Transcript

Bill Gates, Brian Chesky, and more: Unheard moments from our first Summit

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

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Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. When you have everything to lose. Yeah. That's when the risk gets super scary.

The near death business experience. are a company with a burning house. If I could go in the house and only take half the things Which things wanna take with me. Guys.

This was not a calling out. This was a calling in. This was an opportunity

Huge push. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a three-bedroom apartment. We haven't made it. Just how you do it. This is masters of scale. Hey folks, Jeff Berman here.

We're doing something a little different with this week's episode. As our team gears up for the twenty twenty four Masters of Scale summit in San Francisco. We thought it was a good time to share a few of our favorite moments from our first event. That was back in twenty twenty-two with featured speakers like Bill Gates, Tyra Banks, Brian Chesky, and many others. It was a room charged with ideas and full of big energy.

Consider this your sneak peek into the kind of insights we will surely see again at this year's summit. That's coming up October 23rd and 24th, by the way, with more fantastic sessions from people like Microsoft's Mustafa Sulaman, Pulitzer Prize winning author Tamahasse Coates, entertainer and entrepreneur Tracy Ellis Ross, and many, many more. You can learn how to attend or tune in at mastersofscale.com. To kick off this curation of highlights from the first summit, we have a conversation about scaling creativity with Pixar executive Lindsay Collins and the creator of the film Turning Red, Domi She. Kirse Lindsey

Oh When I started at Pixar, I started on a Bugs Life. Um so it was very small. I think at that point they had just decided that they were gonna get funding to make a second movie. Right. Um so nobody knew what they were doing. It was a bit of a a hot mess, as they say. So Uh, but it was super fun. That's why um I think all of us were there was the draw of the hot mess. Yes. Um, and kind of being like, Great, let's go, let's be part of that. And uh And since then, obviously we've gone from kind of maybe we'll make another film to then we evolved to one film a year, which took us a long time to get to.

And then eventually to kind of three films every two years, which math wise you can just imagine to a bunch of animators being like, So three films every two years, and they're all like, I don't what? Uh every eight months, basically. Uh we were trying to finish a film. And then now we are kind of evolving now with streaming. Um I would venture to say over the course of my time there almost kind of quadrupled the amount of output we do any given year.

We talked a lot about this, which is you know. Kind of as a company. Starting who you attract when you're just starting out. І so different than who you attract. When you're at the top of your game.

Um, the growth of the company, you know, has been huge over the last few years, especially, and those are people that are coming to Pixar. For different reasons. than the people that were s there at the very beginning. And it's not to say better or worse. It's just It's a very different vibe. So I think one of our fears is always that either, you know.

We lose something we find to be crucial, that we forget that it's crucial and we lose it, or that we stick so closely to what we've done in the past that we forget how to innovate. I think the biggest challenge, certainly for me, and that I've talked a lot with you about and with you about. is taking risk. Yeah. You know, when you've got nothing to lose

Taking risks is all you like, you're like, All right, so there's nothing to lose, which is but I mean when you have everything to lose. That's when the risk gets super scary. And I think that's where we are constantly trying to push ourselves, or at least Ask ourselves if we are taking risks. And if so, how? I try to always and I and Domi is great at this too, is trying to kind of always say, Is it too easy? Is it are we

Playing it too safe. Are we depending too much on kind of a a path? That was amazing, right, but is not who we are now. And if not, and if so. We need to change it up. I think we um have to be okay and we when we say fail early. That was always on like a small scale, but we have to be prepared for some of our filmmakers to fail. Here's filmmaker Domi Shi.

Yeah, I think Filmmaking is c just Throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. And that's kind of how we craft our movies at Pixar. We have eight screening cycles. So we have eight opportunities like every two, three months we put up the entire film. in like a really rough form and we just watch it from beginning to end and we just get

as many notes as we can from as many fresh eyes as we can, and we change and we adjust and we rewrite. And I just wanted to like just throw as much spaghetti against the wall as possible, so We could like identify like what are those key moments that we can put into the movie. Like there's no point in agonizing and trying to perfect. each spaghetti strand because you're gonna throw it and it's gonna stick or it's not. I like how you're sticking with this. I know it's like about the world and like food metaphors as you can tell. Yes we see that I think I mean at one point early you looked at me and you're like who Yeah. And I was like, Oh, well

Like twenty three other filmmakers kind of but it was good. It was like she was challenging it because it's frustrating. It's hard. It's horrible. You live for three and a half years with a broken movie. It's hard. It was especially hard for me because I'm kind of a type A perfectionist and you have to fail and you have to show rough broken versions of your movie to your film making heroes and like watch them rip it apart, but we just got You just get comfortable doing it. Learning from failure and accepting blunt feedback is tough.

It can be really tough. But it's essential for every leader. Our next scene from Summit comes from a person who has plenty of experience in this arena. Airbnb founder Brian Chesky talked about 2020 when everyone told him the pandemic would be the end of his company. I thought the hardest thing I would ever do in my life was start Airbnb.

And I was certain of that. And I came back. From the holidays. It was January twenty twenty.

And I think like most of you, I thought my life was going down a certain road and I could predict it. And we were about to go public. We had mostly finished our S one. About a business that I was feeling pretty confident about

And we were like kind of a success story at that point. We were a thirty billion dollar company waiting to go public. And if you told me fourteen years earlier when I was twenty five unemployed, my parents are social workers, that would happen. I would have told you you're crazy. I thought we'd made it. And then all of a sudden Within eight weeks.

We lost eighty percent of our business. And when you're like our size and you lose eighty percent of your business in eight weeks, it's like an eighteen wheeler Going eighty miles an hour. And then having to slam on the brakes. Nothing good happens. And

It was a really actually like In some ways. I mean there were like like Like

major journalists saying is this the end of Airbnb? Um yeah, will Airbnb exist in the future. This is eight weeks after. the preparation for what was supposed to be a huge IPO. And I felt like we had a near death business experience.

And then suddenly everything became really kind of more clear to me. And not everything mattered. And I remember it was like our company was a burning house. If I could go in the house and only take half the things

Which things want to take with me? You suddenly have to do that. The other thing I've learned about a crisis A lot of people now ask me, what's the hardest thing to manage in a crisis? You know what the hardest thing to manage in a crisis is? This surprised me?

It's your own psychology. The hardest thing to manage in your crisis is your own psychology, if you're a leader. because the psychology of the leader I found becomes the psychology the organization. And if you think you're screwed people see in your face and they say, Well you have the most information, so we must be screwed.

But if you are optimistic. And not optimism that's blind optimism,'cause then you'll lose faith. But optimism. Rudin. in like some basis of facts.

People still want us to exist. And this is what we're not gonna be as big as we used to be. But this is why we're gonna exist. Then that becomes the optimistic mentality that permeates the organization and you need to be optimistic to have creativity and you sure as hell need creativity in a crisis because often there seems like no good solutions.

And then the next thing you need to do in a crisis I found is communicate about four times as frequently as a non-crisis. I talked to every executive every day, every board member every week. I did all hands meetings. Every single week. And I would totally be open in Q and A's. And that was counterintuitive because in a crisis you kinda don't want that to face every employee because they're gonna ask are we gonna do layoffs? and you really don't want it to answer that question. But I would try to just go through that process.

And the final thing I think at a crisis you have to be decisive and fast. But the problem with decisiveness is that a lot of people, especially a lot of data oriented people. They get a little bit paralyzed.

Because in a crisis everything's changing and how can you make a decision? We have the core data. And that's when you need courage. But courage needs to lean on something. What do you lean on with courage? And so courage must lean on principles. In other words, in a crisis, I don't think you make business decisions as much as you make principal decisions.

And principal decisions become things like If I can't predict the outcome. How do I want to be remembered? And if you always just imagine a crisis. This is my defining moment. This is how I want to be remembered.

It sometimes help you separate. Фром the craziness and the chaos of that moment. And then suddenly You can point a way forward, and you can become better. Than you ever were. So to end the story.

Before the crisis we were a breakeven company. Actually we were losing two hundred fifty million dollars. People then thought we were gonna own a business. A thousand of us went in a foxhole. Rebuilt the company from the ground up.

Miraculously Eventually went public. An evaluation five times our neater. And now like A design led company did three more than three billion dollars in free cash flow.

By not even really trying to make money. And I think there's a number of lessons here, but I think the most important lesson. That I learned is the thing you learn most about in a crisis is yourself and you've got to be true to who you are.

Don't apologize for how you run a run wanna wanna run the company because when you are in your darkest moments, Then y you know, like The principles in who you are. Is what you have to lean on. After the break, we'll hear from Princess Rima.

Saudi ambassador to the United States. On the importance of not taking no for an answer and how to use business to make radical change. Stay with us. When you build substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious.

Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale.

Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There can be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi.

On my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about

10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. Mm-hmm We're back with highlights from the first Masters of Scale summit. You can find all these full talks and more on our YouTube channel.

Up next, Princess Rima. The current Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States shares what can happen when the word no Does not fit in your vocabulary. Before being a diplomat, I was an actual government employee at the Ministry of Sport. And part of my role was to come in and say, how can we include women in a sector that women never were included in? And that really spoke to my soul because prior to working in government, I'd created a women's social enterprise. For female inclusion, financial literacy and readiness for work skills.

And my mantra is Providing access for opportunity. I was hired to push the envelope. I was hired to make change. I was hired to push back on. Either the stereotype that we had for ourselves or the limiting beliefs that we had for ourselves or Or the the boundaries that we were always told no, because I was told there is no no. The no is simply what you could imagine doesn't exist. So

With that, what I was empowered to do is say From a health and well being point of view for our young women, what do we want? If it's greenfield, nothing exists. From an education point of view, what do we want? From the business development point of view, what do we want from the consciousness of a woman? What do we want? So we were able to put PE in girl schools for the first time in the history of my country. We were able to allow for women to run and jog, ride a bicycle, and participate and compete internationally. We took four women as wild card to the Olympics, and frankly, one of the The most amazing opportunities was they said, Vima, there's these four girls.

We need to get them ready, but we can't talk about it. Which means we can't train anywhere publicly, which means also FYI at that time, no facilities for women in sports. So I said, My God, what do you want me to do with this? So they actually ended up doing their boot camp in my home. They trained in my home gym, they stayed in my parents guest house. Because we just needed to get it done. Get it done. The thing was just get it done before somebody says no.

Because once you break the ice and you take that first step, it is what it is, it's precedent. Get it done. Find a way. It's something every business leader needs to tell themselves at the most pivotal times of growth.

Next up. We'll hear from Aurora James. She's a designer and founder of the Brother Velis brand worn regularly by Beyonce, Serena Williams, and Lady Gaga. Aurora shared how allieship Innovation and profits can go hand in hand.

I'm sure that everyone in this room remembers where we were on May twenty twenty. And I was at home alone in Brooklyn, and when news and video footage started circulating of Mr. Floyd's senseless murder, in a lot of ways it felt like a grief that was almost too heavy to bear. And coupled with my own emotional reaction to the situation, I realized that From a business perspective, I was going to have to handle this as well.

Just like many of you. I'm sure a lot of you in the off on the audience here thought Wow. I would love to do something to help. Інфак

Some of you here. As well as a lot of other CEOs and founders actually called me that week trying to figure out how your company should respond. To this sudden racial reckoning. And I knew this time things were going to have to be different. We would no longer be able to work with just DEI policies or one time donations.

We needed innovations. На часто. We needed actions. На часто. Вот вид ва.

Allieship. The idea for me With simple. Black people are almost fifty percent of the population. Major retailers should commit fifteen percent of their shelf space.

To black owned businesses. And I thought If major retailers started committing to the idea of the fifteen percent pledge Silicon Valley might actually be excited to take notice and start allocating more than just their traditional 1% of funds to black entrepreneurs. I thought about how much money would start being funneled back into the black community.

And I realized something. Наливай. It was going to be damn good business. And so I tagged a bunch of the retailers that I wanted to come to the table and have a conversation.

Guys. This was not a calling out. This was a calling in. This was an opportunity.

But to be honest with you I was nervous. The next morning was a Sunday, and I woke up to a flurry of inbound messages. The idea was catching On. I stayed up at night overnight with my web designer so that we could launch a petition on Monday at noon.

By Tuesday, that same petition had almost 100,000 signatures. By Wednesday, I registered to become a nonprofit. By Thursday, CNN and the New York Times were calling. And by day 10, Sephora became the first major corporation to commit 15% cuts. Right then and there they had become an ally. І на данно, мис was simple. We are all Guilty.

But ultimately, it's the system that we've created that is to blame. And this is our unique opportunity to start rebuilding parts of that system. We've partnered with everyone from McKinsey to Google to Yelp to American Vogue. to help harness their unique skills as allies to actually propel black businesses forward. So I've learned a lot over the past few years.

About what it means to be an ally. А в лерд Алишеп так'ше. I've learned that it takes radical accountability. And I've learned that it takes partnership With black women.

Closing the racial economic gap in this country is entirely possible. But we are going to have to do it together. Each and every one of you in this room right now holds a unique opportunity and ability to effect change. Exactly where you're at. And all you need to do

Is start asking questions. Starting with How can I be an ally. Asking the right questions is an essential aspect of leadership.

Sometimes even more important than having the answers. That problem solving approach was also on display with summit speaker Bill Gates. To close out our episode, let's hear the psychonic leader talk about the global challenge of scaling up. Renewable energy. Electricity when the sun is shining is a essentially solved problem, but

Uh people who don't want to freeze to death or factories that need to run twenty four hours. It's reliability, it's the hard part of electricity. And so you have to think of it as a a reliability system. That faces the problem that during the extreme cases which are Cold snaps and heat waves. Your renewable sources tend to not be available. So when the

Cold front hits the midwest. There's no sun, there's no wind, and yet Uh you have this non sheddable load, which is people don't like to freeze to death. You can't thaw them out later. Uh and So it's twenty four hours a day and kind of a mind blowing amount of energy.

required in that. that case. So having either nuclear fission, which has huge economic problems and we need breakthroughs or fusion. which has both science problems and economic problems. These are grossly underinvested areas.

Now versus say ten years ago. varied dramatically. There's fourteen fusion companies Uh breakthrough energy's in four. out of the fourteen.

Uh By I'm biased on fission because I directly fund, you know, and once you put billions of dollars into something you get uh bias that it might work. Uh so I'm I'm hoping uh that You know, I can take that money and spend it on malaria. Well the involvement of the private sector companies

is one of the fantastic things that happened over the last five years. Glasgow Summit COP twenty six. Uh Uh left. November the

private sector really came, and not just the private sector that's uh inherently emits which is like oil and gas or electricity Or industrial. The finance sector, the technology sector. You know, all were there saying okay they wanna help be involved.

And for many of these new green products they can be pilot customers. You know, they when they build a new building. They can buy green cement. Yes, they'll pay a little bit extra. But that is part of that learning curve. Human innovation's incredible. I didn't know when I started down the break through energy path.

Whether I'd see the same innovation I'd seen in the digital realm. I really didn't. Uh and I'm here to tell you that wow. Uh bright people particularly in the United States.

Have come up with solutions to these. And it's gonna be fun. Uh Uh back those and get those scaled out literally on a a global scale.

Bill reminds us all the promise that innovation can bring. From navigating crises to embracing creativity, the moments in this episode were just part of the wisdom sharing our first Masters of Scale summit. You can check out these full conversations and more on our YouTube channel. Our stage program runs October twenty third and twenty fourth.

Find out more at masters of scale dot com slash summit. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scales await what original. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida.

The production team includes Tucker Legersy, Masha Makatanina, Brandon Klein, Timothy Lou Lee. Our senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Q. Original music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is the tall Malad.

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