Masters of Scale

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.

• 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.”
• The best businesses can emerge from moments of desperation.
• Lavish attention on the few people who love your product in the beginning.
• Early hires are essential for crafting a company’s culture.
• Many founders make the mistake of becoming too attached to their initial ideas.
• Watch how customers are actually using your product.

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.

• 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.
• 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.
• Fighting every fire can cause you to miss critical opportunities to build your business—you’ll be all reaction and no action.

• Kathryn Minshew, the founder of The Muse job site, says investors told her ‘no’ 148 times before the first one agreed to invest.
• Huffington’s wellness startup Thrive has a rule that nobody should interview a job candidate while they’re tired!
• 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.

“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.”