take longer than you think they will.

Time And Money

<ul><li>Kathryn Minshew, the founder of The Muse job site, says investors told her ‘no’ 148 times before the first one agreed to invest.</li><li>Huffington’s wellness startup Thrive has a rule that nobody should interview a job candidate while they’re tired!</li><li>Chinese parents’ dissatisfaction with their children working at Starbucks was hurting employee retention, so the company held an annual meeting of the parents of its employees in China and extended health insurance to them.</li></ul>

Memorable Anecdotes

How do you get the idea for a business and then lead it to success? The best business ideas initially seem the least plausible, that doing things that don’t scale can be a good starting point, and that what customers actually want can be different from what they tell you.

Masters Of Scale

<ul><li>Sometimes when an investor tells a startup founder “no,” it’s a positive sign for the business. When an idea is truly big and transformative, it can draw a polarized reaction or a “squirmy no.”</li><li>The best businesses can emerge from moments of desperation.</li><li>Lavish attention on the few people who love your product in the beginning.</li><li>Early hires are essential for crafting a company’s culture.</li><li>Many founders make the mistake of becoming too attached to their initial ideas.</li><li>Watch how customers are actually using your product.</li></ul>

Lessons Learned

“Whether your staff is 70,000 or only seven, a leader needs two things to create a strong unified team: an elevated mission and everyday human contact.”“If you’re not embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released too late.”“I learned really early that you are best when you know nothing.”

Noteworthy Quotes

"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, digging into the surprising strategies that power their growth. In this book, he draws on their most riveting, revealing stories-as well his own experience as a founder and investor-to distill the secrets behind 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 surprising, never-before-told stories 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 the Bevel razor-solving the problems of the twenty-first century. Through vivid storytelling and straightforward analysis, Masters of Scale distills their collective insights 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"--

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Personal Development

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Entrepreneurship

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Startups

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Books

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—and that mindset can be cultivated. “If you’re scaling a company—or if you just love a well-told story—this is a book to savor.”—Robert Iger, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Ride of a Lifetime Behind the scenes in Silicon Valley, Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn, investor at Greylock) is a sought-after adviser to heads of companies and heads of state. On each episode of his podcast, Masters of Scale, he sits down with a guest from an all-star list of visionary founders and leaders, digging into the surprising strategies that power their company’s growth. In this book, he draws on their most riveting, revealing stories—as well as his own experience as a founder and investor—to distill the secrets behind the most extraordinary success stories of our times. Here, Hoffman teams up with Masters of Scale’s executive producers to offer a rare window into the entrepreneurial mind, sharing hard-won wisdom from leaders of iconic companies (including Apple, Nike, Netflix, Spotify, Starbucks, Google, Instagram, and Microsoft) as well as the bold, disruptive startups (such as 23andMe, TaskRabbit, Black List, and Walker & Co.) that are solving the problems of the twenty-first century. Through vivid storytelling and incisive analysis, Masters of Scale distills their collective insights 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. But you have to keep your profits and values aligned.) Based on more than a hundred interviews and including a wealth of new material never aired on the podcast, this unique insider’s guide will inspire you to reimagine how you do business today.

Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking.

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