The key ideas

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

Reid Hoffman, June Cohen, Deron Triff, 2021

Investors turned down the founder of a career website 148 times, and a few years later almost a hundred million people were using her service. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, asked dozens of founders how their ideas grew big. The book gathers surprising rules of growth: how to read a rejection, why to do things that don’t scale, and why you should trust what customers do more than what they say.

Who it is for

For anyone launching their own business, project or product who wants to know what the founders of Airbnb, Slack and Spanx did while nobody had heard of them yet. And for everyone who hears “no” and can’t tell whether to listen to it or keep going.

If you aren’t embarrassed by your first product release, you’ve released it too late.

Pantyhose without feet

Sara Blakely is twenty-six and sells fax machines, going from office to office. One day she is escorted out of a building and her business card is torn up in front of her. That evening she writes in her diary that she wants to invent something that will help millions of people feel better. Later, getting ready for a party, she cuts the feet off her pantyhose so she can wear them under cream-colored pants. The cut pantyhose roll up her legs all evening, but the thought stays: something like this should exist. That is how the Spanx brand was born.

Plenty of women had cut their pantyhose the same way and gone to bed. What set Blakely apart was something else: she had been looking for her idea for years, and when she found it, she got to work right away.

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and an early investor in Airbnb and Facebook, interviewed people like her on his podcast. The book sorts their experience into ten themes. The main idea: a company’s growth rests not only on calculation but also on a mindset, and the rules of that growth often run against intuition. The caveat matters too: these are stories of people who succeeded, and a vivid example doesn’t prove a rule on its own.

A hundred and forty-eight “nos” and what they hide

Kathryn Minshew came up with a career website for people just starting out at work. Investors turned her down 148 times. Today almost a hundred million people use her service, and the rejections, Hoffman believes, showed her in advance where the project might stumble.

Hoffman suggests neither brushing a rejection off nor believing it blindly, but working out what kind it is. The lazy no comes from someone who doesn’t want to dig into your idea, and in that case it’s best to move on at once. A split in opinions, where some say “you’re out of your mind” and others say “I can see it,” he takes as a good sign. Unanimous enthusiasm, on the other hand, makes him wary: an obvious idea is almost certainly already being built by others.

Some rejections prove you right. When Kara Goldin pitched her unsweetened fruit-flavored water, the head of a big company condescendingly told her that Americans love sweet. She realized the giants would stay in their sweet lane, and she took the empty one.

And some “nos” are honest. Mark Pincus’s girlfriend told him she was put off by his social network Tribe. Pincus brushed it off, and the network never went mainstream. Since then he keeps his instincts, which in a good entrepreneur are usually right, apart from his ideas, which are often wrong.

Hence Hoffman’s advice: don’t ask people “what do you think of my idea?” but “what’s wrong with it?” And don’t take a fragile idea to people who love you and will talk you out of it because they care. Blakely didn’t tell her family about Spanx for a whole year, but she consulted manufacturers and lawyers.

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About the author

Reid Hoffman: co-founder of LinkedIn, one of PayPal’s first executives, a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners and host of the Masters of Scale podcast. June Cohen and Deron Triff: co-founders of WaitWhat, the media company that produces the podcast; before that they worked together on TED’s leadership team.

All books by this author: Reid Hoffman, June Cohen, Deron Triff

Terms from the book

  • Investor
  • Podcast
  • Mayer
  • Zuckerberg
  • Butterfield
  • Glitch
  • Slack
  • Pivot
  • Blakely: Sara Blakely: American entrepreneur, founder of the shapewear brand Spanx. She started out selling fax machines door to door in offices.
  • Spanx: American shapewear brand that Sara Blakely created with no experience in fashion and no investors.
  • Minshew: Kathryn Minshew: founder and CEO of The Muse, a website about careers and job hunting for young professionals.
  • Goldin: Kara Goldin: founder of Hint, a company that makes fruit-flavored water with no sugar.
  • Pincus: Mark Pincus: American entrepreneur who founded several internet companies, among them the early social network Tribe and the game company Zynga.
  • Tribe: Mark Pincus’s early social network, launched in 2003. It caught on in niche communities but never went mainstream.
  • Chesky: Brian Chesky: co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, the service where people rent out their homes to travelers.
  • Graham: Paul Graham: programmer and essayist, co-founder of the Y Combinator incubator. Author of the essay “Do Things That Don’t Scale”.
  • Y Combinator: A well-known Silicon Valley incubator: for a few months it helps young companies with advice and money in exchange for a share.
  • Incubator: A program that helps young companies get on their feet with advice, contacts and a small amount of money.
  • Canva: Australian online design service where you build a layout by dragging ready-made elements. Founded by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht.
  • Kadakia: Payal Kadakia: founder of ClassPass, who has practiced Indian dance all her life.
  • Membership: The right to use a service for a set period or a set number of times for a single payment.
  • ClassPass: A subscription service that lets you attend classes at different fitness studios across a city.
  • Rent the Runway: American designer clothing rental service founded by Jenn Hyman and Jenny Fleiss.

All terms

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