Masters of Scale

Can't find the star employees you need? Then make them. That's what Marissa Mayer did when she founded the Associate Product Manager program at Google — one of the company's crown jewels. She mentored a team of young, hungry, talented employees in the ways of Google, and they helped drive its success. She followed that same mindset when she became Yahoo CEO, a role she reflects on in the show. With a cameo by Karen Kirkland (Nickelodeon). 

To succeed, you have to be relentless about pursuing a big opportunity — and ruthless about killing your own bad ideas along the way. Zynga founder Mark Pincus up-ended the gaming industry with social games like Farmville and Words with Friends. And he did it by gathering data; killing ideas that didn't move the needle, and going all-in on the ones that did. With cameos by Andrea Jones-Rooy, analyst at FiveThirtyEight, and comedian Matt Ruby, founder of Vooza.

You may think that to scale you need to cut humans out of the equation. The opposite is true. You can harness the power of the "human cloud" to solve almost any problem — as long as you keep the word “human” in the equation. That's what TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot champions for this community of people who work with each other, teach each other, and continually learn from each other. With cameos by DeLashea Strawder (Mosaic Youth Theater in Detroit) and Whitney Johnson (Author, "Build An A Team").

Masters of Scale returns on Wed July 11th with Season 3, featuring the entrepreneurs who wrote the rule book of Silicon Valley - as well as the ones who challenge those rules. We'll hear hard-won insights from the founders of Spotify, Instagram, TaskRabbit, Shake Shack, Glossier and Zynga. Plus Tory Burch, Gwyneth Paltrow, Arianna Huffington, Marissa Mayer, and Dara Khosrowshahi, the new CEO of Uber. You can learn more at MastersofScale.com.

To find your big idea? Look for it. And look for it. And be ready to act. Spanx founder Sara Blakely was actively seeking a business idea when she thought of Spanx. Then she moved fast, found help in the right places, and went all-in. The result: A billion-dollar company & women's wardrobes transformed.. With cameos by National Geographic explorer Andrés Ruzo, former Director of the US Patent & Trademark Office Michelle Lee, and Endeavor CEO Linda Rottenberg.

You can make your social impact and your bottom line work hand-in-hand. But you'll have to be as creative and innovative about your company's values as you are about the business itself. Howard Schultz, chairman and former CEO of Starbucks, not only changed how America wakes up, but set new standards for employee benefits. From offering free college tuition to American employees, to providing health care for employees' parents in China, Howard has always been one step ahead of the social impact curve.

Guest host Tim Ferriss shares advice you'll want to etch into stone: The 10 Commandments of Startup Success. We teamed up with Tim's eponymous podcast, the Tim Ferriss Show, to bring you this special remix. You'll hear actionable lessons from every episode of Masters of Scale Season One, including previously unaired insights from Airbnb's Brian Chesky, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Endeavor's Linda Rottenberg, and more.

Never put a limit on your first idea. It could span your entire career. Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Medium (and Blogger, before that), shares what he learned in every iteration of his grand vision to connect the world’s brains. A reminder that passion and perseverance can be paths to scale. Cameos: "grit" expert Angela Duckworth, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg

The price that bleeds your business could also save it. When you invent something innovative, you can’t know how to price it on day one. First, get people in the door — get a LOT of people in the door — even if you have to price your product fatally low at first. In this episode, ClassPass Founder and Chair Payal Kadakia shares their winding path to pricing and how it revealed what was invaluable about their service.

Forget being a unicorn. Learn to be a “Phoenix.” Your company can last 100+ years — but you'll need the resilience to rise and fall, and rise again. Fiat’s Chairman John Elkann shares the principles that allow the "horseless carriage" company founded by his great-grandfather survive the ups and downs of a century of business (including competitor attacks, leader shakeups, financial crises and more). One key: Resilience. Another: Deciding which company traditions to keep, and which to leave in the past. Featuring cameos from Radio Flyer's Robert Pasin, Cue Ball Ventures' Tony Tjan and ABC Home & Kitchen's Paulette Cole.

Whatever you are when you're small gets amplified when you grow. So if you're staring any kind of online community (social media, e-commerce, crowd-funding...), be careful what you cultivate. Caterina Fake has founded or invested in companies with interesting and influential communities -- Flickr, Etsy, Kickstarter, Stack Overflow, even Blue Bottle Coffee. Her wise words for every founder: You have a responsibility to shape the community from day one -- because the tone you set is the tone you’re going to keep, even as you go viral.

To move from one success to another, you have to learn to unlearn. Take everything that helped you win the first time, then discard it and learn a new way. That's how Barry Diller, titan of "old" media (ABC, Paramount, Fox), mastered the new dot-com world—with everything from Expedia to Match.com. Part 2 of "Be an Infinite Learner." With Uber's Dara Khosrowshahi and serial entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan.

Tinder. Top Gun. Roots. The Simpsons. What do they have in common? Media icon Barry Diller. Barry is what we call an "infinite learner." He’s only interested in things he's never done before. And if they’ve never been done by ANYONE? Better yet. He succeeds by embracing that he is, in fact, a master of nothing. Entrepreneurs, take note: You just might be an infinite learner yourself, and Barry shares a lesson or two you can use. 

“If you’re laughed out of the room, it might actually be a good sign.” Entrepreneurs inevitably face a lot of rejection — as does anyone championing a big new idea. But the different ways that investors say “no” could reveal valuable clues about your idea’s potential. Sometimes, it's proof you’re in a space that’s ripe for the taking. Featuring Bevel Razor/Walker & Company's Tristan Walker, The Muse's Kathryn Minshew & Hint Water's Kara Goldin.

In your company’s darkest moment, remember: You CAN pivot from failure to success. But only if you slash and burn everything that isn’t working. Slack’s co-founder and CEO, Stewart Butterfield, has twice navigated this kind of Big Pivot. He launched two different game companies, which turned into game-changing communications platforms (Flickr and Slack).